The Story of Don Chihuahua
Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye - Leonard Cohen [Cover]
November, mist, departure, valediction, church spire, memory, loss, rediscovery. I busked this (badly) when I was sixteen.
Mind World
I am on the beach, with Don Chihuahua. He gives me a cigarette, which I take, since I am no longer able to withstand the contagion of futility. The world is no longer able to find him, or me, without the aid of the blue puff of smoke whorling time into infinity for a few definite moments.
The Don casts his mind back to a recent weekend on which his consciousness dwelt on the rim of the bath. His body remained in his chair, gaping at the live world, but his mind-in-the-world was tethered to the rim of the bath; the hand of his mind raised, constantly, the ideal blade, razor sharp and inches long, hovering on the crest of his will. The movement of his mind-body pushed its arm up towards its chin, the mental knuckles resting there while the blade grazed the polyp-ridden cavities of the neck. A mind-eye watches the wrist flick blithely across the tendons - they are closed in their own world, believing in tension, and oblivious to exteriority, which must disillusion them of their fond dream: severed, the head flips through a half-circle and the gasping of the revealed arteries and sinews traces parabolic out-leaping carnivals of spending blood.
Yet, the Don remains in this chair, breathing, pulsing, living, inescapably. I continue to blame him for my lack of courage, although this very blame is itself the more cowardly act.
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Shee Beg, Shee Mor
Fionn mac Cumhaill, who ate the wisdom of the salmon, and built the Giant's Causeway to bridge the gap between the celtic nations, died in the battle fought between the fairy armies. Two queens, each from the smaller and the greater hills, Shee Beg and Shee Mor, fought, and continue to fight in the immortal night, and the battle will never be won. Fionn's first love was transformed into a deer, and his later love threw herself from his chariot on the Hill of Tara. A warrior is interned, upright in the cairn of Shee Beg, the lesser hill, alongside a woman, teeth perfectly preserved; they face the Hill of Tara. A common foe will one day unite the warring fairy armies, and the warrior Fionn will rise again, to defeat the invading hordes.
Here, in the tomb inside in the lesser hill,
I lie with my dead love.
Over on the greater hill,
the young warrior still raises armies.
No-one will win.
We will be found, fossils in the ground.
Men will look at our bones,
and see in us ancient truths.
But we will not be there.
Lovers of every generation
will come here, and gaze on these hills,
turn to each other and leave unspoken
the tales of fairy queens and warrior lords
that heave in their hearts.
We will watch them as we wander the fields,
I in the deer and you in the doe,
each in the soil,
communing in the air.
Warriors will hunt us for their prowess,
and our unending deaths will ennoble
their darkening hearts
with a measure of innocence.
Like vultures, rulers will scavenge us;
like snakes, they will corrupt our flesh
with the poison in their tongues.
And bards will come and sing of us
as an emblem of a nation,
a cypher for a world.
They will tell tales of wars
that cannot be won.
Their poems will call for me to rise again
with my conquering arm,
and they will call for you to rise
and be my heart.
They will sing,
until men and women are no more,
of restive vitality
and wise repose.
We will watch,
you and I,
as the cycle continues,
broken only by the look
in those lovers' eyes.
Download Shee Beg, Shee Mor - Turloch O'Carolan mp3
Lady Godiva
It was the cold middle of night, and I was summoned by Don Chihuahua. He spoke to me in low tones, without break, and without expecting a reply. I still do not understand his words, and cannot explain his meaning, except to say that I could see he was moved; as to why he accused me of being a spectre of his past, I do not know. An empty whiskey bottle lay by the side of his chair, and his ashtray was overflowing. He was unkempt and clearly tired. I do not know what to make of it - but here, as I have ever promised, is my account of his words.
"Lady Godiva - you know her - has returned". He looked at me accusingly. "She has left the darkness of the past and reappeared, just as you have. I do not ask what you want of me - I can teach you nothing that will alter the choices you make and if I could, well, then I would not be here now to tell you. You cannot force me into a different course of life, and if you could, well...
"But you know Lady Godiva. You love her as I loved her. And for all that we are connected, you and I - you with your incomprehension, and I with my all-too-familiar understanding - yet we are worlds apart. You, as I in my youth," - he grimaced - "do not see where real and imaginary worlds divide. I understand, as you will one day understand, that the unspoken and unenacted imagination overpowers a youthful mind to the point where he must speak and act, regardless of the consequences. My mind recoils in shame at the disasters and tragedies that could have been avoided had I only understood that the world is not a fiction, that the people in our lives are not players, that there is no drama, no denouement, no irony, and no authorial destiny awaiting us; and that to write it into our world is sheer vanity.
"These are the mistakes that you are doomed to repeat. And when we have switched places, and it is you, sitting here, no longer a spectre of my past but myself as I am, and you face the young pretender, as I face you now, then you will understand that that world you have written in your mind is precious, pure, and fragile. Then maybe you will understand that it should be protected, not because it will be destroyed, but because it has the power to destroy. The real world cannot stand the contamination of the unreal; the fates that you pretend to unfurl will not be dictated; the facts of your life will not yield to your delusion of providence; and the people in your life will not be written as though they were your playthings, but will rise and fight - or worse, simply leave you to your ruinous fictions, as I was left to mine, all those years ago, by Lady Godiva..."
He had stopped, and, since I had no idea what I could say, made to leave. As I reached the door, he called after me finally -
"Understand, mind, as you go about your folly, that she is blameless. It is I - you and I - who are responsible."
He looked away from me, clearly finished with me. And now I must see her, my Lady Godiva.
Download: Download Lady Godiva mp3
Sarabande
The Don shares his wisdom, and for that I’m grateful – but I wish he could impart his courage as well as his experience. I told him of my dilemma – my paralysis of inaction, which afflicts me each time I find myself wanting to speak of my feelings: I am rendered mute before the very object of my emotion. He looked at me kindly.
“There have been so very few people who were rays of sunshine in my life. I knew someone who was just such a shaft of light. She came into my life, and her joy threw shadows from everyone around her. Her smile flung away the clouds and her laughing eyes made the world a better place.
“I was in what I thought was my heyday. I thought to distinguish myself, my witty barbs and unconventional manner were magnetic. I revelled in my sharp limelight. My dart words hooked and dazzled, and I held myself guru-like in my acolytes' esteem.
“She had been away for some time, and I felt her absence as though it were a long dark night. When she returned, I put on my display. I was, I thought, on fire. My wit was my peacock feather, and in response to some small remark from a voice behind me, I shot off an offhand and withering remark. On turning round I saw it was her. She lowered her eyes, said nothing, but politely listened to me as I continued to excavate caverns of shame with my foolish words. And then, she left.
“I heard that she had spoken of my insult, and had said she thought me a brute. When I saw her a few days later, though I wanted to scream my sorrow and beg her forgiveness, my anger and pride kept me from it, and she left me in silence - a proud man guarding my horde of nothing.
“I never saw her again. I looked for her, every day, until it was time for me to leave that place. I accepted that it was too late. I never told her what I thought she was; how she lit up my eyes as though I were only half-alive when she was not with me.”
Though I could see he was drifting into a reverie, I asked, “Do you think she would be surprised, looking back on this, if you could tell her now?”
“I hope she has forgotten me entirely. But you – you should not hesitate.”
For Jo L. - wherever she may be
Download: Bach - BWV 1002 Sarabande.
The Port
I spoke again to Don Chihuahua. A gathering of friends brought us together, in the moonlight and flickering illumination of an oil-drum fire, in which the scraps of shattered pallets glowed. The Don bore his soul like a cloak, as though to reveal everything were the greatest protection against the elements.
"When you find yourself in the world and see finally things as they are; when you realise that the world is an ocean of searching and that you are tossed as though you were no more than a fleck of spray; when the comforts of familiarity and safety fall from you like a spent cocoon, and the stays of civilisation are nothing but illusory shackles; when you feel the exhilarating freedom of knowledge - the knowledge that you are truly alone, and that all men are unknowable, and that the only sure thing is that sooner or later you will dashed in the waves and be gone utterly - "
He was smiling as he said these words, but the smile seemed to me complicated and not directed at alleviating the tense silence that had fallen around his voice.
"To what do you cling? To a god? To your fellow man in the hope that fellowship is enough? To gratitude that you have lived at all? To love?"
I think we all wanted to know what his answer would be. But clearly he did not intend to say any more.
For my part, I find his words push me to a precipice. I am unsure whether I envy the depth of his soul - since I am no deep thinker - or whether I am grateful that I have no insights into such matters, and am willing to seek out any port in a storm.
The Port - mp3
Evocation
Don Chihuahua said:
I am suffering from subjunctivitis.
I would be in your arms now.
You would look at me with eyes
impenetrable in the obsidian light
and whisper the location of the hidden magic of the world.
Your opaque beauty would shock me again.
I would be lost again, absorbed
by the down on your soft cheek,
the pale, flushed skin covering
the mystery I could not
nor would not
want to solve.
I would see a glimmer of movement
in your brow, and I would,
as always,
recognise my thoughts in your face.
A train is carrying me
through ghost towns
lit by dull lamps
barely concealing the hollowness.
The carriage bulges with hollow people
occupying space and time
but nothing more.
They are being occupied by hollowness.
I can even see
their transparency –
they leave the train
as ghosts leave bodies,
leaving a shell.
Flickering across their faces
are the traces
of empty thoughts,
consumed by the nothingnesses
of inboxes,
chattering politics,
dinner for three,
four,
five
hollow people
in a hollow family home.
An eyebrow,
mistily visible
against the outlines beyond,
twitches in the last spasms
of an inconsequence.
Forgotten trains of hollow thought
blink out of mind,
only to repeat themselves
glibly.
The scales fell from my eyes.
The beeches trailed behind me
as I stepped into the future
stretching before me,
utterly certain into infinity.
It is lined with hollow homes,
filled with hollow accoutrements
for transparent people
scurrying to and fro
like ants on a dead trunk,
pursuing vacancy with
blind ardour.
What are they feeding
with the empty seed-husks
of nothingness that they carry
on their shoulders
as though they bore the world?
The beeches trailed behind me,
their eyes impenetrable in the obsidian
transparency of blind ardour
bearing the world of hollow homes
and inboxes into my body, leaving a shell.
Download: Jose Luis Merlin - Evocation mp3
The Return of Don Chihuahua
I spoke to Don Chihuahua today.
He told me that he recently discovered something alarming. More than a decade ago, in his teens, he had stood on a prosaic street corner in a northern English town, and had busked Famous Blue Raincoat, but Avalanche and the Story of Isaac were beyond him.
There was something mature in them; something beyond him. He simply couldn't control his fingers - couldn't even imagine his fingers doing that. Looking back, this was unsurprising. Just as a journeyman could not understand what it meant for a soul to be swallowed, so it was not for a journeyman to master that arpeggio.
So it was with alarm that the Don discovered purely by chance that, nearly 20 years later, he was playing those arpeggios almost without thought, for the first time in his life. He was not playing them with technical excellence; he did not really know what he was playing; and notwithstanding the discovery of a new ability, it felt more appropriate to go to the major rather than the minor for now.
"My fingers may grow old, but I swear my soul does not, and I am still an apprentice."
I understood him, I think: in adolescence one's purpose is to murder one's forefathers - whether it is in one's power or not. In later years, though, it seems more important to defer to them. They have created the paths that we now walk on.
I'll try to tell his story here.
Download: Leonard (mp3)
