Imaginary Themes

Like landscape risen, an upthrust,

A pulse of rain or bleak weather to come

Something audible and deep,

Subharmonic and resonant…

…then the blues

The bending note, flattened fifth,

Or third, augmented, glissando

And counterpoint, thundering bass…

…that sad song of the south,

A love song of unending work,

Melody where the notes

Strung out on the stave’s rack

Cut like points of hurt and pain.

Clear sky and rattling wheels…

…a highway ride across an open plain

Here to elsewhere and over the horizon…

…whitewall tyres humming to the road’s beat.

Stones kick like random rimshots, 

With a snare-spring hiss beneath;

All futures seem possible.

The tree-line on the valley edge,

High and ragged, keeps its distance.

Warm wind ruffling the grass, 

In the creeks and draws,

Makes a sound like resignation. 

In a sigh across the scrublands, 

Dry as the dirt, dust devils whip away 

Across the wide-eyed plains

Where every pine is lonesome.

No sign remains of the people who came,

Only the high-bowed cat’s-paw wind

Plays the sun to sleep…

…strings and brass rise.

Without rhythm or signature,

Undercurrents of song,

Laid-back bass lines, ease each other

Into brave, long-noted solos…

Fly-by intersections,

Seem to hang on the dipping wires 

Slung between billboards.

Sky gives up the ghost

Under flashing neon.

…this jazz, this scat, over the backbeat,

Grace-notes, vocalised, blowing trumpet riffs…

…the vibe, the hit, the groove, the heavy music of the night 

Conducts itself in the shadows and the lights,

Those tiny lights, spot- and flood-, street- and head-

Swing the city dusk away from sleep.

Men and women score each movement, 

Flood like rivers through the clamour.

Stories told and songs sung out,

Their own words tell it and the tears they cry,

With laughter sticking in their throats,

Bleed joy to sorrow, tenderness to tribulation;

All their rough emotions rise, stirring in their hearts 

Turbulent and wild, damned and free.

Born of air to flesh, solid in bone, 

Old and young go forward, leaning, 

Heads held high or stooping

Some into the sunset, some at the rising,

Striving, struggling with times of change.

Music fades and dies away.

Others come to dance across the scenes.

Different times, different themes;

And the light is always changing. 

Choirs in the distance sing about tomorrow.

© BH 2015

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When Jack Bruce died in October 2014, it was a loss to music. I'm not just saying that as a once-upon-a-time bass-player myself.  He was a player I'd thought highly of since Cream. For my sins, my music days back in Aberdeen with Manray did see us cover his solo piece Theme for an Imaginary Western. 

It was that I recalled when he died. Well, that and how I met his mother and his wife of the time in a bar on the west coast.

So, in November 2014, I wrote the first lines of this. Put it all away and only finished it now. I put some America in it and also the music that follows all of us around wherever we are. A bit like our in-car entertainment and the way it can sometimes become the theme to a day, or a journey, or an entire lifetime on the road.

It's that music which makes dullness tolerable, scores the tedious moments or lifts those of despair, flight, change, transition, into something better.