Train Song
It smells like stale popcorn and damp shoes and cigarette smoke from twenty years ago or more.
The room is dark. It is silent. From silence a sound builds. It starts as a cuckoo, calling out at even intervals. Slowly it shifts. It becomes more metallic. It is an ersatz bird. A pretty jeweled thing to entertain guests with. It shifts a little more. It becomes more machine. It is the chugging of a train. Too slow. Less slow. A little slow. Neither slow nor fast. Getting faster. Faster still. It’s fast now. The trees are sliding by, lubricated liberally by time jelly. But you can’t see them. The room is dark.
The world is swaying in space. The world rocks us to sleep.
Clank, clank, sway. The whistle blows. The seventh trumpet announces the trombone. And then the saxophone, the double base, the drums. Light piano. No one knows where it’s going. The sounds rise and fall of their own accord. Mist descends. You are almost, but not quite, sleeping.
Naturally, you hear it, a hypnagogic voice (speaking in a sing-song voice; an imitation of the avant garde greats; you know the type):
I wouldn’t mind
if life was like this…
and the afterlife
just a long train headed west
forever
swaying side by side by side by…
sitting side by side with you
sinking into the mist
to the squeaks and whistles and clanks
(saxophone duets with train. 33 seconds.)
forgetting my name and place of birth
in the patches of light between branches
a flutter in the blue, a stone slips,
and the old man behind us
sings along, soft and indistinct,
to a song and snaps
(music falls silent; fingers snap, pause, snap, pause, keeping the rhythm; hypnogogic voice disguised as old man hums the melody; snap, pause, snap; music snaps back on. the jazz is free, freer even; hypnogogic voice returns undisguised: almost speaking, almost sighing, almost singing)
it’s comforting… it’s comforting… it’s comforting… it’s…
(musical interlude. 16 seconds.)
(the room has been filling up with cold mist)
I’m not tired now
just a little sleepy
I’m not bored
just a little stone on a path going nowhere
a long, slow train
going west that never gets there
it’s comforting… it’s comforting… it’s comforting… it’s…
(voice falls away; drums fall away; piano falls away, bass and saxophone fall away; trombone and trumpet fall away; the squeaks fall away, and the whistle; it all falls away but the clank, clank, clank, evenly spaced, slowing, slowing, slowing. It changes and shifts. It is a birdlike train.)
The lights come up. The mist is too thick to see through.