Posted on by
Reply

rephoto003

Photo/digital print.

The festival

Posted on by
Reply

We were at the festival, and I was carrying a blanket and picnic things around, looking for a suitable place to sit. It was really crowded though, so I couldn’t find anywhere. I put everything down and looked towards the stage. Michael Jackson was due to perform soon – I’d heard he’d asked the audience which of his songs they’d like to hear. While I was thinking about his songs I noticed that my feet were feeling wet, and as I looked across the field I saw that people were running away from a sheet of water, moving fast across the grass – a flood, pouring into the field from the nearby reservoir. I started to run too.

 
Soon I was on the street and, wanting to get further away, I got on a bus. I sat beside a couple of girls, and I gathered from their conversation that they lived with Iggy Pop. I was just thinking about why they’d be living with him when one of them spoke to me – why don’t you find out, she said, come on over and stay with us: he won’t mind. So I got off at their stop and went with them.

 
Iggy’s house was in an ordinary suburban street: inside it had a pleasantly bohemian feel – bohemian 1970’s I would say. The girls went upstairs to change out of their school uniforms. I went over to the window and looked out at the back garden. Iggy was out in the garden entertaining his dog by throwing a golf club that the dog ran to collect: they both seemed to be enjoying themselves. I noticed the sky was an incredibly dark grey, dense and oppressive. Looking past the end of the garden I could see, on the horizon, a long way off – but also, seemingly, very close – a series of funnels, or chimneys, of the kind you get at power stations: the whole horizon was taken up by them, and they were pumping out this grey smoke that became the sky. One of the girls called out – she said they were ready and I should come upstairs.