Bostin News: Join the Carnival by Tim Brinkhurst

Streetblend by Tim Brinkhurst

Interrupted

With the window open, enough that a burglar can slip slim fingers through and stroke the plastic frame. Senses sprinkled with a powder of grey noise, a light concoction of weekend cooking, diesel, marijuana smoke, fear and joy.

Bed-sheets are crumpled, veins of cloth, creased and flattened beneath us. We are moving slowly, inches are yards. All our attention, spiced by the messages through the window crack. All our attention, focused on ourselves and each other but seasoned to taste by the dread and fantasy out there, in the city.

Insect motors. Grooves of tyres. A headlight animates the shadow of my head across your face and shoulders. A peppered nest. Restless messages. Ideas delivered, suggestions discarded by the kerb. Glass breaks, shatters, cracks, silvers and shakes. Entry, access, exploring the shadows of a glove box, the hard architecture of a door-knob.

A scream shoots the rapids of the streets, buries itself into the night. Into the undergrowth. Breathless, fast-paced walking conversations, one-sided, guilty and defiant, going home. We walk with her.

Distracted. We ride the buses. We search for bud between our feet by the accelerator pedals, inadvertently pushing the brake pedal we wink quietly in red at a fox. We tap at doors. We start work and finish work. We lie with breathers and moaners and dreamers. Sitting on the branches with a nightingale. Perched on the landing gear of the helicopter, hovering above the stalking, prowling, lonely man in black become shimmering fluorescent white in the lens.

Tired, heads cocked to the mass, the whispered confessions, the cathedral, the prayers, the reverberations of a thousand pleas – ‘not tonight, please Lord, not now’. And, despite the temptation, we do not whisper comfort through the window crack, we do not kiss the fingers of the burglar.

We fall back, two lines, hands on chest, toes touching. Defeated by the energy. Close our eyes and join the carnival.

Sound artist and producer Tim Brinkhurst has produced 5 sound pieces for Bostin News that speak of and share creativity.

Words, sound and images - Tim Brinkhurst
Commissioned for Bostin News Summer 2020