planet krikkit
As the Empire is thwarted at the frontier, losing legions by legions in its attempts to subjugate a recalcitrant province, as the Imperial Capitol is in tumult, the line of succession in dispute, as the People wallow in the Reality of their poverty, or float in the Unreality of their mind-altering drugs, I still manage to blog about completely random things.
I am in the midst of upheaval in too many ways to explicate—I am in a state of physical displacement, mental and emotional disarray, and I'm quite unable to focus on the here-and-now.
So I have been reading f(r)ictions and in the last three posts[n][n-1][n-2], the theme of Paul McCartney runs common throughout. Which reminded me of Douglas Adams's
Some select quotes:
They walked quite near the watchers beneath the tree, swinging lanterns that made soft and crazy lights dance among the trees and grass, chattering contentedly, and actually singing a song about how terribly nice everything was, how happy they were, how much they enjoyed working on the farm, and how pleasant it was to be going home to see their wives and children, with a lilting chorus to the effect that the flowers were smelling particularly nice at this time of year and that it was a pity the dog had died seeing as it liked them so much. Arthur could almost imagine Paul McCartney sitting with his feet up by the fire one evening, humming it to Linda and wondering what to buy with the proceeds, and thinking, probably, Essex.…
Arthur saw that a couple of members of the party were now singing a different song. It came lilting back to them through the soft night air, and was a sweet romantic ballad that would have netted McCartney Kent and Sussex and enabled him to put in a fair offer for Hampshire.…
At this point Arthur noticed a curious feature to the song that the party was singing. The middle eight bridge, which would have had McCartney firmly consolidated in Winchester and gazing intently over the Test Valley to the rich picking of the New Forest beyond, had some curious lyrics. The songwriter was referring to meeting with a girl not "under the moon" or "beneath the stars" but "above the grass," which struck Arthur as being a little prosaic. Then he looked up again at the bewilderingly blank sky, and had the distinct feeling that there was an important point here, if only he could grasp what it was. It gave him a feeling of being alone in the Universe, and he said so.…
…they arrived at the inner perimeter of the hollow, spherical Dust Cloud that surrounded their sun and home planet, occupying, as it were, the next orbit out.
It was more as if there were a gradual change in the texture and consistency of space. The darkness seemed now to thrum and ripple past them. It was very cold darkness, a very blank and heavy darkness, it was the darkness of the night sky of Krikkit.
The coldness and heaviness and blankness of it took a slow grip on Arthur's heart, and he felt acutely aware of the feelings of the Krikkit pilots that hung in the air like a thick static charge. They were now on the very boundary of the historical consciousness of their race. This was the very limit beyond which none of them had ever speculated, or even known that there was any speculation to be done.…
They flew out of the cloud.
They saw the staggering jewels of the night in their infinite dust and their minds sang with fear.
For a while they flew on, motionless against the starry sweep of the Galaxy, itself motionless against the infinite sweep of the Universe. And then they turned round.
"It'll have to go," the men of Krikkit said as they headed back for home.
On the way back they sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life-forms.…
"It's all right," she said quietly, but clearly enough for all the shadowy crowd to hear, "you don't have to do it."…
"I want you to do something for me," she said, and unexpectedly laughed.
"I want," she said, and laughed again. She put her hand over her mouth and then said, with a straight face, "I want you to take me to your leader," and she pointed into the War Zones in the sky. She seemed somehow to know that their leader would be there.
Her laughter seemed to discharge something in the atmosphere. From somewhere at the back of the crowd a single voice started to sing a tune that would have enabled Paul McCartney, had he written it, to buy the world.
It is a little sad to mention Linda McCartney, since she's dead, but then again, so is Douglas Adams. (The world is now a lot less funny.)
The entry entitled "pleased to meet you" also reminds me a little of T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", but that is really neither here nor there, and I don't know which deranged neural pathway in my mind lit up to make me think that. I suppose I identify a lot with the protagonists of both pieces.