The Sick Bag Song Read online

  My wife and I had come to visit Lucy Ferry. Bryan was away on business. I was relieved. Who wants to meet their childhood heroes?

  Lucy showed us around the grounds. We saw the walled garden all in bloom, we saw the orchard full of apples, we saw the swallows and the martins, we saw the foaling horse prancing in the fields.

  In the noonday sun the women were as white as snowflakes. I drifted away and found a swimming pool surrounded by a high hedge. I took off my jacket and sat down on a lounger under an umbrella and fell asleep.

  I awoke to find Bryan Ferry in his bathers, standing in the swimming pool. He was white and handsome and very still.

  I haven’t written a song in three years, he said.

  Why? What’s wrong with you? I said.

  He gestured, with an uncertain hand, all about him.

  There is nothing to write about, he said. Then he pushed off into the water.

  That night I sat at my desk writing in a frenzy – page upon page – song after song – I couldn’t stop! But weeping too! Hot, sobbing tears pouring down my cheeks. Hey, what’s the matter, baby? said my wife, propped up on the bed.

  I’m a fucking vampire! I cried, thinking of Bryan Ferry and his bursting flowers and his prancing horses and his flight of swallows and his hedged swimming pool and his lovely wife.

  No, you’re not. Come here, she said.

  I crawled onto the bed and she pulled the sheet away.

  Listen, she said.

  I put my ear against her distended stomach, her knapsack, and listened. I could hear little trapped people swimming around within.

  They are eating me from the inside, she said.

  Lucky them, I said.

  I’m serious, she said.

  But she had fallen asleep and I crawled off the bed across the floor, up the wainscot and along the panelled ceiling. I pressed my ear to the ceiling and listened. I could hear people gathering on the floor above. The ceiling vibrated. I recognised the voices as past collaborators, going back many years. They sounded fatigued as if depleted of oxygen, maybe, or as if someone had siphoned their blood away. I could hear them sobbing and cursing and consoling each other.

  I fell asleep.

  I awake hanging from the ceiling fan in the Westin, Calgary, Southern Alberta. I spider down into my clothes and fling wide the window!

  Blue skies, motherfucker! Day off!

  Everything we do is for a better you! says the mission statement on the lobby wall as I high-five the doorman and hit the street at a cheerful pace.

  O lovely Calgary, Alberta! What a bright and pretty spot!

  I cross the pleasant Bow River under a faultless sky and stroll along the Chevron Learning Pathway – the fabulous environmental educational walkway on the east end of Prince’s Island Park. I wind my way through a constructed wetland, and by a clump of purple blazing star, a family of dabbling ducks waddles by, followed by a solitary stinger bee and up above, a white bell-shaped cloud floats across the sky and suddenly and out of nowhere, a feeling hits me like a kick in the guts, huh, huh, huh, for it suddenly grows dark, so I hurry back to the hotel, black smoke in my chest, and write a song until huh, huh, huh, half past fucking three. It went –

  I was born in a puddle of blood wanting everything. The blood was my own, pumping from my infant heart. I weighed myself and found myself wanting, wanting everything. Wanting everything is the thing that eventually tears you apart.

  I spend my days pushing Elvis Presley’s belly up a series of steep hills. Wanting everything is the everything that eventually kills. In the morning I attach my king-sized shadow to my heels. Without my shadow I don’t know how the other half feels.

  I’m standing in the dressing room with a mushroom cloud for a head. My cock sticks out like a sore thumb. I long for my hotel bed. I say, I wonder who I have to blow around here to get ahead? Wanting everything is the everything that eventually kills you dead.

  These king-sized tears do not come from me but beyond me, Drowning my eyes with floods of unexpected memory, Of a time of wanting, wanting it all, wanting everything. Stop now! Let it go! You are completely enough!

  And called it ‘King-Sized Nick Cave Blues’ and climbed into bed, and thumbing through the Gideon’s Bible – 1 Samuel 7 – I read,

  Then David took his staff in his hand, chose a number of smooth stones from the stream, put each of them in his nine shepherd’s bags, his pouches –

  The elegant Air Canada sick bag,

  The efficient American Airlines sick bag,

  The grim, grey British Airways sick bag,

  The functional Alaska Airlines sick bag,

  The instructional Delta Air Lines sick bag,

  The hip, extroverted Virgin Atlantic sick bag,

  The exploitative Qantas airline sick bag,

  The boring Southwest Airlines ‘advertisement’ sick bag,

  The useless, ink-resistant plastic-coated United Airlines sick

  bag,

  and with his sling in his hand, David approached the Philistine.

  So David triumphed over the Philistine with a sling and a stone. Without a sword in his hand he struck down the Philistine and killed him. Wham! Right between the fucking eyes! David ran and stood over him. He took hold of the Philistine’s sword and drew it from the sheath. He cut off his head with the sword.

  •

  I like ‘King-Sized Nick Cave Blues’. I think it has a lot going for it. I like the idea of our longings ultimately destroying us – it’s weirdly comforting, even though it’s not really true. It’s our lack of longing that gets us in the end. I am really pleased with the line about my cock sticking out like a sore thumb – you can’t buy that shit! – and I like the image of pushing Elvis Presley’s belly up a hill – the Sisyphean burden of our influences. As much as we twist and turn, they are never really transcended. They are seared into our souls like a brand. But mostly I like the last unrhymed line that suddenly and abruptly decapitates the song with a command from some less indulgent part of me – to basically stop moaning and shut the fuck up. Right on!

  •

  The next night, the air-conditioning is set to polar at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, in Calgary. By polar, I mean that when I try to enter the band-room, I find that it has frozen solid, a great block of barely transparent ice, and trapped inside, Warren, like a psychedelic Early Man, crouches over his violin and bow, a cake of pine rosin in his hand. In the centre of the iceberg, Marty and Conway face each other, caught in time, each holding an enormous glass of Pinot Noir, with looks of intense concentration on their faces as if attempting to stay balanced on a see-saw. Meanwhile, in a secluded corner, behind massive, gold-rimmed shades, Barry sits, hatless, snap-frozen and unmoving, while George leans, handsomely encased in ice, one hand caught mid-journey toward the sushi platter. Jim, an actual giant, towers above them all, work-busted hands behind his back, angled forwards from the waist, as if weighed down by his spade-shaped beard.

  The assistant tour manager shouts through the door Showtime! and the ice instantly crumbles and melts away and we move down the hall and into the hellish lights and the suffocating, deoxygenated air. And as we take up our positions on the stage, we call upon the nine Muses for assistance,

  Calliope, who helps with the epic ballads,

  Euterpe, who helps with the sad songs,

  Erato, who helps with the confessional songs,

  Clio, who helps with the oldies,

  Melpomene, who helps with the super-tragic stuff,

  Polyhymnia, who helps with the religious songs,

  Terpsichore, who helps with the dance numbers,

  Thalia, who helps with the funny songs,

  And Urania, who helps when it gets spacey and psychedelic.

  The nine Muses wait in the wings and upon hearing our petition, flash their AAA passes and jostle for space with the nine choruses of the angels,

  Seraphs, who keep us sexy and freewheeling,

  Cherubs, who stop us doing a
nything too stupid,

  Thrones, who keep us strong and virile,

  Dominations, who free our minds, Right on!

  Principalities, who stop us getting weepy and nostalgic,

  Powers, who transform us into small gods,

  Vertues, who keep us humble,

  Archangels, who deal with the cops,

  And ordinary angels, who keep us child-like.

  We call upon them all, this diverse and squabbling army of inspiration, to each breathe their curling tendrils of transmutation and combustion across the stage, so that we can begin, in love, and get this fucking show on the road.

  Look! Here they come, these figments of the imagination – invisible, silent, odourless, tasteless! You can’t see them, you say? Where are they, you say? Oh, my darlings, they are within us and without us, above us and below us and all about us! Look! Here they come now, with my fucked-up, spade-shaped, sad-sack sick bag song!

  At the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald in Edmonton, Alberta,

  A piece of old Europe hanging from the valley wall,

  The only Four Diamond Rated Luxury Hotel in Edmonton.

  Mythology bubbled up about me like melted plastic.

  But be warned! The Fairmont Hotel’s dry-cleaning service,

  Basically Chernobyled my suit enough to make me gag,

  Which I wore to the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium,

  Where Procol Harum recorded Procol Harum Live In Concert

  With The Edmonton Symphony Orchestra in 1971,

  With an awesome version of ‘Conquistador’, with drumming

  By the amazing B. J. Wilson, who was born in Edmonton, England.

  How weird is that? Edmonton in Northern Alberta

  Was named after Edmonton in England in 1791 as the new

  Trading post for the Hudson Bay Company, don’t you know.

  That night, our work done, we rolled out of the Jubilee,

  Down the valley and swam around in the Saskatchewan,

  Then partied with some comely Canadian fur traders,

  Like it was seventeen ninety-one.

  Mythology bubbles up about me like melted plastic.

  I sit alone on the bank of the glacial Saskatchewan,

  Beside a low-lying bridge,

  Picking at a thread in my jacket sleeve. Pick, pick, pick.

  Cubic tonnes of water spew along the river’s course.

  The river is a pulsating, living artery.

  It has nine known qualities.

  It is not ashamed of its actions.

  It flows without resistance.

  It washes its own history away.

  It has no memory.

  It is eternally of the present and in the present.

  It is not dependent on the whims of the muse.

  It needs no angels to transport it.

  It is not petrified, haunted or derelict.

  It is not fumigated.

  I strip off my reeking sick bag suit and rinse it in the river. Wash away the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald’s dry-cleaning service’s toxins all the way to Lake Winnipeg!

  And naked, I drift into a sort of reverie.

  •

  I remember the disastrous events from the town of my youth. The boy who accidentally shot and killed his brother in the street next to ours. The boy who had a fatal allergic reaction to multiple bee stings. The old dead man we found in a gully on the way to school. But mostly I remember what my mother and father told me about the boy who had died jumping off the railway bridge. He had hit the concrete pylon support that lay submerged beneath the water and was knocked unconscious. He drowned. He was found a couple of days later tangled in the branches of the half-felled tree. Mostly I remember that.

  I light a cigarette, and resting there on the bank stare out across the dark, moonlit river and wonder how many memories I have mislaid along the way and whether they will ever be retrieved. Without warning, I am overwhelmed by a particular kind of sorrow, swollen and hard in my chest, that is reserved for the loss of something both utterly precious and entirely illusory, and my eyes well with tears that spill down my cheeks.

  •

  I stay that way for a time, until I become aware of a shallow breathing coming from beneath the bridge. I rise to my feet and, hunching down, crawl under the heavy wooden crossbeams to investigate. It is damp and dark under the bridge, and although it takes some time for my eyes to adjust, I grope my way towards the strange locking breaths that seem to emanate from a fringe of rushes along the bank. I lean down and there, lying on her side in the shadowy reeds, I find a small, pale she-dragon, sick and close to dying. Her eyes are closed and when I put my hand on her neck to feel for life, her armoured eyelids roll back to reveal startling orange slits. She looks at me for a moment, and then closes her eyes. There is the faintest discernible pulse.

  I kneel down and wrap the dragon in the jacket of my suit, then with some difficulty carry her up the slope to the majestic Fairmont Hotel Macdonald in Edmonton.

  •

  Mythology bubbles up within me, and all about me. The dragon lies on the bed in my suite at the Fairmont. Her breath is so shallow as to be almost non-existent. Sometimes her breathing catches and stops and I think she has died and I panic and wring my hands, but then there is an odd clicking noise in her throat and her delicate respirations begin again. I have turned out the lights, as the brightness seemed to agitate her. A phone rings repeatedly in the room next door. I turn on the flashlight app on my iPhone and examine her – a little squamous Drakania – with intricate trace markings curling about her body. On the webbed back foot is a long bone spur used to poison her attackers. Her sexual organ is a neat blue-rimmed fold and the waxy skin on her belly under the light of the iPhone has an opaline sheen that is heartbreaking.

  Everything is happening and has happened and will happen again. Everything that exists has always existed and will continue to exist. Memory is imagined; it is not real. Don’t be ashamed of its need to create; it is the loveliest part of your heart. Myth is the true history. Don’t let them tell you that there are no monsters. Don’t let them make you feel stupid, just because you are happy to play down in the dark with your flashlight. The mystical world depends on you and your tolerance for the absurd. Be strong, my darling ones, and believe!

  And you, too, I say to my dragon. Be strong! I say, and I cover her body with a thin blanket. Be strong! I say, and there in my underwear I press my ear to the dragon’s slow-moving side and adhere to the distant argument of her breath.

  After a time, in a low whisper, I address my wife, in the hope that she may hear, all those many miles across the sea.

  Hang in there, I say to my wife. Be strong, I say. You can do it. There are a million of us, all over the world, breathing like you tonight.

  That night, on stage at the Orpheum, I stood at the deep end.

  It was Canada Day and I was a single screeching lung of lack.

  My dragon had not survived the night. She had died.

  I had sat there and listened to her last slow susurration,

  Bubble like a song from the wound in her side.

  And the name of the song was ‘The Butcher Boy’,

  That I heard in 1999 at the South Bank, with my wife,

  About a young man called Willie who went away,

  And a white English rose who took her life.

  •

  Arise and leap! We must take the first step alone!

  The Muses and the angels shared a cigarette and cried.

  Behind the Orpheum I paced and phoned home.

  They told me our gods would outlive us. They lied.

  Ring! Ring! Said the phone and it rang and it rhymed.

  Ring! Ring! Said the phone, there is nobody home.

  Ring! Ring! Said the phone and it rhymed and it chimed.

  Ring! Ring! We must take the first step on our own.

  •

  On the way out of Vancouver we pull the bus over on the Interstate Bridge. I carry the drag
on’s corpse to the barrier wrapped in a small embroidered blanket I took from the Shangri-La Hotel. I lift the bundle over the barrier and drop the whole lot down into the river below.

  I stand there a moment watching the relentless movement of the water, half expecting to see the bundle rise to the surface and bob jauntily down the river. But it does not.

  Instead, I hear a voice.

  You know the Chinese do not consider the dragon to be an evil creature at all. The dragon is seen as a god, ruler of the waters. Worship the dragon and you will find prosperity and peace.

  Yeah, well, the dragon is dead, I say sadly, and turn.

  Leaning against the barrier of the bridge, stands the black girl. She is dressed in a white mini-skirt with a red maple-leaf design printed on it. I smile in recognition.

  Canada Day, I say.

  She returns the smile and puts one naked foot up on the rail.

  I’ve seen you before, right? Louisville?

  The girl nods and salutes.

  Thought so, I say.

  The flushed fingers of the morning sun reach across the river and enfold the girl, igniting her in a nimbus of unworldly light. She steps up onto the barrier and presses her body against the new day. I move closer to her and together we look out across the waking city.

  Vancouver, eh? I say. Hey, have you ever heard Procol Harum’s live version of ‘Conquistador’? It was recorded in Edmonton.