|
During
the week a package arrived for me from the United Kingdom. In
the upper right hand corner was a stamp with a picture of Edinburgh
Castle. My mother assumed that meant the package was from Scotland,
but it was from somewhere more south and west and by the sea.
(Mothers can be wrong, though they admit that infrequently).
I drew my own castle when I was in Edinburgh in December, sitting
in the park below the castle. From my bag, I took my black blank
book and my felt-tipped pen. That drawing became more of the
castle wall and the hill, due to the size limitations of the
page. Think of cross-hatched blacks lines loosely composed into
the idea of a mass of rocks and the idea of a streak of a wall
cutting across that, and you nearly have the drawing of mine.
Holiday shoppers walked past me as I sat on the bench drawing;
I noticed how they tried to glance over my shoulder without
my noticing. But, since I did, they obviously were not doing
a good job at that. I had had to take my gloves off to hold
the pen. My hands became numb and red from the cold, and the
deepest pockets can still take months to warm them again. I
showed my father my drawing and the stamp; he told me that it
looked great. I can never tell whether he is lying or not. Unlike
him, I do not take to the pushing of lines across a page; I
usually just push words around instead (they don't fight back).
On the train from Edinburgh to London, I listened to Belle and
Sebastian's Tigermilk album. From the window that I looked
out, distant mountains passed, the ocean swept by, and often
history's leftovers of a castle or an abbey were seen. And I
just sat by a train window, speeding across the land, listening
to a tape cassette. I had wanted to know if being in Scotland,
the band's native land, enhanced listening to Belle and Sebastian.
No, it does not. Grey lonely days and empty high streets. A
little pain and a lot of love. (Both treacherously similar in
some cases). Whatever those songs are about is all the world
over.
| Matthew
Patrick, October 1998 |
|