If you gotta go. Roar.
Picture the scene…
i) Quent and I are crouched behind walls of sandstone. In between mopping salty sweat from our brows and rearranging prickly arse hairs interfering with dusty denim slacks we grin back and forth. Take that Mexico, we’ve done the lot and now the entire army has us surrounded.
Nothing can save us. Not even Sergio Leone‘s director’s cut. He’s been waiting for this killer shot and we know our number’s up.
Inbetween chewing tokes of our More 120s and clinks of brown beer bottles we discuss our travels and misadventures. The more we robbed, the less we cared for the riches and more for the adulation and danger.
We paid little attention to the bulging bags weighing down our rides. Even less to the clichéd ‘don’t hurt us,’ cries whimpered by the bloated clerks. No, we took more pleasure in the escalating prices above our heads.
We gave so much back, that your average Joe’s and Jane’s wouldn’t ever rat us out.
Well, this is it. The Kid & Sundance Part 2. The end of the line. The stench from those bloodthirsty yellabellied uniforms outside is rising, they’re not going to wait much longer.
Conversation is finished. We take one last knowing look and bend those clicking knee joints and we’re out the door, laughing as the sound of a thousand bullets pepper the midday heat – but all we hear is silence.
Soundtrack: Chicago Train, And This Is What We Call Progress.
ii) We grew up in the same town. Tamie Lee Simpson. She had such big blue eyes and wore the most beautifully pressed pleated skirts you’d ever imagine. Always blue. To match her eyes.
I suppose you could call us best friends. But deep down we were always rivals. The competition was there from an early age, whether it be on the hockey field, shooting hoops for Ms Hampson’s netball team or scoring house points in the classroom. We high-fived no matter who finished first or second – but there was obvious contempt if you were the runner-up. Second was nowhere, third didn’t even exist.
Now 27 years later we’re at the other end of this runway on a deserted airstrip inside 18 tons of dirty metal billowing diesel into the midday sky.
How we got here is too long a story, but let’s just say there’s a missing case of rare goshawk eggs and the body of a striking Italian named Gennaro lying undiscovered in a motel off highway 67 in San Diego. When the cops find him they’ll want to know why he’s wearing a pink dragon kimono and has a tomahawk buried in his temple.
Tamie Lee and I are no stranger to this kind of scenario but losing the eggs was the last straw and I said to myself ‘Dana, this has to end, she’s pushed you too far this time, girl.’
So here we are. The clock’s working itself to One – we chose One as we thought that’d be apt – and I refuse to get distracted by the furry dice which keep brushing up against my floating fringe. I can just about hear the stereo: Jase Lasek‘s vocal whipping up a ghoststorm of a thousand phantom dead spies.
We may be almost 100 metres apart but I can still see those blue eyes. Like crystal lazers trained across the plateau willing me to burst into flames.
My fists clench the wheel. The second hand strikes 12, my red leather boot slams the accelerator and for the briefest of moments I catch sight of my reflection: 100-miles-per-hour of 100-carat woman smiling as I hurtle towards shattering Tamie Lee Simpson to oblivion.
Soundtrack: Land Of Living Skies Pt 2: The Living Skies, Glass Printer, Devastation,
iii) The legend of Professor James Kensington III will forever be associated with madness. But in that madness there was profound greatness. A disturbed, imbalanced greatness. Few would or can disagree.
To design something so magnificent and yet be the architect for the death of millions – including your own fantastically orchestrated finale is a quite remarkably tragic achievement.
A genius at pre-school, and having made his name – and billions – before puberty, word of Kensington III’s designs for The Tower began to whisper into the planet’s planning domain circa 2173. What was this magni-monstrosity that would reach far into the ether and why would it be considered for construction?
Having created the world’s first rolling house a mere four years earlier to disastrous consequences – the Skilling family dead, neighbours homeless and a law suit waiting to be served – many feared the end was nigh for the uber-ambitious visionary.
Now a complete recluse, the press revelled in his flights of fancy (there was suspicion he’d eaten his own left hand and rebuilt a new one made of gold) and talk of The Tower only served to feed their appetite for the spectacular. Was his new creation a weapon for war? An overblown escape route to a nearby planet? Or simply another colossal vanity project?
Talk of scale grew daily. Five times in reach of the Great Wall was the closest extreme projected by guestimates. Nowhere near. When work began in 2110 no-one could have foreseen what was to come. Investigations into the death of workers (slaves) from neighbouring countries were hushed under the carpet as authorities marvelled at the Professor’s ambition.
The years passed and The Tower stretched high into space until that fateful morning. Dressed all in white, including a small bowler hat with an accompanying strange visor, James Kensington III appeared on a platform atop of his creation and beamed a message for the watching world, tens of thousands of miles below.
‘You won’t forget me..’ were his only words projected onto the implant chip behind their retinas.
And with that he launched himself head first, laughing like a hyena on crank, blistering through all barriers imaginable. The visor broke the fall but the body couldn’t withstand the depths of the ocean.
They say the speed at which Kensington III hit the water it’s possible his broken frame may be wedged in the very heart of the planet and that his body will burn for all time.
Soundtrack: Albatross, And You Lied To Me, For Agent 13
Albatross – Getintothis single of the Week
Besnard Lakes in Getintothis top abums of 2007
Getintothis label feature on Jagjaguwar
Besnard Lakes live at Liverpool Barfly, May 2007
