From my Bob Calver archive

[Martyn White]

[Originally posted by Seb Welton, BOC-L, 1993]
This was originally printed in Sounds in 1974 and was reprinted in Hawkfrendz
no.18. Seeing as this is just a limited edition of only 1000 copies and they
seemed to (kind of) ignored the copyright and whatever, I thought it would be
a decent thing to pass it on to others. Enjoy.


                               Cattle At Twilight

                                 Robert Calvert
                                   28-12-1974

          ...they're  so  weary of it all. "Nostalgia seems the latest
          thing," says Noel Coward. He wishes he'd known that was  all
          there  was  to  it  when  he was Down There. Jimi Hendrix is
          puzzled: "You mean a hankering after the past?" There's even
          nostalgia for the future. A fantasy.

          Noel  Coward, dressed in a gold lame evening suit, is seated
          in a great wing chair of swan and ostrich  feathers.  He  is
          looking  downwards  through the legendary heavy-lidded eyes,
          smoking a leopard skin cigarette in  an  ivory  holder.  The
          wings  of  the chair are raised, and the whole thing appears
          to be floating  against  the  glaring  white  background  of
          eternity.

          Enter  Jimi  Hendrix,  dressed  in a coat of many and moving
          colours. As the colours change the light around him is  left
          stained  by the glow of their radiance. He wears a battered,
          black felt hat in which six metal feathers  are  fixed  that
          jingle, like spurs when he moves. His skin is silver.

          Hendrix: You still sitting there?
          Coward:  I  am.  And  I  think I shall continue sitting here
          until I'm tired  of  sitting  here.  And  when  that  moment
          arrives,  I  shall  wait.  Until I'm tired of being tired of
          sitting here. And so I shall continue to sit.
          Hendrix: That sounds logical.
          Coward: It isn't.
          Hendrix (peering over Coward's shoulder): You still watching
          them down there?  What's going on?
          Coward: Nostalgia seems to be the latest thing.
          Hendrix: Nostalgia? Sounds like a disease.
          Coward: More of a symptom really.
          Hendrix: It means like trying to hang on to things that  you
          ain't got any more, right? Hankering after the past.
          Coward: It's more like handkerchiefing after it...
          Hendrix: So what's all this nostalgia for?
          Coward  (rapidly):  The Twenties. The Thirties. Occasionally
          the Forties. More often the Fifties. And I  don't  like  the
          way they're looking at the Sixties.
          Hendrix: So? Let 'em get on with it.
          Coward: I don't care what they do with the Fifties. Dreadful
          greasy decade.  But the Twenties was my invention.
          Hendrix:  You  mean  all  those chicks with short skirts and
          flower-pots on their heads. Waving beads around?
          Coward: Certainly.
          Hendrix: Yeah? OOH Wack a Doo...baggy pants and short, shiny
          hair?
          Coward:  Well  it  was only a prototype really. The Thirties
          was by way of being an improvement. But I'm  afraid  it  all
          went a bit wrong towards the end. Very depressing.

          Hendrix  takes  what  appears  to be an intricately jewelled
          six-gun out of his coat pocket. He aims  into  the  air  and
          pulls  the  trigger.  Instead  of  going  bang,  it  emits a
          brilliant rainbow chord of sounds. He spins the pistol round
          his finger like a gunslinger and slides  it  back  into  his
          pocket.

          Coward: What on Earth was that?
          Hendrix:  It  was just a dream I once had. It was nothing on
          Earth at all.
          Coward: That's one of the advantages of  being  up  here,  I
          suppose.
          Hendrix:  Yeah, I guess there are a few. Do you ever get any
          of those nostalgia feelings?
          Coward: I suppose I do.  But  only  in  my  weaker  moments.
          Mostly  for  silly,  isolated  fragments  of childhood. Tiny
          fractions of time  in  which  nothing  spectacular  actually
          happened.  But for some reason, whenever I recall them, they
          have that exquisite aura of ever inviting sadness shimmering
          through them. I don't dress it up in period  costume  trying
          to  evoke  them though. I would certainly look very silly in
          short trousers and a school-cap. No...it's not  for  any  of
          the  great,  grease painted, applause-swollen moments that I
          feel nostalgia...it's more...let me see...I had it somewhere
          in a song of mine...  "I'm so weary of it all...Other voices
          call...the  cattle  at  twilight...the  birds  in  the   sky
          light...of dawn."
          Hendrix:  Before I was born I wanted to be an Eagle. I guess
          I wasn't assertive enough.  Maybe  the  reason  I  joined  a
          parachute mob was just so I could get my share of the sky. I
          told them I wanted to be a soldier. They gave me a gun.  And
          a  parachute.  And  then  they  said jump. And I jumped into
          twenty thousand feet of air. And in  those  few  seconds  of
          falling  free I didn't feel like I was falling at all. I was
          climbing. I was rocketing  away  from  the  plane.  Upwards.
          Into the blue. Then suddenly this great white membrane burst
          out  of  my  shoulders. It grew. Like a speeded up botanical
          film.
          Coward: You mean it was like a pair of wings?
          Hendrix: No, it was worse than wings. Sure, wings  hold  you
          back.  But  this was more like a drag. A huge dome of silken
          resistance like the shell of a  giant  aerobatic  snail.  It
          held me back. It was dragging me down.
          Coward: I know the feeling well, dear boy.
          Hendrix:  I  looked down into this organic canopy...I mean I
          was looking down into it...not looking up.
          Coward: You were upside down, looking down.
          Hendrix: No, it's entered in the books up here that I jumped
          from a plane. And my parachute  never  opened.  I  wrote  it
          myself.
          Coward: I don't suppose there was much room left in the book
          after  I'd  written my own account. I did my best to live as
          many lives as I could. All at once.   They were  all  quite,
          quite imaginary.
          Hendrix: What are they doing now?
          Coward: Down there? They're doing a play about the Beatles.
          Hendrix: They're not dead are they?
          Coward: Not enough to bury.
          Hendrix: Who's that cat with the orange hair?
          Coward: That's David Bowie. He's somehow managed to create a
          feeling of nostalgia for the future.
          Hendrix: They'll be doing a play about him next.
          Coward:  If  they  do  I'm  sure  it'll  be  based on purely
          circumstantial evidence.
          Hendrix: What's that other guy doing over  there  with  that
          guitar?
          Coward: He's impersonating you.
          Hendrix: Did I really sound like that?
          Coward: No, but you looked as if you did.
          Hendrix: I guess you get a lot of impersonations, huh?
          Coward:  My  dear boy. I'm constantly being impersonated out
          of my wits. Look at them all. In nightclubs  everywhere.  On
          television.  At  private  parties.  All  they  have to do to
          induce floods of laughter is to stand  there,  talk  through
          clenched  teeth  and  wave  a cigarette-holder about. I only
          wish I'd know that that was the secret.
          Hendrix: Who's that cat in the leopard skin suit?
          Coward:  That  one  over  there?  In  the  white  jacket and
          bow-tie?
          Hendrix: Yeah, the one in the blue jeans and tee-shirt.
          Coward: That must be the Scarlet Pimpernel.
          Hendrix: Hey, I've just seen a guy write a song  lyric  with
          his eyes closed.
          Coward:  Yes.  He's  the  ringleader of a band of rebellious
          cocknies. He was probably just signing autographs.
          Hendrix: I though he might have been writing a note for  the
          milkman.
          Coward: I don't think he discriminates

          The  sound  of Celestial engines is heard. They both look up
          and  see  a  fair-haired  girl  approaching  on   a   golden
          motor-cycle.  The  white mists of Eternity spiralling around
          her wheels.

          Hendrix: Here comes Janis. We're going starbathing together.
          Wanna come? Bring Cole Porter and Ivor Novello.  We'll  make
          it a party. Take a crate of Nectar along.
          Coward: Cole is still giving Ivor his versification lessons.
          I'm  sure they wouldn't thank us for interrupting them. Poor
          Ivor, he won't give up 'til  he's  learned  everything  Cole
          Porter knows. I suppose eternity should be long enough.
          Hendrix: What about you?
          Coward:  Thanks  for  the  offer.  But as for me...I think I
          shall continue sitting here until I'm tired of sitting here.
          And when that moment arrives, I shall wait. Until I'm  tired
          of  being  tired of sitting here. And so I shall continue to
          sit.

          The volume of the Celestial Engine reaches such a  pitch  as
          the  bike arrives that speech is no longer feasible. Hendrix
          climbs aboard pulls blue  and  sparkling  goggles  over  his
          eyes,  and  the  bike  takes off. The surging colours of his
          psychechromic coat merge into a solid blue that  grows  more
          and more electric-looking as it recedes into the distance.

Copyright (C) it's original publication. No breaches of copyright
intended or implied.