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Shadows



The scene’s one of wandering back to a tent, through a field of thousands, flag posts and lamp-lit; the pitch hasn’t moved but their damned if they can find it, more having cropped up in makeshift walkways in-between. The sky’s the final shade from its fullest darkness, throwing clouds across itself like fishing boats, streamlined by currents. Campfire smoke drifts across the site, a half-cut mob of guys attempt to resurrect some fading chant, and a man is running in the inimitable manner of one desperately in need of the toilet. Morning darkens. Now one of the crew mutters something to himself, another sparks a roll-up with the same Zippo that was held to the wall of sound and fading whine conjured not an hour ago; a stack of Marshall amps and the wielding of a custom-built, sunburst Fender Strat… If there is a more direct way back it escapes them, left instead as they are circling in on the plot that, altered by darkness, will finally return to the mind as the changed yet half-familiar face of an old acquaintance might… In the meantime, there are only the torches of camps illuminating their puppetry of contents, and the names the imagination might give to the shadows of intimacy, argument and practicality that flicker so suddenly across them… Wings; The Last Dance; Snakes; A Parting Kiss; This is Something