In
the cylindrical tower, a spiral staircase descends from unseen height.
The
building is of white, ancient stone, punctuated by rings of rounded windows of Romanesque design, the staircase of wide thin stone of the same type as the
building.
An
infinitely varied pattern follows the course of the simply ornate ironwork
supporting the smooth endless polished banister rail.
As
I find myself half-floating, half-tripping down the smooth worn stairs, I look
in wonder at the walls that pass me, where floral interweavings, frozen animals
and gesturing stylised human figures cover the curved vertical surfaces, hewn
with infinite silent patience by masons who were able during their work to
remain for the period floating at the scene of their anonymous memorials.
Other
figures, children, the old and infirm, the beautiful and the crazed are
glimpsed, passed and sometimes brushed against.
As
I continue my descent it is possible to hear the faintest, most distant of
musics which, as I attempt to focus my whole undistracted attention upon it,
becomes increasingly close and clear and sweet until instead of a staircase, I
am inside of nothing, my body has disappeared and the universe exists only as
sound, with the infinite fluctuations and ebbing flows of air currents high
above the earth, microscopic particles of gas and vapour, of which I am a
single one.
I
was awakened from the dream by shouting and fire alarms on the landing outside
my room, confusedly half dressed and moved outside to find out the reason for
this confused interruption of
sleep.
It
was the winter of 1992 and I was working as a busker and living in the Hotel
Audran, off the Rue des Abbesses in Paris.
The
staircase I noticed for the first time had a particularly subtle combination of
evil, permeating smells that through repetitious application to the fetid air
of the place had become as much a part of the building’s fabric as the
stiff-stained carpet under foot and the streaky stains on the layered peeling
paint.
Descending
from the third to the second floor, as the midnight fire alarm signalled an
electric cooker or tumbled candle out of control in one of the rooms, I noticed
a tiny variation in pitch between the alarm signals emanating from the
different ceilings.
The
one on the level below was of minutely sharper pitch and - moving slowly backwards up the stairs,
ears focussed, against the dazed downward flow of drowsy half-clad people - it
was possible to hear the upper signal at enough of a higher volume for the
lower to be imperceptible, then to shift, first two then four steps, down again
for their mixing to create a strangely pleasurable throb as the skewed
interfluctuations pulsed arrhythmically: the closer you descended to the sound
below, the faster became the throbbing and then quieter, then disappearing as
the higher note dominated.
We
descended through two more flights.
I
was now possibly the last person on the stairs. The first floor sound was
slightly higher yet and the shrill sine wave from the ground floor ceiling was the
lowest of the three, all of the sounds within a whole tone of each other, or
the distance between middle C and the white note above it.
There
was no smoke, no flames or crackling, no smell of melting, fat soaked carpet
immolating within the crumbling rotten floors.
We
were a motley collection of desperate souls, moments before in sagging beds,
listening to the constant
scratching of cockroaches and whistling of water pipes either trying to sleep,
drink ourselves to sleep, fuck our way to momentary dishevelled contentment, or
obtain the money from a haunted looking client with rotten teeth for tomorrow’s
first fix.
I
looked at my fellow residents and saw a mirror of shame at my own failure and
outsiderness.
The
long term unemployed who stayed for the first two and half weeks of each month,
until the chaumage cheque ran out then slept on benches and subway vents for the
next week and a half or so of the month.
These
were my neighbours and on certain days, the only people with whom I spoke.
The
Hotel Audran was a narrow, infested hole in the street of the same name
directly half way between the church of Sacre Coeur and the Boulevard de
Clichy.
As
my Bulgarian friend Ivan pointed out “slep exectly helf vay to heafen end hell.
Parfect!”
In
the month or so I stayed there I came to know the neighbourhood and made a
couple of acquaintances, principal among whom was Corinne.
In a tiny crammed grocery shop on the Rue Germain Pilon I boggled at the cost of
basic groceries, wondering where to buy food for the evening meal in my room.
A
strikingly pretty girl with full lips, voluminous mousey hair and round green
eyes was hanging around, slinking and swinging a bottle of milk in one hand.
Excuse
me, I said, do you know a shop not quite so expensive for basic food near here?
Buy
me a coffee and I’ll tell you she said, and I thought why not, astonished and
glowing.
So
we went to drink coffee and grinned and told each other stuff, leaning over our
cups with a confidential air, although she was coy, guarded, under the
coquettishness.
She
turned my amusement quickly into a committed, serious lust and, becoming aware
of this fact, I admired whatever magical action she had taken, unnoticed, upon
me.
Suddenly
she had to go, to work. Where did I live she asked. She would come for me
there. Oh, when, I asked, confused.
Soon.
Maybe later she laughed, a kiss and she disappeared.
Suddenly,
my surroundings were highly coloured, complex, filled with danger and promise.
Uncertain
as to what had just begun, I moved to pay for the coffees, remembering I had almost
no money, certainly none now for groceries.
I
returned to my room with a small loaf and opened the wardrobe to look through
my tinned food stash, finding nothing there.
There
was a rather foul stew of andouillettes and borlotti beans in the cold electric
frying pan which I kept hidden, beneath a towel under my bed (in case hotel
staff should decide to enter my room and clean it, although this hadn’t
happened yet).
I
pulled it out on its stand and turned the dial to full heat, opening Russell
Hoban’s terrifying and compelling Riddley Walker, a post-apocalyptic coming of
age tale, set somewhere in the south of England a thousand years in the future.
Riddley
had begun his journey and was a fugitive from several lethal pursuers.
Distractedly
lifting a fork of food from the pan to my mouth as I rapidly read, I noticed
just before it entered my mouth, a chunk of dead, now cooked, cockroach on my
fork.
When
the pan was cool, I wrapped it and its terrible contents into a black plastic
bag and carried them down to find a place to leave them in the street.
This
did not solve the food situation and I resolved to go out and play the violin at a metro station to raise some francs.
That
was the night I met Olivier from Gibraltar, at Chatelet, which friendship would
both signal the beginning of the end of my time in exile and lead to a series
of events that brought me to composing music as my job.
The
memory of heterodyning electronic sound signals, Doppler effect and the
physiological response of strange and complex random sonic occurrences would
inform all these processes.
What
happened with Corinne and who was she? I would only ever find out a little.
Olivier
was the hapless bringer of both magic and of chaos.
It
could have been for him that Macduff cried “confusion now hath made his
masterpiece”.
But
more of this anon.
