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Ringer
a dystopian exercise
Hold the bell aloft, as high as you can, until the doleful siren to decays to static. You are the raindrops that zigzag down. This is your red-eye awakening wired into the void —a pitiless soundbow etched with melancholy. Check the crib notes of this vaguely dystopian concept strung between artful trestles. You may not realise it yet, but you are about to become a purveyor of sweeping amplitude, projector of the Poe-dreadful, scything into the zero hours. Yes, you. No-one is sure how far it will reach.
Gather round for a display of dampened oilskin, random snares and unalloyed anxiety. We are the ringers coordinated by masked overseers in dark coats and cloth caps. They pace between a corresponding black box of tricks twiddling with the entrails, while we wait in surrender stance for the nod and the fugue signal. Push and release then execute a few steps to the side — try to avoid any slapstick.
Inside the cage, the toll begins with broomstick end. Tape-tacky, drawn into the magnificent sway. An embarkation skyward towards a darkened canopy of distorted starlight, powered by bone and sinew hierarchy. Now quarter slowly up to half, pushing clock hands around the face, our labours harnessed to the Moloch of Art and Industry, braying for black gold in this industrial playground subsidised by no-one.
