Face the lift

The Guilt Mirrors
Elevator
Performance with video, 2007

Elevator

Taking the lift up to the Head Office McDonalds. Purpose and planning ridiculed by life’s everyday momentum. Calming elevator music permeates the industrial breathing of masked demonstrators. Enforced quiet reflective time on individuals intent on noisy unreflective time. The clown mocks you deep inside his labyrinth. It’s the enforced ride in a boat and a mumbled prayer before you reach the beaches. The obligatory smoke in the trench before you are sent over the top. The wait in line before the adrenalin ride. The enforced quiet time that heightens your nerves. Vomit inducing tension that makes small jokes great. Self-doubt looms large while the chance of success seems smaller.

Then the door opens again and we are back to the nightmare of our own making.

column inches

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Let’s Kill Muzak (or Some Things i Want Returned To Me by the thomas ferguson band, for The Queen Of Sheba)

- time spent sitting through standing ovations to people i detest
- self-control
- time spent in elevators when i’m not dressed as a harbinger of ultimate chaos
- the Slits cd i lent someone in freshers’ week (and she doesn’t even like The Slits)
- time spent on hold
- the olympic bronze medal i threw into the river dee
- time spent recoiling in pure terror at the inescapable grasp of mortality’s razored hand (and the fluid i lost sweating in fear at the realisation of my insignificance in a horrifyingly infinite universe)
- my baby blue stilettos
- time spent reading any arts supplement ever (i learnt more about my existence from The Beano and Melody Maker)
- faith in machines (dear machines, must try harder, signed, the thomas ferguson band)
- time spent nodding and smiling at people i am too bored or angry or tired to talk back to
- imagination
- time spent cutting toenails (they always grew back)
- virginity
- time spent arguing about religion (nobody leaves believing anything different than what they arrived believing)
- the homes of all the snails i’ve ever trodden on (sorry snails i didn’t mean to)
- time spent ironing (i still look like a tramp regardless)
- all technical ability acquired in childhood (long since expired after prolonged fits of slovenly triste)
- time spent waiting for the apocalypse (or rather expecting it)
- the cuckoo clock i accidentally smashed (it never cuckooed again)

the thomas ferguson band