Ocean Child. 2005(ish)

FORTH
Over the swaying caged walking bridge with the trains roaring past your right ear. On the left is space. EAT THE RICH painted on the balustrade. Murky grey water gushing way below your feet.
Step step down to the pastel lit concrete. Blue wall. Pinks somehow fading to yellow. More blues than Chicago. Pungent lime green. White light direction signs. Pointing. Shadows. Dark spaces hiding unknowns. There must be an optimum number of people for this place. Too few and it would be desolate and scary. Too many and suddenly you are crowded out. Where is the sky?
Step step step down into the foyer. Deep warm carpets. It is all a little too cool. Stumplike padded blocks to sit on. Pretty plastic glasses for your white wine. There is a library in the corner. And a baby changing room. Spot the famous face(s) while pretending not to. It is a louche conglomerate gathered here this evening.
Step step step step down into the big seating room. The one with a stage at the front.

INSERT
A shining torch behind a large sheet – eventually a tiny, beautiful Japanese woman in a hat tears her gentle way onto stage. Although she is small you cannot take your eyes from her. She is mesmerising. No wonder he (yes, him) fell in love with her in 1968. She must have been stunning then. So full of ideas. Stretching and peeling back. Hurting. Loving. Pushing. And seemingly blind to all the dangers. Even the dissolute looking bunch of musicians standing on the stage with her tonight cannot overshadow/outshine her as they start to crash their way through some very loud discordant music. They are led by the woman’s son – he who looks like a Japanese version of his father circa 1969. He has a sense of humour and an American accent. Has he ever been drunk in Liverpool?

BACK
Clutching your tiny torch in its plastic bag, step up from the forum into the crisp late night air. They are packing the books away. The chattering classes are drunk on their chilled plastic glasses of warm white wine. The grey water carries on its way eastwards – it has got a long way to go.
Bright zinging lights show themselves from across that grey moody river. Neon. Zapping. Crackling (ha, like bacon.) There is life and excitement over there. Sharp and violent. Forceful. Harsh. Brash. Ready to go. Already gone.
And behind your head the pastels remain. Still the pale flaccid blue. The sharper but strangely subdued pinks. Green gone. Replaced by a surprisingly moving brown – a brown of many shades, contrasting with itself and bowing down to the watery mauve. The white of those direction signs. The black (the black?) of the sky.
Back on the bridge with even more folk. It doesn’t flow like it did earlier, as if the crowd is concentrating less now. It is noisier. Jumbled. Blurry. Stumbly. Through the underground station, quickly past the bridge and the tunnels with their ghosts of the rough street sleepers. On and up the slope that is Villiers Street. On and up and step step in to the vast grey chamber of Charing Cross Station. Blow your nose and don’t look back.