Call Me the Breeze (35 page)

I went into a tiny, anonymous bar and spent the rest of the night there, shivering. The old owner stood by the window, bemoaning the changes in the town and how nobody any more cared about anything. ‘Fucking like dogs from morning till night, falling about the streets, tearing around in their foreign fucking cars. The fucking
dollar is all they want, everything else can go fuck itself. Including Jesus Christ! Not that I care — soon I’ll be gone and they can do what they like. But in the past in this country I believed in the future
.’

‘
So did I, my friend,’ I said, as he poured me another drink and I heard the mighty surf crashing, ‘so did I
.’

Having finished the film, the way I feel is that I could do absolutely anything. Just get my hands on a camera and start shooting my major feature right here and now! It has been a wonderful experience and I see so much more clearly now the pitfalls and problems, etc. Obviously the visual quality of I Want to Be Born 2 (the title we’ve agreed on — a cast decision, picked from a number of my own suggestions) leaves a lot to be desired (it can be quite foggy at times, the titles rolling from side to side at the beginning, some unsteady camerawork — not all of it deliberate in the Cassavetes style — and a few little problems with the dialogue — due to wind noise you can’t hear some of it). But it is a first effort after all. Problems such as these will be ironed out with Psychobilly (not the final title), which we should be getting up and running very shortly. And, in any case, the piece itself is so original (forgive my immodesty but I really do think it is!) that I don’t think an audience will be all that bothered
.

It opens with the camera tracking along the rubber doll’s legs — we’ve bought a new one specially (hope Carmody doesn’t find out, for we borrowed the money from the kitty!) — and then taking in the pubic hair — for which we had to use horse hair, for they don’t come supplied with that. Before coming to rest on Mangan as he disappears — pretend! — inside her, all of him seeming to vanish
.

That’s it, more or less. It’s a very short film, remember. With one of the students, u/o, going: ‘I want to go back! Please let me go back! To live in the cave of our dreams and there at last to be once again born
!’

You just know when something is good, don’t you? And there can be no denying the response Mangan’s performance received — astonished, rapturous. I don’t know what word you’d use or what one might be most appropriate. None at all, maybe, or none that
exists. Especially when I played them the music — Handel’s ‘Hallelujah Chorus’, which is really going to be stupendous, especially when experienced in tandem with Dead Souls — the lovely passage about the coming ‘new spring’, what else
?

The music and the prose rise together — fusing — as we see Mangan slowly disappearing under the skirt — ‘No! We don’t need to see your face! It’s gonna be OK!’ I kept telling him! — and the screen is consumed by a sheet of blinding light as — boomph! — he’s gone, at last one with the world
.

The only hard job I’ve had today, the thing went so fucking well, was persuading the students to stop clapping for a while as I could tell them to stop praising me and convince them that, it anything, film is a collaborative art and that no one person’s contribution is more important than the next man’s. ‘Or woman’s!’ I corrected myself, to the good-natured amusement of a lot of the chicks
.

The more I think of it, the more I want to dedicate it to Mona. To label that cassette with these typed words: ‘In Memory of Mona Galligan — A Film by Joseph Mary Tallon: I Want to Be Born 2
.’

(There is just this one single page of foolscap — with a drawing at the top of me posting the package! — headed, in what is clearly triumphant lettering:

Off She Goes, Me Boys!)

…
Was up at the post office this morning and have sent the video cassette off at last! It was like everyone knew I was doing it. They were all chat
!

‘
You look in good humour!’ says your man behind the counter as I handed him the jiffy bag. ‘Pay day, I suppose
?’

‘
I guess in a way you could say that, all right!’ I said, but didn’t elaborate
.

Which, of course, in a sense, it genuinely is. Pay day in so far as all our hard work now looks like it is going to be worth it
.

The more I stood there, staring at the pasted label
ဓ Attn. The Commissioning Editor, Debut Series, New TV Drama, BBC Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London WC1 –
the more insignificant it all began to seem, this occluded little world of Scotsfield. Worrying
about Carmody, Boyle Henry
, et al.,
who probably isn’t even aware of the way he’d looked at me in the pub that day. This town is so small and you see people so often that after a while you start to imagine things. I feel stupid for ever having allowed myself to think along those lines, not to mention investing a throwaway comment regarding a waistcoat with all sorts of pointless significance. Sandy probably just meant it as a joke. Yeah. Course he did. Yeah. I’m sure of it
.

Which was why, all the way down the street, having cleared my mind of all that nonsense, I went back to what, I suppose, you might call the ‘big issues’ — like the magazine says! Ha ha! — life and death and why we’re here.

And the more I did so, the more I couldn’t stop thinking about myself up there on the director’s chair, considering the best possible composition of an upcoming shot, now possessed of a belief no mystic had ever inculcated, my books and notes tucked beneath my arm as I swung into Austie’s a completely changed man, from that day on only thinking one thing: ‘So hey! How you doin’ there, y’all? It’s Wonderful Pictures from the town of Scotsfield! And we’re here to shake your tree!’

Which I suppose you could think of as
another
new beginning, the beginning of the end of misunderstanding and all that other stupid imaginary stuff that seems to go along with it — eyebrows that had never been raised and smirks which didn’t exist but which resulted in you vacating pubs almost the minute you went in. Getting it into your head that it was you, specifically, they were all looking at. Not to mention thinking:
There he is! There’s the kidnapping fucker! The same treatment as Detective Tuite, that’s what he deserves
! When clearly now that wasn’t the truth or anything remotely approaching it. The more I thought about it, the dafter it seemed that I’d even considered it for a second.

(from
J.T.’s Nineties Diary
, a separate book with asstd random entries — not in chronological order — often scribbled in when the ‘ledger’ was not immediately to hand)

Turns out I was right. About the misunderstandings and so forth
—
if today is anything to go by, at any rate. I was just sitting in Austie’s going through my notes, trying to look as if I wasn’t paying much attention to what was going on around me but actually, in fact, trying to determine once and for all if I
had
imagined it all or not. Without a doubt, I’m absolutely delighted to be able to report! For Boyle Henry was there, sitting with some fellow down the back, in the exact same place as before. But this time not even bothering to look in my direction. Far too busy talking business with your man and working his way through a great big feed
—
you want to see the grub in Doc Oc’s! They do the most amazing lunches now. As a sort of celebration
—
from now on, no more of this ‘paranoia’ nonsense, for there’s no other name for it, really — I decided to treat myself to the fillet of lamb with spiced pumpkin puree and green beans. ‘There you are, maestro!’ says Austie, and slaps it down in front of me. As I worked my way through it, I reflected on just how good an idea it had been to conduct that ‘little experiment’, which, really, in a way is what it had been, the road ahead being totally unimpeded now because of it. If I fucked up this time it would be nobody’s fault but my own. Except that that wasn’t going to happen
.

Then all you can think is:
It’s all systems go!
It’s only a matter of days now before the movie starts shooting! It’s the most wonderful feeling and the only thing I regret is that Mona or my mother
-
Jamesy, even, the abandoning old fucker
! —
won’t be there to see it, talk about it, enjoy — whatever
.

From the ‘Community College Ledger’:

‘Complaints, complaints, fucking complaints!’

(This is scored at least seven times across the middle of the page in bright red felt-tip marker and underlined quite heavily.

Then it reads:)

I had a really good time reading over the entry from a couple of weeks back about the pub and the misunderstandings and how the movie would be so good if everyone could be there Mona and the old man and everyone
…

But there’s always something, isn’t there? There’s always fucking something
!

(The remainder, however, as if written in a frenzy, is quite impossible to decipher. There are, though, some other pieces dealing with the subject, the most illuminating, perhaps, being this one from later on in the ledger.)

I have never quite been able to manage to establish the source of the recent complaints for certain but I have my suspicions regarding the cleaning ladies, for there were no other people around the set that I could see. Anyway, whoever it was, it has got back to me that someone had observed one of the students ‘having sex’ while attired in an Apache headdress. Which shows you the level of absurdity that rumours can attain, with all kinds of half-truth stitched in along with what can only be described as utter fantasy. Sure there was someone wearing an Indian headdress
—
what do you expect when you’re making a pastiche Western? (The idea for which the students had come up with themselves, incidentally!)

It was short — a little sideline project, which was very good, actually — written by one of the fourth years. But having sex? Nonsense. Not that I’d have had anything against it, in principle; it’s just that it didn’t happen, that’s all
.

There was also talk of spliffs being smoked. I don’t know for sure if there was — maybe one or two of them went out during break for a blast. I couldn’t say one way or another. It’s just that I had more to do with my time than breathe down their necks every second of the day God sends
.

‘
For Christ’s sake!’ I said. ‘I’ve a film to shoot here
!’

Which I had. And the script was giving me trouble, real trouble! So I would have been able to do without the aggravation. ‘This shit I can do without!’ I said one day, really losing my temper. ‘So come on, let’s try that again! Hit it one more time
!’

The kids, somewhat cowed now, set the scene up again. But we had a great laugh afterwards when we had a drink in Doc Oc’s, which was getting as bad as the Fuck Me with the amount of palmtops and organizers and fucking cellphone ringtones
prr prr prr. ‘
You really had us frightened,’ they said. ‘We never seen you like that before
!’

‘
Well, that’s the way it can be sometimes! It’s not gonna always run smoothly
!’

‘
Especially when people keep interfering! Sticking their stupid noses in
!’

‘
Exactly!’ I said. ‘You got it now, my man!’ and we all had ourselves a really good chortle
.

I don’t know what time it was when at last I rolled home, with so many images just flying through my head like black-and-white playing cards going flip flip flip, as all these titles for the ‘psychobilly’ movie came swooping in my sleep:
Death of a Salesman, Reservoir Death, Murder on the Irish Border.
And the one which seemed most insistent —
Stories from the Animal Pit,
the animal pit meaning Scots-field or Ireland — being decided upon —
eureka three! —
the following morning as I sprang up in the bed
.

(Piece ends here with, once again, heavily scored in bold black type:)

THE ANIMAL PIT
A film by Joey Tallon

Which, of course, never did see the light of day!

Even now, Bonehead maintains it was all my own fault and that if I hadn’t gone blabbing about it to Austie things might have turned out differently.

Which he’d be better off not saying, to tell you the truth, for it gets on my fucking nerves when he does it. And we only end up squabbling again.

‘Oh, what the fuck do you know, Bonehead!’ I said to him. ‘You know sweet fuck all about it! Anyway, it might just as well have happened that way as any other fucking way! It’s all the fucking same in the end!’

Whenever you talk like that, of late, it drives poor Bonehead crazy. Crazy! Especially when you remind him that he once thought along those lines himself. ‘But that was different! We had nathin’ then!’ he says. ‘Sweet eff-all is what we had! Things are so much better now! Look, Joesup, you’ve got a lot more going for you than most people! Once upon a time you had an excuse! But not now! Don’t be an eejit, Joesup! Don’t throw it all away! It’s here, Joesup! Ripe for the taking!’

No point in telling him it’s not. Or elucidating any details I might consider relevant regarding my little ‘error of judgement’ that particular day in Austie’s.

I’d had a dream the night before in which I’d seen every detail of the ‘forthcoming’ movie so crystal clear it had gotten me all fired up, all … consumed by a desire just to share the experience …

‘Do you understand what I’m saying, Austie?’ I kept repeating. ‘What it is that I’m trying to do? Yeah? What I’m about here is
sharing the idea
! No more misunderstandings! Let’s lay it on the line! Are you hearing me here, Austie?’