Geoff Nicholson - Flesh Guitar

There are now tears in his eyes, saliva drooling down his beard.

‘One thing’s for sure,’ he adds. ‘We shall not hear her like again.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ says Bob.

Imagine a cathedral of sorts; an endless chain of arches, some round, some pointed, some four-centred, some ogee. Imagine them in series, a complex, rhythmical arrangement that cuts and curves and zigzags through space like a maze or the framework for a house of mirrors. And imagine them rising, stacked high in irregular storeys, one row on top of another, reaching up to a great and distant height, the upper levels scarcely visible, disappearing in haze or smoke, mounting up and forming an enclosure that is both labyrinth and coliseum. Every arch is open. There are no doors, no walls, no stained glass. And though the principle may be essentially Gothic, there’s also something digital, something computer generated about the structure. The stone has a metallic sheen and in places it seems to be dissolving, pixilating like molten polystyrene.

Imagine further that suspended on wires from the apex of each arch is an electric guitar, each fitted with a radio system and connected to unseen banks of amplification. There are countless instruments, wildly varied; all makes, all models, some pristine and glittering, some wrecked, the basic and the customized, the de luxe and the work-manlike, all hanging in suspended, unplayed animation.

Slowly, somewhere off stage, further off than the ear can hear, doors are opened. The stable system within the ‘cathedral’ is disturbed. Air begins to move through the arches, through the openings. It is a soft, benign motion. The thick, contained air turns, becomes more intricately enfolded. The wires holding the guitars sway and creak.

The movement of air grows and builds, swirling the dust, chafing the stonework. It becomes a wind, strong and mobile and threatening. But what is there to threaten? The architecture is beleaguered, yet still, only the guitars, tautly suspended, can move in time to the deep eddies and gusts of air.

At first the sounds are minimal, mere background quiver and string flutter, or an open tuned twelve string will suddenly be shaken into harmonic life, to give a safe, cascading, multi-voiced chord that seeps into space; the gentle singing of aeolean harps.

Other guitar voices respond; low bass growls, jangling treble. Guitar bodies tremble in the draughts, are raised and dropped. There is the loose twang of swaying whammy bars, the mechanical noises of bridges slipping, of strings unsettling in their courses.

Then an immense gust of air hoiks a guitar through space, a red sparkle double neck, and rams its body against the curving top of an arch, the strings scrape against stone to create stark, chromatic tonalities.

Invisible hands pump up the volume of both wind and guitars, a gale starts to blow through the myriad open-mouthed arches. The instruments are convulsed and battered into new, undreamed-of life. The wind has moved beyond technique, has become an agent of creative rage that sears and yelps from every unseen place, edging towards physical destruction. Invisible hands, ruined choirs, strings planed and shaved by the razored air. A hollow-bodied baritone guitar snaps like firewood against the masonry of a supporting stone column.

Finally there is only a howling, a wail and squalling of wind and feedback, fused, fierce, alarmingly articulate. Weather and electricity play more eloquently than any group of musicians ever did.

And Jenny Slade runs into the maelstrom, empty-handed and unfettered. She finds herself overarched and overwhelmed, a mute matchstick figure beneath the traceried canopy of noise and stone. She is buffeted by the rage of air and sound, yet she remains untouched, the unmoved mover, calm in her eyes. The air cracks, thunder and lightning, cloud bursts of electricity, a tasty cocktail. Spheres of blue energy bounce towards her like footballs. Jenny waits quietly, knows just when the power will come.

Lightning strikes. The electricity hits her, precise and certain, shoots through her veins, along the neural pathways, hammers the pleasure and pain centres. She experiences ecstasy and oblivion. Jenny Slade finally locates the electrical mainline, feels like she’s being bounced right out of her body, feels as if she’s being finally freed from the tyranny of her dreams and fantasies, from guitars and amps, from performance and audience, being liberated from time and space. A smile cracks her face. This is as good as it gets.