Thumbprint City

This is An SMS

This is An SMS

In the silence which follows, people move slowly, blinking in the predawn cold. The show is over & the world, as ever, appears to be unchanged.

Finale. Loud, horribly distorted music plays through loudspeakers fitted to buildings, making work, conversation or concentration of any kind almost impossible.

Rumours that the dead are risen as part of the performance. That ghosts walk the streets. Smell of roses again, and turpentine.

Persons from the Anatomical Tableaux rumoured to be at large in various pubs, cafes and public squares. The crowd aghast.

Some tableaux appear to have trouble maintaining their stillness. Even a cursory look around reveals a good deal of twitching, swaying and breathing.

Barricades. Running battles. Some long speeches about freedom & revolution yelled into megaphones. Beautiful quotations from Marx, Bakunin & Timothy Leary.@

The police arrive to stop the affray but they too are quickly embroiled in the fighting. Some shop windows are broken. A bus is overturned and set on fire.@

Paralysed clowns cleared away by stagehands. A 3rd group of clowns arrive & inflict terrible injuries on the stagehands using insufficiently rubberised mallets.

As the snowstorm gets thicker one of the explorers walks towards the audience. Hard to tell if this bit is staged or genuinely impromptu.

By the river a costume parade? Some people dressed as sheep, others as wolves, chickens & farmers. All hanging round as if waiting for a signal - ?

commentry: everyone must get the same messages?

commentry: i loved this one because it was completely unexpected. The shortest message is the widest screen. Its still a scene, camels and nomads are lawrence of arabia, but weve jumped across the world@

A desert scene. Distant caravan of camels and nomads.

When the lights come up theres been a change of scenery and the whole town with its streets and roads and houses and buildings is gone.

Electric lights across the whole city flicker then fade to darkness. As if on cue, the stars themselves begin to dim, sparkle then blackout.

A stern announcement is made requesting that people turn off their mobile phones the performance is about to start again.

An interval. People get drinks & talk about whats happened. Some are pretty positive, others less so. Theyre missing a story & the songs bit was too long.

commentry: im starting to wonder if i should wonder how and why these things are happening

Men wield axes with convincingly aggressive facial expressions. Cavalry charges into merciless cannon fire. Swordplay and parachute drops. Hand to hand combat.

The kids are still singing, tho as dawn comes many have crumpled, making nests from their own coats, curled asleep in bundles on the floor of the stage.

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