This Machine Kills Fascists

‘This machine kills fascists,’ was the legend defiantly scrawled across Woody Guthrie’s axe.  As Eddie slumped in his studio chair, balefully eyeing the mixing desk, his own guitar lay unloved in a neglected corner.  The desk was state of the home-studio art.  He had audiofile, autotuning, midi and banks of computers with flat screen monitors blazing with 3D graphics, throwing colours across the otherwise darkened studio.  He had multiple keyboards, synthesisers and a Gaggia cappuccino machine.  He had the must-have media kit of Iphone, ipad and Blackberry, and a modernist black leather sofa for clients to relax on.  To counteract the ice cold technology Eddie had filled the room with a plethora of rarely used, unusual instruments from around the world.  He had a sanza, a balafon and an armpit drum, amongst other African instruments.  He had a Chinese zheng and a Japanese shamisen as well as maracas, didgeridoos and congas.  The walls were hung with original artworks bought cheaply in markets from as far away as Rio and as close to home as Camden.  That modernist sofa was draped with a rustic Bedouin throw and a bowl of potpourri sat on the handmade wooden coffee table. All of this was to create the right bohemian vibe.

         Eddie didn’t want to be seen as a mere hack, a techie, a nerdy, by-the-numbers, button-pressing computer geek, programming muzak by the yard for forgettable satellite television feature items.  Eddie was an artist and he wanted his clients to know it.

         ‘This machine kills fascists, “damn right,”’ Eddie mused as he filled his glass.  Laphroaig.  A proper drink and precisely the right drink for this time of the night.  It was four o’clock in the morning and the joss-stick had burned out long ago.  Its sweet scent was now replaced by the smoky warmth of the whisky.  As a young man he had regularly sat up all night, sometimes for days, jamming with his buddies, his band, anybody who would sit in and hit, pluck or blow a tune out of anything to hand.  He had played the Hell out of that old guitar.  Then they all got jobs.  Bankers, lawyers, civil servents, stock brokers.  Sparko got a job as a builder, now he’s in property development.  Eddie stuck with the dream, assuring them all he was going to be a star.  And he could have been one too, if only the chips had fallen differently.  All his so-called pals had retreated from Narnia so now there was just Eddie left, getting fat in his home studio and drinking Laphroaig on his own in the dark at four o’clock in the morning.

The sequence of events that led him into composing television sound tracks was hard for him to recall.  It was all so long ago.  It had been a process of accretion, he knew that.  First one little job brokered by an old school mate, followed very much later by another one, followed by the slow, building, snowball effect until now he had more work than he needed or wanted.  He didn’t actually possess that thing people call a work ethic.  He’d spent his entire life dodging work and pursuing pleasure.  Banking, law or the civil service had never been for him, still less the building trade, but he had bills to pay like everyone else and these days he only had one way to do it; making music, or what passed for music in the television business.

         He was dying for a fag but he knew smoking in the house would drive Belinda crazy.  He considered stepping out of the French windows onto the balcony but, on seeing his reflection in the rain drizzled windows, he thought better of it.  It was November and a cold one too.  There’s wanting a cigarette and there’s desperation.  He wasn’t desperate.  Not that desperate.  Not yet.

         The gig was getting on his nerves.  It was a score for a new scripted reality show called ‘The Big Lie’ in which contestants competed for weeks to win the ultimate prize by deceiving as many people as possible in a variety of scenarios.  The population of the show’s apparently real world was made up of improvising actors who were not let into the lies.  Which lies would they buy?  The banality of the show, the stupidity of the contestants and the trite, prompted dialogue were like sandpaper in Eddie’s brain.  He had been noodling away at the score for weeks now and making little progress but he had a deadline coming up.  He couldn’t get into it.  The show just didn’t inspire him, neither did the pay cheque.  There was no money in television soundtracks.  Theme tunes, that’s where the money was.  That’s where the money had always been.  Simon May had made a fortune for ‘Eastenders’.  Eddy could do soundtracks for his entire life and still struggle to pay the mortgage.  He took a slug of Laphroaig and turned to half-heartedly address the Korg keyboard.  He flexed his fingers and sighed.

His job was to provide ‘beds’ of music; noise, essentially, to fill the gaps behind the banalities of the brain-numbing drek of the show.  Like all scripted reality shows, ‘The Big Lie’ consisted of a procession of semi-sentient exhibitionists spouting drivel for forty-seven minutes and thirty seconds.  His job was to put noise behind them.  It was demeaning.  It was depressing.  He was an artist.  He needed another slug of whisky.  He could churn this bilge out in his sleep twenty-four seven and the teenage ignoramuses producing these shows would always complain.  Eddie’s birthday had been in September, he was now forty five years old.  A big number.  He’d forgotten more about scoring television shows than these kids would ever know.  He looked over at his guitar. 

‘This machine kills fascists, “yeah, right.”’ He bellyached to himself and took another slug.

‘Are you coming to bed?’ she said in her sleepy but insistent four o’clock voice.  He spun his chair to face her.  Belinda was silhouetted in the doorway, naked and haloed by the landing light.  He knew she wanted attention.  Not necessarily sex at this hour but attention. Eddy made the effort to focus his whisky-fogged eyes on her.  She was still in good shape, he observed.  Still beautiful, maybe ever so slightly fuller of figure than in her glorious youth, but everything was still athletically in the right place thanks to the tennis and her regular yoga.

‘Working,’ he grunted.

‘Oh come on,’ she murmured as she padded over to him.  She draped a lazy arm over his hunched shoulder, reached across and plucked the glass from his hand.  Her smooth breast brushed his rough cheek and he could smell the warmth of the bed.

‘What have you done so far?’ she asked.  Eddy looked up at her from his chair.

‘I’m visualising,’ he explained.  She took a sip of the Laphroaig and smiled at him.

‘Well don’t visualise for too long,’ she suggested, ‘you might go blind.’

Maybe she does want sex after all, considered Eddie.  He could take her right here, right now.  She’d love it.  Fuck her senseless on the mixing desk.  That’s what he should do.  That’s what he would have done in the old days, when they first met, when they were young, when he had all the world before him.  All he had to do was take her.  Take Belinda, take the world, take everything.  That’s definitely what he should do.  Fuck her brains out.  Right now.

He stroked the smooth skin of her inner thigh and she looked into his eyes.

‘I’m going back to bed,’ she said.

‘But you just got here,’ Eddie protested.

‘You’re working, remember?’

She handed the glass back.

‘Don’t be too late darling,’ she said.  He looked up at her and she stooped to kiss him on the forehead.

‘I won’t be,’ he replied obediently. 

Raising her arms, she stretched and yawned.  He watched her bottom as she sauntered out of the room scratching a hip, then he blinked and diverted his gaze to the guitar gathering dust in the corner of the room.

‘This machine kills fascists,’ thought Eddy.

Maybe it did once, he really couldn’t remember.  He put his fingers on the keys of the Korg, sighed again and started to play.