Escalator Ball, Bristol
14 October 2024
14:13
A perfectly calibrated escalator would allow a person to be trapped in an infinite backwards roll. This escalator would have to be travelling at just the right speed so that a person could fall backwards, ball up and be sort of rolled on the spot. I am imagining tumbling in place like a decorative waterborne stone - a monument to clumsiness forever being righted and then tossed back upside down by the moving staircase.
It would not take long for the sharp metal stairs to take their toll on me. First, my clothes would be torn away from my body and get fed into the machinery at the end of the escalator. I would be nude then, and in my rolling I would become terribly bruised and cut.
My extremities would only be able to take so much punishment. I would, before long, be a ball of perfectly worn flesh. My dad used to frequently claim he wanted a sky burial. This would involve the rest of the family placing him on a sort of platform so that he could be eaten by vultures. I'm hoping that he didn't actually put this in his will. I want an escalator burial in which I am given over to the endless backwards spinning motion described above. As my extremities - and thus my human features - would be worn away I would present no recognisably human form and therefore not disturb other escalator users.
Garden Centre have been on tour recently - including some shows with the excellent band Chime School. We have also been working on new songs for our upcoming album. All of the new songs are coming along well. There will be a song about the possibility of an escalator burial.
We do have a couple of shows coming up - both with good bands from the USA. Also both shows are inexplicably in Bristol:
October 28th with Foyer Red - The Lanes - Bristol - Free
December 4th with The Smashing Times - Cube Cinema - Bristol:
Here we are playing in a school classroom a year or two ago for Gob Nation TV: