There is a broadness that comes down with the sound of Sunday. The sun shares a fitful sky with clouds and the floating torrents of parade balloons and the shape of these things seem to echo some thing sad and maybe lonely with orbital regularity and happenstance. The air is cool and crisp and the people have color and shape, but there is nothing of the substance of realness about them. They seem like coherent pockets of stray light that may have come from the sky but probably have origin in a violent conflation of dreams and confusion - there is a sense that the relation of the sound of my steps and that tattoo marked by a distant marching band, are not as unrelated as the phase shift in echo would seem to show. The rise of some feeling, of something strong in my chest is sympathetic to this sound, is hopeful of some new diversion: the rise of an echo, of some same day in the past, of... willing sadness, and a bleating that snaps at the end of steel tethers to show these relations in form and sense - there is a power that begs for a key to release it, that strokes the will to desire. This strength of tension in the rhythm of breath and the feel of well worn boots soothes with passage down another street, down the avenue of one more day.
Where a surface is complete in the shape of its cobbles, where a man in a hat can sit; his elastic band of rhythm and monkeys renders different songs in monochromatic tempos - the punctuation of his sound bleeds the drum, which is all tin and no roundness. The voice of this moment is cast across a face of old buildings shadowing drawn faces on poster-boys. He knows the words of the song, but I wonder if he knows the eagle and the road, that is the loneliness... of home. Of a Hotel called California. It's Sunday still but for a smile it spreads. Yes. Yes old man. I've tread O'Connell bridge and contributed to the legend, and your one-man band and your simple song and the movement that has not escaped. I hear the light of your dying day, I hear the mirror of your boredom. It's a simple station in the rhythm of silence - it's a simple wish to hope. Can ya call up an answer for the questions, for those bleeding with freedom? Can ya soothe the wrinkles in time?
A rise up the song has cast the path as a wake that courses from these boots. Wonder is seeing the shape of a memory, of the bitterness of drinking the past. Though the shape of these streets bear the marks of experience, the familiarity is bred in the bone and the sweetness is sad and the light is too hollow and bright - the windows on the mall are empty; there is no life; everything is beautiful and lame. Trailing back, the tendrils of sound still bear witness to the day; this season is split by newness and the anticipation of continued respite. Her gaze has caused me the quality of pain that comes from living hope; so Sunday it is. It's a day for the season. A day to entertain the terror. I can hold it in hands that are impervious to heat, that for feeling shudder in mercy, but this terror and pain... this wonder stretches my smile - where it's green it is not envy. It is pride and release. In the cadence the power is found. The gesture of tabling the paper for the ink opens a window to the world. Contrast rushes over my skin and its cuts - where it has bled it always feels best.
The music is gone. It has disappeared behind an obstacle of motion, of a seething hub bound by the headings of people; their speech is a roar and in this silence no faces are familiar. Here the turn mounts and you realize you are bent, that you are bound by the absence of humour. This is just cause - I know the scene because the texture of the paint still hardens. Relax my friend. Though you're scared you are strong. It is a moment among many and the horizon is furrowed with a sun rising gravity and light, without the boundaries of life - on an edge, in a fit, or lost and wandering. So it will be laughter too, the feeling and the color are all sliding. Take my hand. It has cast aside the gate, and it may hold you if you let it. Come inside, come inside ...
to this street. This broad path. This crucible that has poured gold and hot slag. I love this, and you, and the broadness of Sundays and silence. There is a rise at the heart of dawn where the walls are sculpture and every wail is music and the rhythm of silence cannot be measured. Pass back the path, and the smoke of the myth. Rise. Rise up the day to embrace a line in the legend of death - Sunday comes broad upon the city and in the laughter of crossing, O'Connell bridge has set me free.
(c) Brian O'Reilly