JONATHAN TAYLOR

Kein Töd in Venedig.

              The ex-composer yawns (atonally) whilst his own black dots return to swarm round 
him like unswattable flies.  
              At the end of his two-minute setting for soprano, prepared piano and taped 
whale-song, ‘The Kraken,’ he stands dutifully and nods at the audience, more because 
he wants to unstick his buttocks from the plastic chair than from any pleasure in the 
applause or the performance. Here I am, he thinks, inhaling old flies I thought I’d 
squashed underfoot, and I’m expected to be pleased about it.
              The ex-composer sticks his buttocks back onto the chair and sighs (atonally) - 
all that’s left now of the conference is a two-hour lecture by an academic who’s 
kindly going to tell him what his two-minute song is about. This is good, he thinks, 
because he himself hasn’t got a fucking clue.
               The lecture begins, and, within minutes, he’s convinced that every sentence 
simply must be the second to last. If someone would nudge her, perhaps they’d 
preciptate her into the conclusion. Or perhaps if I break eye contact, that’ll make her 
stop – otherwise, she’s obviously going to insist on addressing all her ‘very best’ 
remarks straight at my face for the next two hours, or two minutes, or however long’s 
left.
                He looks around the seminar room; all the usual suspects are here, of course - 
a structuralist, a poststructuralist, a postmodernist, a deconstructionist, a 
psychoanalyst, a feminist, a feminist-psychoanalyst, a generalised and rather neurotic 
combination of the above, a writer of a book on Bucks Fizz, a woman concerned about 
diminished fifths, an Oxbridge ‘Kraken’ in too small a pool, a cripplingly-shy old 
charlatan in too large a jacket, and a perplexed businessman in the wrong room. 
The ex-composer tries once more to attune his hearing to the lecture. It’s a 
common experience, he thinks - when one is really, really bored, it becomes almost 
impossible to assimilate the meaning of complete sentences, and gradually phrases 
fragment into single words and sounds which, in isolation, seem wondefully  
symphonic and impressive, but which are not connected to anything else. The best 
politicians realise this subliminal symphonism, even if, like Ronald Reagan, it’s only 
with acting, old age and Alzheimers. 
                  The ex-composer decides to stare nonchalantly out of the window to see if that 
will put her off. It isn’t that he violently disagrees with, or is offended by, this female 
Reagan of (B-list) academia, and her efforts to find in the song’s use of Neapolitan 
chords “a symbolic connection between the Kraken’s ‘huge sponges of millennial 
growth’ and his [overweight] Italian mother.” No, what bothers him is the expectation 
in her gaze that, as “the composer,” he should care at all about a song he wrote two 
years ago, before 2.14 pm on May 4th, 2000 A.D. 
Before he’d become an ex-composer, stuffed and wooden like the ex-Parrot in 
Monty Python.
	Outside the window is a sham-Oxford quadrangle, which, the composer fondly 
imagines, might on sunny days be filled with lazy students lounging on the grass, their 
breasts pointing towards the sky. Today, it’s filled with drizzle and peeling posters 
announcing ‘Rugby 1st Team perform Can-Cans from Moulin Rouge at “The Seven 
Seals” bar tonight.’ The ex-composer’s gaze travels over these posters, around the 
quadrangle, and then climbs the opposite wall. The first-floor room is white and 
empty, apart from a heater and some uprooted street furniture; the second-floor room 
is ….
	Oh, my God – she’s in there, and she’s taking off her … she’s taking off her 
…. breasts – no, that’s not right – she’s taking off her bra. My God. She’s taking off 
her bra.
	The ex-composer suddenly realises his mouth is wide open, and snaps it shut, 
looking furtively round the seminar room. But no one else has noticed – everyone else 
is seemingly still intent on the fully-clothed Prof. Ronaldetta Reagan and the 
generalised noises she’s making into the mic.
	Fucking unbelievable – you silly bastards. There’s a young, beautiful, fleshy 
woman undressing over there – yes, over there, you blind gits – and you’re listening 
to an incomprehensible lecture about a raspberry I once blew.
	He looks back at the girl, who’s now standing, with her (beautifully shaped) 
back to the window, in just her knickers, her thick, dark hair loose on her shoulders. 
She reminds him somewhat of a stripper he’d seen on his stag night (many, many 
thousands of years ago) whose stage name was Jezebel, and whose speciality was re-
enacting various sections of the Book of Revelations with strobe lighting and a snake 
called Leviathan. Kissograms had had more intellectual substance in those days.
	He wills the girl with all his might to turn round and to slip out of her 
knickers, agreeing with God to pawn any meagre musical talent he has left in return 
for one look, one touch, one grope. He so desperately wants to see her breasts in 
motion, vibrating slightly under his fingers. Perhaps, he thinks, if you had sensitive 
enough ears, you’d be able to hear the low, murmuring hum made by breasts vibrating 
everywhere as women jog, walk, sigh, talk. (Perhaps, if you had sensitive enough 
ears, you’d still be able to hear my wife’s breasts vibrating as she stepped into that 
road; after all, the great inventor Marconi was convinced that past sounds never die, 
but just get quieter and quieter and quieter and quieter and ….)
Prof. R. Reagan isn’t getting quieter, but is still groaning on incoherently like 
the teacher in Charlie Brown. Noise pollution, he thinks – it’s white noise like this 
that gets in the way of hearing the things that really matter. Why should I care what 
she has to say? She certainly wouldn’t care what I’ve been doing for the last two 
years. I haven’t written anything she’d recognise as music for that long - since, of 
course, 2.14 pm on May 4th, 2000 A.D.
Still, the jingles he’d composed for Supernova Chocolate Products Ltd. had 
been really successful in their way. He was particularly fond of the ones he’d done for 
‘Dog Chocs’ and a laxative called ‘Chocs Away.’ The advert for the latter pictured, in 
close-up, a huge and hairy woman’s face, which was all screwed up with strain and 
discomfort, but which gradually transformed, with a sigh and a plop and some 
cunning digitial image manipulation, into a svelte, relaxed, smiling blonde. The ex-
composer had sampled bits of industrial engineering for the constipation, and had then 
gradually faded this into a synthesised version of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, 
with added bird song. The studio manager, Geoff Jefferson (studio managers always 
seemed to be called Geoff), declared it “a masterpiece.” Indeed, he had even offered 
the ex-composer a long-term contract if he’d agree to write the ‘incidental music’ for 
a Channel 5 soft-porn show called ‘Cream Crackers.’ Geoff reckoned he had the 
stylistic versatility to cope with the diverse demands made by the many different 
kinds of shagging to be featured. The ex-composer had graciously declined.
	My God, thank you, thank you - Jezebel is reaching down to take her knickers 
off. She’s turned to face the window, and  is going to reveal all to me. 
	“I am Lazarus, come back from the dead, Come back to tell you all, I shall tell 
you all.”
	“ …. And, since we have him here, let us take the opportunity to ask the 
composer himself what he thinks of this interpretation of the modulation here?”
	What? Oh, bugger, Prof. Reagan’s asking me a question and everyone’s turned 
to look at me through their beards. “I … err … yes, certainly, I would … err … very 
much agree, or, at least … to a certain extent and with certain provisos. Yes, indeed.” 
Shit, got no idea what I’ve just agreed to. Perhaps I should say something else.
	Awkward pause, frowns, coughs, quizzical stares. The nostrils of the academic 
sitting nearby loom disparagingly.
	Why should I care – you can all fuck off. I wrote the shite song before 2.14 
pm on May 4th, 2000 A.D. Before I didn’t hear the ambulance, before I didn’t hear my 
wife crying and bleeding into the tarmac, before I didn’t hear the trucker, who was too 
busy listening to Megadeth, bounce her off his bumper, before I didn’t hear her heels 
clacking away as she was saying she was just popping across the road to buy a Mozart 
c.d. for her brother, before I was too busy perving at the sales assistants in New Look 
who were playing ‘Dancing Queen’ too loud for me to hear anything.
	“Yep. That’s right … in a way,” he adds. It doesn’t matter. Reagan’s ambient 
noise starts up again and carries on regardless, without need of prompt or response. 
He looks back up at the window opposite. Jezebel (damn it) now has on a 
little, flowery dress, seamed stockings and a tiara. For one terrifying, ravishing 
second, she turns to look out of the window, seemingly straight at the ex-composer, 
and is then gone, turning off the light and shutting the door behind her. 
Never mind. The composer has already decided to see if Geoff Jefferson’s 
offer is still open. He’ll never know that his Jezebel isn’t actually female at all, but a 
member of the university’s Rugby lads 1st Team dragged up to do some Can-Canning 
to a drum-and-bass version of Offenbach. And, of course, it doesn’t matter in the 
slightest.