Clarion Blog visitor Heather C. introduced me to this week’s energetic and and edgy track. When you have 8 minutes to spare for a creative meditation, plug in some headphones, close your eyes and see what plays out on your mental movie screen as you listen to it. Don’t find it inspiring? Email me at blog@the(x)foundation.org–replacing (x) with Clarion–and suggest a few musical tracks that are more your creative speed.
There are only two rules for Clarion Calls:
- If you choose to try the assignment, do not read the comments section before you post yours.
- This is a critique-free zone, and that includes critique of your own offering. Save your analytical skills for Mondays with Lynda.
With that in mind, I invite all of you to give it a try. At the end of the year, I have a special honor in mind for the person who most often posts an answer to our weekly Call. So have fun, and stay inspired!
Clarion Blog 
Robots twisting in a delicate ballet dance across the factory floor. Scraps of metal, twisted and flaking rust, drop into the cauldron, steaming red like the soup pot of the devil. Silvery red streams of molten steel pour into molds. At the other end of the line, gray pieces tumble to the floor. Robots polish and scrub, smoothing rough edges into glistening gleaming bits to be passed on to the next robots in line. Part by part, screw by screw, weld by weld, the end product grows. Each robot, faceless animated constructions, add their bit before passing it farther down the line. No organic organisms exist within the mechanized ecosystem.
The wide doors at the end of the factory stand open, ready and waiting as new robots emerge, fresh from their sterile birthing. They pour forth, one by one, to build more birthing facilities for their kind. Not quite mindless, not quite as intended, they cover the world. Then reach beyond, to the stars, to new worlds waiting for factories to grow under the diligent, meticulous touch of the robotic spawn.
It’s a ball.
The lights shine and sparkle in a myriad diversity that catches the eye in circuitry haze. They dance, they swing, they tango and they sing.
Revelry.
The men and women and everyone in between swim past and around each other, moving from one to the other like capricious butterflies and honey bees from flower to flower spreading and impregnating, touching and feeling. The lights are red, beams of laser light swathes crushing and cruising through the throbbing mass of Bacchanalian decadence. She dances, hands above her thrashing head, hips gyrating to the beat , knees bent, midriff bared and alluring.
Excess.
The beer and booze flow freely, bodies are wet and slick with it, sliding, slippery against each other like milk on silk in a battle of contrasts with the sharp broken glass riff of the electric guitar and the sledgehammer abrasion of bass drums and snares. He jumps jumps onto a table, alpha male, prime specimen, leader of the pack roaring out his dominance and vulnerability to the force of the masses and the call of the music and dance.
Lust and gratification.
They see each other, eyes touching, like lovers, intimate with knowledge of the other. The others are blind, no song seen by their eyes see but the deaf din of synth and the sound of the strobes on and off and on. The riff builds, the drums pound. They see, they reach, they touch. Fingers, but tips that tap, no closer, no further, just that. The mass, the crowd, as one there’s the scream and crescendo, building up, and building up, and building up to final
sweet
release
…
The coasting…
Down…
To normalcy…
The music fades, slowly, softening. The crowd is released, the spell is broken. She is sweating, her midriff and chest heave with each breath, straining for release. He is feeling dizzy, but good, nothing can touch him here, nothing now. They look again at each other, they try to find that touch, that spark.
But it’s not there.
The band is shouting, thanking the masses, thanking the crowd for their moment of divinity, their hour of godhood.
The crowd begins to disperse, to fade.
She leaves out the back way, he goes out the gate.
They never see each other again.
Ever.
A gritty cocktail of lead, gravel and blood filled his mouth, the highwayman spat. He watched the slow saliva trail ride the waves of heat down to his hands where droplets of blood fell and were never seen again. The buzzing in his ears made his brain numb while the light blinded him to anything close. The black frame of his life encroached on his conscious sight, taunting him to act. In the distance, past the burning cars and broken bodies the distorted lights of the law rode on the waves of hell’s highway toward him.