The Music that Imagines a Glass House

On ‘Head On’ by Bobby Hutcherson

I’m in the tremendous glass house. It’s deep night out but very bright in here. White light spilling from every casket, every open crevice; the house is awake. Everyone’s eating liquorice at this party. White teeth pulling on long taut black branches. The jaw releases and the stick recoils in the hand. Everywhere around me are groups of three-four people chit chatting, with black branches shaking in their hands. Weaving in and out of the crowd is a fleet of busboys with glinting silver trays finding empty hands to give glasses to. The mass of moving bodies, the free flowing of suits and gowns comes refracted as a flurry of oscillating tones and natural shapes in the flutes of white champagne, jumping from one glass to another. It’s unruly in this house, the guests are all epicureans. There’s a Croat doing the tango with a stained oak pedestal. There’s a venus fly trap in the ensuite and a cigar in the mouth of the stuffed hog which greets you in the vestibule. The Venetians are full of sex, clasping their palms together, furrowing their brows and taking exaggerated breathes in and out, following some beauty from Côte d’Ivoire with darting eyes. Four men are lined up against the rococo feature wall in the lounge, six feet behind the band. The open glass piano cuts diagonal across their assembly. The four have perfect posture and are in sharp navy suits, each with a tie of different colour. They talk in turns out the sides of their mouths without looking at each other, cutting deals and smoking thin cigars. Meanwhile, a venture capitalist from Plymouth got caught on an arrow of Eros (it was in the lesser hall, where all the marble likenesses are kept). The tip pierced his hounds-tooth blazer and out came pouring oil, black gold, on to the white slate floor. The black puddle (it’s film in a phase change breaking with interference colour) lay undisturbed the entire night.