cello song

Today this lovely Nick Drake tune, "Cello Song," came on right as sun hit steel over the Potomac and I was staring out the window of the train. This is a song that allows motion to be felt, one that actually evokes wooden wheels turning and pressing into the earth, rolling by strange, exotic landscapes. I had a vision of the train thrusting forward at the dead end of the tracks, and just flying. I thought of it flying over the river and landing a centimeter above the marshy muckwater and sliding over it, gently sinking in bit by bit while still pushing ahead. I imagined the train's passengers: painted women and siamese twins and men on unicycles, all in black and white against a dusty indigo sky, climbing out of the windows and helping each other to the top of the train as it kept flying and sinking. One of the painted women grabbed the hub of a unicycle and wrapped her long yellow and turquoise fingers around the silver spokes as two men braced themselves against a steampipe and pulled her up to the top. All the passengers were sitting crossed-legged and leaning on each others' backs and someone was playing the cello and someone was tapping the top of the steel train to keep the rhythm and then suddenly the backdrop turned to a blood orange as the sun fell from the sky and black smoke from the crushed and drowned engine started to creep up and wrap itself seductively around the passengers who continued to play and sink. And life in their peripheral visions started turning into newspaper illustration and the trees on the river bank lost all their colors and leaves and turned to black sketches on gray paper and soon the ground followed and turned to coal, and the muckwater dried up and turned to ash, and the wooden wheels halted and froze, and suddenly the train itself was a hollow illustration and the passengers couldn't move as they saw each other's fingers, lips, and necks turning into black sketches on gray paper until the scene was still and the good Americans on the morning commute could see it in the paper.

Cello Song - Nick Drake