literature

Another Day in Paradise

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Philip David Charles “Phil” Collins is an English-born Irish singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, who is most renowned for his career as an enigmatically powerful drummer and lead vocalist for Genesis, and also for his worldwide solo artistry. He was very heavily inspired by his personal life in his writing, especially in his political and religious “Another Day in Paradise”; an anti-homelessness anthem inspired by his daughter Joely’s work with the “Angels” charity, in providing food for the poor and the homeless…




-A High Street in the Centre of Town… January, 1990-

“Sir…? Sir.”

He doesn’t listen to me.

“Sir, can you help me? It’s cold… it’s so cold, and I have nowhere to sleep. I have nowhere to sleep.”

No… he doesn’t even notice me.

“Is there… is there somewhere you can tell me…?”

And just like that… just like that, he is across the street, whistling away, never looking back.

He just walks on ahead of me like that. Just walks on ahead, and he doesn’t look back.
Did he hear me? Perhaps he’s deaf? Or blind? Just like me… with all my failing sight, my failing speech, my failing strength. Maybe… maybe he’s just like me.

Or not…

No… no. No, he’s just like the rest of them. They all pretend… they all pretend. We’re not worth their time, our kind… we don’t fit in there, with their kind. It’s always been this way. We will always be this way.

“Oh… Lord. Oh, Lord. Is there nothing more anybody can do?”

Those are our dying words… our kind.

One last breath of hopelessness. One last breath in the loneliness.

On last breath amidst the homelessness…


*


It’s a distinctive tune.

You can hear the whining of the city streets, and the low and tender humming of the high-street air about you that arises out of nowhere, out of the bubbling chatter of the men and women and children long retired to their beds and no longer there, and the vehicles that once rode along the cobbled roads and now are parked elsewhere away from the centre of the eroded citadel. It is almost as if it is the murmurs of the industrial estate not so many miles away, creeping up from beneath the pavement and singing low in the atmosphere. And it is a monotone melody that does not rise… it simply levels about your ankles, clinging to the skin of your shins like a moving, breathing fog come to life and speaking inaudibly its woes.

Only a dozen or so breaths into the melody – then you realise, that the supple pulling at the strings of the guitar have broken into that layer of fog, and dispersed it, almost, with a careful, gentle four notes that ring almost as a lullaby to the citadel high streets… and then there is a rhythmic crack, of skin against skin, or palm against palm; or the firing of guns all aligned, one by one, along the street; or the heels of shoes on a tiled floor – and they reverberate, for half a moment, before they are cut off, like an echo pumped through the mouth of a cave and then abruptly cut off, muted by a fallen landslide. And it is rhythmic… for it is a beat of silence, then a crack... beat, crack, beat, crack, beat, crack. Twelve times over. And all the while, Dominic Miller plucks away at the strings of the guitar… that lullaby to the citadel high streets.

And then the day breaks. Or you could have sworn it to have been, for the music that cuts in then, it is so alive, and so light, the beat feels almost as if it has been lifted, like the golden rays of the sun picking up on the street. It is almost as if those dark rainclouds humming and gathering low about the skies overhead have parted and made way for the softly spoken shimmering of yellowed dust and light air. The citadel does not seem so dusky and musky, now, when that tune rifts through the speakers. And the strength of the bass… and the persistent beat of the drums, that underlying rhythm. It gives that daybreak a purpose, almost. It can almost motivate you to run headlong into that daybreak, and grasp at it, and claim it as your own.

It’s a distinctive tune.

Who can mistake it? It’s Philip David Charles, “Phil” Collins’ worldwide number one hit, after all. Another Day in Paradise can’t be much missed by anyone.

You can recognise it distinctly through the radio, pumping its music through the high-street shop doors, each individual note roaming the pavement about you like the people that once walked here early in the day. It is top in the charts, and has been for some four weeks now, the indisputable Christmas no. 1 for the US. It is a beautiful song; you don’t much pay attention to its lyrics, but Phil Collins’ prowess in that music is impeccable.

It’s then that you hear her calling out to you… “Sir…? Sir.”

Her words break the ice-y winter air of the early year with an uncanny synchrony with the lyrics of the song. So much so, almost, that you could swear that the song in itself has broken free of the speakers and has taken a physical form, here in the high streets of the citadel. You wouldn’t pay much attention to it, ordinarily.

Only, she keeps speaking.

“Sir? Can you help me?”

It’s at that point that you see her – a young girl, fourteen, fifteen at the oldest, with long blonde hair that has been dirtied and is streaked with ten different shades of blood, not hers, clearly, but somebody else’s. Her clothes are ragged and her face is heavily lined, and her eyes, they would have once been a dazzling, stunning shade of blue, but now they are greyed, lost, lonely, afraid; and no shoes, you can see the blisters on the soles of her feet. She’s so close to collapsing, she clearly can’t walk, but she’s trying, she’s trying so very hard.

It’s pitiful.

Pathetic.

You’ve seen teens like this on many an occasion down this twilight city street. Mind, many of them put on the act, to save finding a job elsewhere and all the while scavenging a few pennies throughout the night. Feigning homelessness, or orphanage, or family abuse. The latter of the three, you would likely have put on this one, given the blood, and the bruises and the broken nose. Run away from home, likely, on the pretext that her parents have abused her for long enough. Had to get away from it. Had to run away from home.
“It’s cold,” she says. In that tired, broken voice of hers, she says, “It’s so cold… and I have nowhere to sleep. I have nowhere to sleep.”

But you simply brush past her. A middle-class businessman like you, who has all the corporation to manage and five hundred workers to employ over in Liverpool, does not have the time to spare for the likes of them. So you pretend you can’t hear her. You pretend that you don’t even notice her.

Because you don’t. What is she even worth, someone of her kind?

“Is there…” She stumbles, as she attempts to reach out to you. But you snap your wrists forward and she doesn’t take hold, and she crumbles, crumples to the pavement. She can no longer walk. “Is there somewhere you can tell me…?”

And then she says no more. Not to you, anyhow. She simply stares after you, with those grey eyes, lost, lonely, afraid, as you cross the street, whistling away, never looking back. She starts to sob, and through ragged breaths, you can hear her whispering the words, “Oh… Lord. Oh, Lord. Is there nothing more anybody can do?”

There must be something you can say.

But you do not. You say nothing. Instead, you simply stroll away from her withering frame, whistling away, tapping your fingers in your leather jacket pocket in time with that distinctive tune. And one single lyric breaks through to you, and you think, yes. Yes, of course.

Why should you have cared for her? It’s just another day for you in paradise.
Inspired by Phil Collin's no. 1 hit, "Another Day in Paradise".
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