Coma

I woke up.
There was a car alarm going
on the street behind my house.

I heard it all day.
I was driving around Gower and Pembrokeshire
trying to locate a cliff
the ideal cliff
from which a person could fall
and reasonably survive.

I'd been hired by a Manchester-based TV company
called: Aversion.

The sound was still there when, that night,
I pulled up on top of Cefn Bryn
to watch Mars. You can tell it's a planet
because it doesn't twinkle.
It's more like a torch with the batteries nearly dead.

The sound was there when I tried to get to sleep.
There were crickets too, loud as maracas.
I hummed La Bamba as I drifted off.

The next morning the sound had lost its saw-toothed edges
and become more like a very large finger
circling the rim of a very large wine glass.
I blinked because it was a nicer sort of sound.

I put one finger in my ear when I rang Hannah, the director,
to tell her I'd found somewhere perfect:
Tor Bay, where the sand is soft as a hospital mattress.

I had my lunch under some power lines.

In the afternoon, I liased with an outdoor pursuits instructor, Ian,
who had badges of thick hair on his biceps.
He said he had Wednesdays off
so he could come help out on the shoot.
He said he'd be happy to.

The next morning, the sound seemed mellower:
it was like being in a room with twenty TVs all on stand-by.

It only took Ian twenty minutes
to set up the harness.
The sea was not very loud.
It took four hours for lighting,
make-up and cameras.

The scene seemed a bit flimsy
but, as I explained to Ian,
they can transform things in post-production.
In the scene, the boy was shouting
about being in love with the girl. He was being a bit aggressive.
The girl was backing up.
The shot started half-way through some dialogue,
the boy saying:
"You don't even hear me anymore.
I'm like a ghost.

I talked to Ian about the whole industry.
I told him that most people involved in the film industry
were there by accident,
not by design: second, third, fourth careers,
a job to plug a hole, to fill a void.
I talked for hours and he listened attentively.
Sometimes he said: woh.

When she pushed him off the cliff
the boy had to stay quiet
and not scream because they were going to dub the yell
in afterwards. It made it easier for the editing guys
if he just made the face like an ö
of someone falling backwards,
as he dropped out of sight.

The next day the sound had disappeared altogether.
This was a great relief.
I walked along the beach in the mist.
The sea was not very loud.
The mist made everywhere I walked seem like a small room.
I tried to imagine that there was a whole universe,
with planets and noise,
going on outside of my grey cot.

I discovered the body of the actor, lying still on the sand.
I put my ear to his open mouth
and listened for a scream
or breathing
or the sound of the sea.