Quite Possibly Divine

Jon looked around the place  and  wondered why he was here at all.

The crowd bustled all around him drunk and drugged to the eyeballs, pushing past as if they were at the Glastonbury Festival rather than a gig by a once famous band in what had once been a famous cinema.

Joanne was off chatting to strangers and folk that she evidently hadn’t seen for ages, discussing their criminal pasts and their glowing futures with most excellent employment and even better financial recompense.

Why did he bother?

The one-time prophet of punk, took the stage in all his flabby glory, his hair dyed  raven black, and jowls shaking as he belted out half remembered songs from 40 odd years ago, was it that long since the heyday of punk?

The music which had once been the sound of rebellion was now a melange of 70’s rock with an eastern flavour , dub reggae and 90’s dance rhythms, a turgid dirge like mass of noise.

Jon was lost in the music, feeling the bass vibrate the floor below him, Joanne could go her own way, in the words of the Fleetwood Mac song from years back, why they even here together, it wasn’t as if they had a relationship anymore, they were just friends, whatever that meant.

He zoned out, as the young of today say, from the people who were following something, the messianic posturing of a once popular singer, a modern substitute for religion in a secular age.

Then all was silent, serenely so, the crowd and music had gone.

Jon beheld stunning seemingly endless vistas of woodland, shimmering leaves whispering on trees which stretched their branches heavenward like arms reaching out to a beatific blue sky, bereft of clouds. He was on an island, maybe Iona, somewhere like that,  a remote and peaceful place. There was a small church just a small distance from where he stood, with echoed with the sound of the singing of unaccompanied psalmody. This was certainly a place where Heaven was close to Earth.  Perhaps this was what Heaven was like. He was a believer, a Christian, but never thought he would have such a vision, perhaps Christ himself was about to put in an appearance, maybe this was to be the Second Coming, a real messiah instead of washed-up rock star giving the impression that he was messianic.

He was brought rudely back to earth as it were, when a fat girl spilled her drink all over him.

Fucking hell, what’s that for? He said.

She didn’t really respond, as she was one of the many people in the place off their faces with drugs, and alcohol.

Joanne had disappeared into the night with one of her strangers, maybe she had never existed anyway, maybe she had been conjured up by any drug he had taken in the past, his new vision, one without the aid of drink or drugs, had given him something to think about, something quite possibly divine.