Clear: A Transparent Novel

I sit up, panicked.

‘What? You think they set me up? You think they’re planning to mess with me in some legitimately fucked-up, McEwan-like way?’

‘Blackmail,’ Solomon sniggers, ‘or worse.’

‘I gave her my phone number…’

Solomon throws up his hands, ecstatically. ‘But of course you did, Massa. Of course you did.’

I stare at him, in silence, while the genius McCoy Tyner hammers away discordantly on his crazy, plinky-plonk piano.

‘Karma.’ Solomon grins, taking a last, long draw on his spliff and then leaning forward and proffering it to me. ‘Pure, undiluted, genius karma.’

Wow. Thank God that album’s over.

No matter what your views happen to be on the subject (love him or loathe him etc), there’s still no escaping this one essential thing (no, I’m not evading the issue, because this is the issue, see?): it’s like a bloody 24-hour party down here. And everyone’s invited – the famous, the infamous, the rich, the poor, the pretty, the ugly, the lovers, the haters. Everybody’s invited. Seriously. And everybody’s equal; they simply wouldn’t dream of turning you away. Because they want you, no matter what, to be a part of the spectacle.

It’s an event. It’s a happening. It’s fluid – like an organism. It has integrity, it flows, it’s vital and screwed up, and ridiculous and ongoing…

It’s a pure, fucking blast (I mean let’s just shelve the moral whys and the wherefores for one moment, shall we?), because man, what a backdrop! Tower Bridge! The Pool of London! I know I keep harping on about it, but it really is astonishing – like a picture postcard suddenly come to life. Almost as though (and, yes, hyperbole is my middle name, but a person needs to get excited about this shit sometimes, don’t they?) something which was previously virtually entombed in its own history (and significance and tradition; conserved, mothballed, mummified) has suddenly been reinvested with this incredible immediacy.

The spectacle of Blaine (hanging there, quietly, on his workaday green crane) has made this bridge come alive again (and the water, even, damn him – although the water, in my opinion, was doing just fine on its own). Even the sunset. The fucking sunset. Even that.

This preposterous magician (Jesus Christ! How’d he do this trick?) has reanimated the vista.

Everybody’s feeling it. The lovers are loving it. The angry people are getting angrier (I mean he’s a foreigner, a fraud, an affront, a squatter, eh? How dare he take on this noble landmark – out of his depth? Out of his depth?! – and then casually twist it around him like it’s his own private ampitheatre?).

Fact is, it almost seems like the quieter he gets, the more vibrant his surroundings grow. His weakness (his ‘hunger’) kind of vivifies the whole area.

Yup.

So where’s this strange, new N-R-G coming from, exactly? Us? Him? Is it (God forgive me), could it possibly be: pure, undiluted, honest-to-goodness charisma?

Shhiiit!

Hat’s off to the geezer, I say. Because I didn’t think it could be done. No, seriously…I really didn’t (I mean what is this now? Day 10?).

How’d he do it (any clues out there?)?

Number 1 (in my opinion): Passivity. The dude just sits (this part comes from him). Number 2:

Raw emotion (and this is our contribution). Love and hatred. Empathy and bile. Fury and benevolence (a great, uncontrollable fucking wave of reaction), and all – so far as I can tell – in fairly equal measure. The stuff of life, no less. The stuff of art and cinema and fiction. The stuff of all great narrative – comedy, horror, farce, tragedy…

It’s the whole package (Blaine is merely the prompt, or the twist which makes the plot start moving).

And we’re bringing it along. We’re getting all Dickensian again, all Rabelaisian, all ‘how’s yer father’. We’re reconnecting to a long social history of public spite (and – credit where credit’s due – public adoration).

‘Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be…’

British. So fuck you, right?!

Jeez.

Let’s get back to the vista, shall we?

Now here’s the thing…(if you haven’t come along yet, or if you’re unfamiliar with these surroundings – Unfamiliar?! Where’ve you been buried all these years? – or if you’re still not quite following). You know how it is, sometimes, when you see the most beautiful flower in the world – or girl, for that matter, or scene, or view, even – and you’re so drawn to it – or her – that you feel this incredible urge to pull closer: you want to touch, lick, smell…But – as you’ll invariably discover – the most beautiful is rarely the most aromatic, or the most smooth, or the most tasty, or the most interesting? Yeah? It’s just the most beautiful. And that’s simply that.

Uh…

Well not any more. No siree. Not here. This bridge is starting to twitch in its supports, whistle in its masonry and creak in its hinges. Like Frankenstein’s Monster, it’s starting to thud and gag and shudder and breathe again. It is! It is! I swear to God.

So let’s give that hype-crazy, quick-fingered New Yorker his due: Blaine has altered the dynamic of this spot (don’t know if he actually meant to; don’t know if it’ll last for ever – I seriously doubt it, somehow…), and that’s a kind of magic there’s no palpable explanation for. You can’t just hire the video and watch it all in slo-mo (look for the sleight of hand, the cut in the flow). Nope. You simply have to be there. It’s subtle. It’s perplexing. It’s pretty fucking intangible. It’s all (a-hem) in the ‘atmosphere’.

(Phew. Why’s my head suddenly filled with this over-powering vision of that smug SOB Solomon rubbing his hands together, rocking back on his heels and basically pissing his damn pants at my naive enthusiasm. Huh?)

Okay. Enough of the big spiel, the heavy sell…Let’s get down to brass tacks. Let’s hone in on the mechanics of the thing. Let’s try to get to grips with all those deeply perplexing anthropological and behavioural niceties, yeah?

Yeah?

The Insiders vs. The Outsiders

Right. Because of the way the fencing works, the actual crane (and the box – 7 feet by 7 feet by 3 feet, flying at a steady altitude of 30 feet – and the scaffolding ‘tower’ adjacent to the box – where they keep the magician’s water – so that’s the entire site, effectively) is cordoned off (it’s a rough 50 yards in diameter, I’d say, although my spatial awareness is not all it might be), for security, partly, but also because they’re filming the whole event – Blaine’s ‘great friend’, the universally acknowledged nut-job/enfant terrible of the US film world, Harmony Korine (he of Kids fame, i.e. small group of spoilt, underage brats hang around taking drugs, being twats, having sex and basically setting the refined moral senses of the chattering classes on both sides of the Atlantic madly twittering), has landed the gig (Nepotism, you say? Nepotism?! But the guy’s a genius, man. Didn’t you see Julien Donkey-Boy?).

This means (inevitably) that to step inside the cordon is to voluntarily submit to the eye of the camera, which has – but of course – necessarily facilitated the gradual evolution of two main, basic ‘types’ in the DB watching arena; two very distinct ‘divisions’, you might almost say: the Insiders and the Outsiders.

(i) The Outsiders

Since they raised the fences (and increased the security – an average of eight men, now, most days, more, even, some especially rowdy Fridays and Saturdays) the distinction between the inner and the outer has become all the more apparent.

The Outsiders are extremely keen to maintain their veneer of indifference (are – by and large – what you might call exquisitely ‘British’ in their demeanour). They always stay firmly – decidedly – on the outer perimeter (wouldn’t consider, for a moment, actually going inside the fence, proper – What?! – that’d be like…uh…tantamount to taking a carnation off a Moonie – maybe accepting their cordial invite round to ‘afternoon tea’.)

The Outsiders often sit on the river wall, swinging their legs, having a quick fag, reading their papers. They might even – and this, I find, is ultra-duplicitious – turn their backs on Blaine and look the other way, towards the river – the Pool of London (Yeah. Maybe they’ll raise the bridge soon…Is that an original nineteenth-century schooner…? Did you actually see the harbour master before, on his little blue and white boat down there…?).

They may possibly decide to take a dispassionate (nay, smirking) interest in the nutty-seeming banners bedecking the fences (the fan letters, posters and other detritus) while casually peeking up at Blaine, every few seconds (perhaps muttering angrily, or – you never know – supportively, under their breath), like suspicious badgers blinking up into the daylight from the dark and reassuringly musky confines of their underground lair.

Sometimes the Outsiders don’t even stop at all. They walk by, but very slowly, as if out for a casual afternoon stroll (like the thought of actually stopping would be absolutely inconceivable to them.

Stop? Me?! And here? But why?).

There’s a couple of wide, concrete steps up from the embankment, on to what’s actually the ‘park’ proper (Potters Fields – a small, paltry assemblage of dusty grass and tired trees), where the perimeter fence duly kicks in. Climbing up the steps definitely denotes something. It’s a little concession. And the concession is made out of either aggression (easier to yell – and throw – from this position) or a desire to announce that you’re unintimidated by the event (I’m bloody here aren’t I?!) even if you don’t quite consider yourself a real Blaine-groupie.

Some Outsiders like to sit on these steps (mainly tramps and teenagers – once again with their backs to Blaine), like angry silverbacks in the jungle, asserting a strange mixture of (on the one hand) indifference/hostility or (on the other) intimacy/inclusion. If they’ve brought along a sleeping bag, or a bottle of wine, say (as they often do), then it’s almost like they perceive their slightly-raised selves as part of the drama. This is my show now, see? This is my life. This is me.

(ia) Eating

Many Outsiders come to eat. It stops them from being bored, it gives them something to toss (or to think about tossing), it keeps their hands busy, and it’s an explicit slight to the High and Hungry One. To come here and eat is the number one indicator of real hostility (they say the smell of fried onions from the vans has been driving the Illusionist almost wild with frustration).

It’s a curious fact, but I often see packs of women in late middle age standing around and devouring fast food with a far greater sense of malicious gusto than almost anybody else from any other sex/age group (apart from the schoolboys – but then these testosterone-fuelled imps are a law unto themselves).