Hanging with the Elephant

Hanging with the Elephant by Michael Harding Page A

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Authors: Michael Harding
Tags: BIO026000, FAM014000
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music was by far the best soundtrack for killing. And he described what it was like on one occasion to be in battle, shooting away at other people.
    ‘They started shelling us with rockets,’ he’d said. ‘We were fighting them non-stop for forty-eight hours. And in those situations, if you get something wrong, you’re going to die. And as you’re picking your target, and as you squeeze the trigger and watch the target fall, you must befocused. And when you see the target fall down, you flick a map to give grid references to the guy on top even though the bullets are still flying over your head. But there is no fear because you are busy and focused. The fear only rises when someone shouts “Stores!” and you know that the aircraft who got your co-ordinates has just dropped its load and it’s on its way down and you feel sickly for a moment because if you got it wrong, it will land on you. And then it detonates. Your heart leaps. And you’re back up firing again. And of course you’re fully focused.’
    ‘Now that,’ I’d said to myself, ‘is what I call a man.’ And I’d been impressed by how much music meant to him. I could just imagine them all with their iPods and mp3 players banging away intensely and finding more focused concentration in those moments than I would ever find in twenty years of looking at a spot at the end of my nose.
    Earphones gave him the illusion of privacy when he needed to relieve himself sexually in the middle of battle, he’d explained – but I didn’t quite understand what he meant.
    ‘And just as in sex, when the killing stopped, the elation was intense,’ he’d said. ‘A euphoric release. But empty.’
    That’s what he’d said. The man was having some kind of mental orgasm as he killed other people. And he was euphoric about it. And then empty. You just can’t beat the BBC.
    ‘I had a metallic taste in the mouth like after adrenaline,’
    he’d said, ‘but empty.’ And he’d grown accustomed to it. And he’d needed more each time. More risk. It’s what turns men into boys. I could just imagine a squad of them with headphones and sexy battle fatigues, like warrior princes going off to slaughter, and them creating playlists for the action on their little iPods.
    ‘And when you’re fighting,’ he’d said, ‘when you’re scrapping all the time during an engagement, when it has become just an old-fashioned shooting match, it’s just like trying to get through a crowd to get water at the bar during a dance. So there’s a bias towards dance music. I mean it makes sense.’
    Right. Of course. Techno music, for the war on terror. You learn something new every day.
    ‘Bullets flying and the sound of RPGs is music in itself,’ he’d declared. ‘Sometimes I would put on my cans and listen to Josh Wink as all hell was breaking loose. Oh, yes, definitely,’ he’d concluded, ‘it focuses the mind.’
    Well, why the fuck was I wasting my time staring at the floor when I couldn’t focus at all? I was up on my feet in an instant and quenched the candle in complete frustration and went outside and paced up and down the garden, using the musician’s walking stick to whack last year’s nettles and me in a rage that I couldn’t quite understand.
    If she hadn’t been in Poland at that moment, what would I have done? If she were near me, if she were in the kitchen, what would I do? I would have gone into the house for acup of tea, a slice of currant bread or a bowl of chilli soup; whatever was going. It would have calmed me down. Or if she had been in her studio at the end of the garden, I could have gone down and sat by her stove as she sculpted some new figure in clay. If she were not in Poland, she might have sustained me. Any kind of small talk would have taken me away from the badger and the soldier and the war in Afghanistan, because as sure as there is shite in a goose, meditation wasn’t helping me.

M Y MOTHER WAS afflicted with loneliness. I suppose it

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