Not From Above!
Page 1
About the Author
Alexander Mayor is a writer and musician based in London. He started his musical adventure as one third of early Noughties synthpop band Baxendale, peddling unashamedly upbeat pop to European dance floors. In 2013 he reinvented himself as the sole proprietor of a literary-minded pop group called Alexander’s Festival Hall with the album Not a Dry Eye in London. He also writes for German culture magazine Chart – Notes To Consider, pens sleeve notes for the popular Too Slow to Disco vinyl AOR reissue series and turns out finely tooled paragraphs about brainy subjects for cold hard cash. This is his first book.
NOT FROM ABOVE!
The Book of the Album of the Book
Alexander Mayor
This paperback edition first published in 2019
Unbound
6th Floor Mutual House, 70 Conduit Street, London W1S 2GF
www.unbound.com
All rights reserved
© Alexander Mayor, 2019
The right of Alexander Mayor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-78965-032-7
ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-78965-031-0
Cover design by Mecob
By the Same Author
Upturned (EP, 2011)
Not a Dry Eye in London (Album, 2013)
Not From Above! (12″ EP, 2019)
Available on iTunes, Amazon MP3, YouTube Music, Spotify and many more.
Find out more: www.alexandersfestivalhall.org
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‘It’s a literary-musical adventure!’ cried Edmund,
as he fell in the lake.
A Note on Illustrations
Back in 2013, those nice people at the British Library decided to digitise over a million images from 65,000 different books and manuscripts in their collection. Seemingly scanned at random by a robot with an eye for Victorian whimsy, they’re an absolute joy. Like many people, I lost hours hunting through these fascinating fragments and decided to include a few where I felt they added something. Many thanks to the BL for this act of mechanical curation and open-minded content sharing.
How to Use This Book
Datherson woke, his heart pounding, and gazed out through a gap in the heavy drapes. His cheeks were cold as he tried to peer through the sallow fog that hung in morbid tendrils across the lawn. Dimly, he knew he could hear what he feared most: the distant but ever-present drumming whose hideous beat had enveloped this grey little shoreline town for fully 10 days now. The ignorant were lucky, he thought, grim-faced. All too soon they would learn whence derived these ancient rhythms, dark and awful… and discover the maddening melody that might return the sun to our sky, but at such terrible cost…
•
Carrie let a lock of hair play down her face as the waiter poured another generous Chardonnay from the ice bucket. Mr Cute! Colin Farrell hair. Steady, Carrie! It was the kind of summer when consistently high temperatures made a girl forgetful. That sunlight didn’t actually make everyone more attractive. That you didn’t really live anywhere near Barcelona. But wait, was that a wink? Cheeky guy! She sipped. Things were definitely looking up.
•
Deft social wisdoms at a price point that guarantees you’ll be thrilled and enraged.
•
This book is not intended to. That’s my copper-bottomed pledge, which you probably recall from our last meeting. Indeed, I more or less promised myself I would never write a book after reading quite a few perfectly good ones by almost anyone else.
But what about an album that’s also a book? Or a book that doubles as an acceptably sized musical gift for the non-reader? Perhaps you’d just love to own something about this size with a sticker on it? You’re only human.
Think of this (the reading bit) as your part in a terribly exciting social experiment: an ill-thought-out cultural camping trip to a place with scant phone coverage. A distant destination where you (the reader and/or listener) come along with me (music maker, recovering clarinettist and now apparently ‘writer’) as we attempt to upend an industry, keep ourselves amused for a few hours and make increasingly desperate attempts to find shelter.
Looks lovely on a coffee table too, but then people don’t have those any more either, do they?
•
Download the Album
Not From Above! is also an album of songs! There should be a download code on a sticker just inside the cover. Simply visit http://alexandersfestivalhall.bandcamp.com/yum and enter your code to get your copy. If you don’t have a code, drop me a line at info@
alexandersfestivalhall.org and a member of our elite customer service team will provide you with a link.
The Opener
It isn’t necessarily possible to calculate when (or even if) the exact moment of crossover will occur. For years scientists have disagreed, if amiably, about the finer points of the sequence.
You arrive at the party a picture of engine-idling sobriety, the console’s lights dimly lit by caffeine. As a committed believer that the show itself should provide the soundtrack, the stimulation, there’s no point in pre-over-egging it. Newspaper articles concerning the volume of people drinking Tesco’s vodka at home before the night ‘kicks off’. And then a miniature shudder at the idea that football terminology should have been allowed to leak into something as wholesome as a house party.
A party’s precise dramatic possibilities turn mostly on the players, of course, though a Scottish castle or Monaco beachfront would have been nice additional dimensions. To this end, arriving as something of a blow-in from the social peripheries only heightens the need to make publicly sound alcohol choices. Tins of wife-beater are a no-no, for obvious reasons – overstating your hedonistic game plan with a plastic bag and a five pound four-pack might have worked at 17, but at 38 the headroom remains in deftly staged choices, poured with at least a modicum of élan. Real ale? In a beard-strewn pub a fine thing, but it’s not a sharing drink and this, this, is a party.
Sally, whose take on burlesque is a disappointing combination of the mostly clothed and chansons that make ‘Gloomy Sunday’ sound like Los del Río, opens the door. Peering past her, you can see people of a certain confidence bobbing and swelling within the room beyond. There’s that almost tactile challenge, it’s always like this, its precise vectors carved by the loud physical declarations about a new fashion collection, art show or an impossibly self-referential DJ mix you haven’t heard. A full-throated challenge, to find some room among this lot – but oh, beautiful people do make the competition worth it all.
‘I’ve brought a bottle of white?’
Not strictly speaking a question, but you’re still finding your feet. Sally nods and smiles, inverting what you recall of her most recent stage appearance. Her face motions that there’s a kitchen. This being the blasted east of any European city, the kitchen is a series of pop-up plywood afterthoughts, a tiny lacuna of food preparation in an off-white industrial space. Nagging, shameful memories that the kitchen in your family home was tiled with folksy scenes of harvest-time wheat sheaves momentarily surface. Inner blanching, mouth wider, regain that edgy profile; swerve through the crowd with a smile that says, ‘Look at me… I know where the kitchen is.’
In just a few steps, we move from London industrial heritage through Italo-disco to a ship’s galley or an under-budgeted TV-set version of same. True, the beards are adding to the seafaring vibe back here and though your attention is briefly taken by scanning the artsy surfaces for glasses or a bottle opener, the thing has just happened again. For this is the raised and tempered ground, the town’s cobbled square, that hill where the sacrifices are staged and the sun always looks most beautiful just before night-break.
The brain, its computational power revered by scientists, psychologists and physicists alike, does that thing where it conjures at least five delectably apt names for the beautiful girl who’s just announced that she too is hunting for the bottle opener. Tasmin, Verunka, Sophie, Natalya, the number 9 – let us reel on the spot while central casting gets busy in the frontal lobe.
At this point, the philosophical chemistry is reasonably well understood. Free will gloriously undermined and overpowered by ethanolic determinism, combining to produce powerful pulses of ambivalently held beliefs. Then a sudden, carefree alacrity for the unfamiliar new forms perceived through the lenses of your lips. The point is that more things than there were, suddenly now are, without the physical numbers changing themselves, you see? Boom! There she was.
And really, who cares about reality when you can be both actor and audience in this slipping unto a new world? Sure, it wouldn’t pass muster in even the lowliest regional centre of academe, and yet you’re sure you can feel the edges of a discovery. The overwhelming nexus of subtly applied make-up, impossible clothing patterns, jewellery bearing messages from a thousand judicious, tiny, delightful choices. Suddenly, the light seems so very bright.
In an admirable piece of parallel processing, the remainder of your consciousness tries to turn this communal endeavour into a low-level 1950s musico-theatrical scene. The audience settles in, as the cast unknowingly elevate tiny tasks into the very dance of discernment, luck and love. It’s a slow reveal but with lots of zippy moments.
For this is hallowed territory. Forget the dance floor, everyone knows the real magic happens in the kitchen at parties. Here it is that we will unconsciously rehearse the kitchen rituals that must surely follow once Tasmin/Verunka/Sophie/Natalya/‘9’ joins your forces in a different kind of hallowed public place, at a later time. It’s only 25 seconds into this, your relationship, and you are already demonstrating an ability with glass cleaning that will mark you out as a potential mate of some distinction. And look: as per the prophecy, the bottle opener is located, and the most powerful moment of all is upon us. The wine will be opened in public, great love established and proclaimed. Without corking, without tears, effortfully effortless.
‘What did you say your name was?’
Learn to Play Esteban!
Race, fight, jump, spoon! Everybody wants to end up top of the heap, but there can only be one Esteban! Amass a fortune, seduce Lady Fate, lose your shirt – only one game combines such excitement, fun and good old-fashioned fear. Surely the bravest will be covered in glory. For 3–6 players, ages 10 and up.
Game pieces:
♠ 1 game board depicting the mythological and enchanting island of Marassaña
♠ 1 small plastic hourglass
♠ 4 coloured pencils and a pad of paper
♠ 6 shrunken-head play pieces
♠ 2 decks of cards (The Decider Deck and The Deck of Charms)
♠ 3 plastic Pierrots with sad faces
♠ 3 plastic Pierrots with happy faces
♠ 1 eight-sided die and skull shaker cup
♠ 1 fold-up dance mat depicting the 12 signs of the Xodiâco
♠ 1 crumpled paper crown
♠ Banknotes in various denominations of the queño
♠ 1 carved ‘Horn of the Multitudes’
♠ 1 miniature bottle of Tundro (64 per cent ABV)
Rules:
At the start of the game please ensure first that the hourglass is fully reset. This can take up to 30 minutes. If you require additional entertainment during the restoration of the sands of time, you will find a selection of songs at the back of this rules booklet, including ‘A Thousand Years of Toil (and You)’, ‘My Struggle, My Loves, My People’ and the heartwarming ‘Dark Knights of Marassaña’.
[Note to tournament players: we keep here to the 1952 post-Repensando rules, meaning auction dividends will be valid only if the winning player’s total is held en común and lava has not yet overcome the village.]
All set? Then let us begin…
*
The object is, of course, to take control of the board (country). First, every player shall place the die in the skull shaker and roll, taking turns in first-name order. Continue until a player rolls ‘8’ – this lucky player is designated Someliero and has control of the money supply for six turns as well as control of The Decider Deck.
The Someliero will give all other players 25,000 queño at the beginning of round one, but the notes must remain face up at all times or risk sequestration by Old Uncle Rómulo of the Pentarchy. Fear his yellow square that is always to the south!
Play proceeds in a clockwise manner, with the upper leftmost tip of the board facing the player with the lowest original die roll. If two or more players scored ‘1’ on the die, the one with the shortest surname goes last. May no one say that the meek wil
l not be guaranteed their deserts on the Isle of Marassaña.
As play begins, each player must confront the Dilemma of Signs. Should you build an army with luck, forcefulness and queño, or stab Herrero the ageing stablehand? Perhaps only your Xodiâcal sign can reveal your true direction – for as the goat will think locally, a ship’s mast must point globally. Which will you be? Jump on the mat and find your direction. It’s all in the fun of Esteban!
Each player will now move his shrunken head the number of squares correspondent to the die roll, unless a double is rolled. On the occasion of a duplicate score the Someliero can seize the possessions of a player of his or her (or his) choosing, with few requirements for the usual attendant paperwork. The targeted player must now turn up his Pierrot-with-a-sad-face and for two rounds all play ceases for any pieces located within two squares of the village. Other players may laugh, but recall in detail that fickle fate is the true Queen of Marassaña!
Things are hotting up, no? (Windows should be kept closed to warm younger players or un-hatted female participants.) But remember, success is a distant land (square H32/B12) and he or she (or he) who shall be crowned in victory will not be settled a’fore all players have crossed the mighty River of Vundebleco, fought the giant Battistu ants in the leafy glade and invested wisely in real estate at the port-side developments in Bellómo. Merriment and danger maketh the player as you learn to play Esteban! (Note: this is written clearly on the box.)
In the fourth round, the Someliero will turn over the bottom card from the Deck of Charms, and outwardly express the writings therein inscribed. The blood-coloured text is in fact ‘Siennanonza Red’ (depending on your progress it will match either the colour of your dress or the mood of your eyes). The player immediately to his or her left will become Receiver of Charms and the card’s text must be read aloud. Examples include (but are not limited to):