Manafonistas

This has several meanings: a title of a book that will never be written, a running gag that has lost its wit, a dream of a journey to the outskirts of Europe in the middle of winter. The postman out there only rings once, there is a local folk group, and a lot of whisky. It’s a bit like living in post-war Scotland, with smartphones and e-books. There are fishermen, there is sheep, there is whisky. Simple life. Wonderful. There is grief, too, when the shadows take over and death comes to town. The town is a long street, and there is another band that plays free jazz all night long, in January. Some dreamers fly out of their windows and meet a colony of ravens on the East Coast of Barra. Ra-Ra-Ra. Birdsong is a heavenly music corporation, but there will always be different, fragmented sonics, melodies in disguise, noises in common sense, really weird ones, light as a feather. No one can make a singalong out of these „things“, the locals call it „waduahoo“ – only an ornithologist (from Cambridge, fact) claimed to know how to notate and decipher them. He did that once, fell asleep and never woke up. The rate of criminal events is very low, the theft of chickens is a major event. There is a local newspaper that invents stories cause nothing really happens. Everybody knows the jukebox in town, it plays the same songs since 1968. The islanders are addicted to „Winchester Cathedral“, and everybody can whistle that old tune from a long gone era when pop music had still been innocent and simple. The fool of the village has always been keen on „Puppet on a String“, and he read Jack London novels all day and all night long. At least he did so till 1985, then he left the island and travelled to another world: the world of the Yukon Quest, he loved it when the dogs (a peaceful army of dogs) came from the icy horizon, his tears ran down and looked like the smallest rivers of the world. Then, absentminded, he looked around. He saw (second take) people who looked like those figures in the novels of Jack London. Wolves among them. Serial killers. The goldrush in decay. Greed ruling. Masks falling. Still a fool, he decided to play on a ukulele he found on a grave instrad of a cross. His fingers did the playing all alone, and he knew that tune. A cradle song. Turning around time. Writing last pages. Starting all over. Ego-Dumping in the Yukon Quest. What end? What end?