SKULL & JOEL

By the time Joel and Harri left the pub the stars were out, the pin holes pricking the black sky were just a little fuzzy from the beer. In bed Joel stared at a ceiling littered with a set of luminous plastic stars he’d put up as a boy. He now lives in Hackney where light pollution has snuffed out the perspective he’d seen from the Brecon Beacons. The city’s skies are orange and small. Joel bought this skull in a London percussion shop. It sits on his desk at work. Shaken like a maraca it makes a low pitch rattle. But it also serves as a reminder that under our skin we’re all the same, that there’s more that binds us than separates us, that ‘it’s important to remember your mortality when bullshit gets in the way’. Joel quickly punctures the morbid conversation. Grinning, he says that the skull also glows in the dark. He then quotes an episode of ‘Porridge’ where the seasoned Fletch offers Lennie, his young cellmate, some sage advice – you’re born, you die and it’s up to you to fill the time in between.

17 Mar 2013