Here Come the Warm Jets
| Sound | Lonely wind idling over an empty expanse. A wasteland. Subdued almost below the level of the auditory threshold. Occasionally rising to a ghostly lament punctuated by intermittent forceful but distant gusts, then fading once again. |
| Vision | Black. A few stars on a clear indigo and slowly brightening sky. Pan down to horizon. Dawn is breaking with equatorial swiftness.
Foreground: A dune crest. Course and gritty dun coloured sand covers the uncertain outlines of a rocky core which angling from the lower right of the scene leads the eye diagonally left into.... Centre: A brown plain, dry and dusty with scattered regular rocks the size of petrified loaves, small skulls, clenched fists and broken bones. Small hillocks cut low and sweeping contours; the slowly shifting undulations of the Devil’s tablecloth, blasted flat in the eternal time winds to dry across a perpetually vacant blowing sky. Everything is a sombre, horizontal and boring brown. Tonal gradation is subtle sepia and shadow black. A hint of a track crosses the desert to..... Background: The contra glow of the horizon sky opposite the rising sun. China blue. The land flat. Slow sweep over about ten degrees then hold to leave the foreground dune cutting parallel with the bottom of the picture, severing the lower third. Tiny protrusions stabbing knife like into the pure horizon. A thin column of black smoke. |
| Vision | Cut to a swollen sun broken by a gently scalloped line of hills as it clears the earth. Heat haze. |
| Sound | Complete silence. Subliminally arresting by the sudden absence of noise. Restoration of sound on picture switch. |
| Vision | Cut back to previous horizon. Slow zoom over ten second period into horizon centred on the irregularities and the smoke. Detail becomes. It is a city. Smoke drifts only very gently away as though it is too heavy for the weary winds to be bothered with it. Tall skyscrapers burn in the distance with an occasional flicker of furnace red. Hold zoom at edge of recognition. Salt pan between farthest dune and buildings fills 80% of shot. |
| Vision | Slow perception of wide road leading from the city across the plain. A black and shifting ground cloud is seen to be a crowd of people trudging in a gravity bound trail of smoke towards the centre of the viewpoint. Irregular line of exiles dreaming of Gomorra. Hold shot for twenty seconds. |
| Sound | Fade in faint noises of distant crowd. Cries of pain, moans and mumbles of complaint. Rumbling wheels of carts all barely heard. At the end of the shot wind sounds rise in intensity again to swallow the outcasts. On picture switch, complete silence. |
| Vision | Cut to swollen sun well above the horizon. It seems larger and yellower than normal. Hold for five seconds then track round sky. Light azure tension of waiting for the unknown. Pan down. Glint of metal against the side of a dune. Close in to reveal child’s tricycle, bright yellow hub of wheel, flaking rust of handlebars. Dust blows over it. |
| Sound | Wind noises resume and grow louder. Now clearly audible at all times. Faint clankings like those of the warning bar bells across a road when recently hit by a lorry that is too tall to pass below the bridge, tin cans rattling behind a slow hearse commandeered for the daughter’s honeymoon, glasses clashing in a washing up bowl and the distant shattering of caves of icicles. |
| Vision | Pan up the surface of the dune. Close up of dust and sand. Vortices whip in futility around the depressions created by small rocks. There is a feel of absolute purity. Minimalist. Rise above abstract patterns to top crest as.... |
| Sound | Cue music. Swelling out of the wind and the clankings a tune. The dull drone of a kazoo or perhaps electric bagpipes - a broken synthesiser. Melody is simple and direct; driving to despair; an awful humming of ironical heroism with an addictive monotony. |
| Vision | Sudden panorama and stop. Looking down a crazy sloping surface to reveal a faint track across the wasteland. Five distant figures. They are the source of the clanking. Sudden shifts of light blaze from the assortment of metal which they carry like some demented scrap iron merchant’s assistants. They draw closer slowly as the melody grows louder. Their leader is a powerful man in his early fifties. The huge sun gleams off his bald head. His chest is wide and muscular. He wears a black leather jacket, grubby boots, dirty battle jeans and a metal belt. He carries an enormous rusty cross, twice his own height, constructed crudely out of a length of rail track to which has been nailed or wired a flashy fuel pipe torn from the underbelly of a dead juggernaut. A wispy old woman follows him, pushing a white peeling pram stuffed full of springs and the door panel of an unidentified truck. Next an old man. His face a wizened brown autumnal leaf, only a slight shade more red than the surrounding landscape. His belt, too, is metal studded with great square rivet heads. He turns as we watch and the back of his leather jacket becomes visible. We read ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’. His hair is a grey. He dances round eagerly but without the clear purpose of the other two. His arms and legs are bent like the pet monkey of an Indian God King. A girl, little better than a toddler, pulls a string to which are attached twenty or more old cans rattling as they bounce over the hard rocks, then dragging with a reluctant hiss in the deeper sand. Her face is grimy, her expression painful, intense and resolute. She is thin from the verge of starvation. From time to time as she grows tired, her mother picks her up and carries her, but never for long. She holds on to the string with an animal possession at all times. Her mother is a lanky brunette barely out of her teens. She has a greasy olive complexion and long limp hair blown bedraggled and clogged about her face. Her expression is empty as though with drugs or tiredness - a fallen Madonna from the city. She might be sleepwalking. Mechanically she drags a sled with an old radiator and a pile of miscellaneous ironmongery atop.
The leader calls them all on, beckoning fiercely. Only the old woman, who seems to have some sort of manic fervour, shows greater vigour, but by the power of his direction and relative rationality he commands them because his is the calm, assured, determined and relentless energy of the true prophet. The other three struggle to keep up. |
| Sound | The faint cry of the voices of the five. They are singing a chant in time with the endless wind noise and the droning instrument. Snatches of voice reach us but the meaning is obscure and private. They are pleading or lamenting, but with overtones of religious zeal. They have given up even more than they perhaps had to, by choosing to come here. They are bewailing their loss. They are looking for salvation but only in a resigned and hypnotic kind of way. They are looking for the warm jets. |
| Vision | Now they are climbing the initial dune right in the centre of our field of vision. |
| Sound | We hear the swish of boots in the slip sliding progress up the incline. Their breathing merges with the wind. |
| Vision | Dust falls from their clothing and swirls away angrily. They reach the crest. |
| Vision | Cut to gross sun. Heat huge. Intense before noon. Hold as the music grows louder. Three black dots - tiny at first in the centre of the fat butter gold orb but growing rapidly larger and darker as.... |
| Sound | with a swoosh |
| Vision | they flash across the sky. They stab stainless steel as they pass at an eyewrenching height. Quick track to follow, then linger on the cobalt poisoned sky. |
| Sound | The tune drones still louder. The voices become somewhat clearer. Exultant. |
| Vision | In the perfect blue sky, slow crystals appear. A vapour trail, but one wider and more sinister than that made by any earthly plane. It forms in cracks and fractures on the air, spreading like paint in a jar in the inky atmosphere; whiter than snow, more quiet than the fall of night. |
| Sound | The chorus cries in wonder. Their hymn of supplication rises in desolate joy. |
| Vision | Another silver flash. A second wave. Quick track and hold, then lock to the sector of the sky just above the sun and let the frame rest even as the third wave crosses it. These ships are not so quick and move at a lower height. Their trails develop into more exotic tails though. With psychedelic pinks, greens and vivid yellows they begin to cover the sky with broad brushstrokes. Like some LSD fantasy the vapour patterns grow; like a crystal front solidifying out of supersaturation in God’s microscope. Feathery fronds are translucent but already cover with layer upon unnaturally bright layer, a good proportion of the sky. |
| Vision | The top of the dune. The old woman gambols about and throws mad springs into the air with fundamentalist glee. The old man stares thoughtfully straight at the sun. We see the sun reflected in his metal studs and his fusing blind eyes. The crusade leader has planted his cross in the ground and shouts in triumph, a huge grin branded on his face. He sings lustily, his chest thick as he greets the aliens. |
| Vision | A fourth wave. So slow it seems they can hardly fly at all. Each metal craft like a lazy silver locust. Vibrating antenna sense to fore and aft. Multifaceted diamond windows glisten in empty malice. The abdomen stings the too cold air. They will recreate the world in their own image. These chemicals will melt and refreeze the atmosphere; sterilise and polish it to a new purity fit for them to breath and breed. A magnificent and thriving hive for the hidden masters inside. An artificial, beautiful and vivid system. A dusting to paint the drab and tawdry desert, renew the ravaged land and let it lift its eyes to a new sky. |
| Vision | The top of the dune. The old woman has begun to tire. Her eyes are running with tears that are the heart’s sweet sweat. The toddler is held in its mother’s easy arms. At the passage of the fire breathing craft she has retreated to babyhood, opening the vacant woman’s blouse to suckle blindly at a flat breast. The old man is letting sand trickle between his fingers as he gathers repeated handfuls. The leader, only, holds his head high. They have left the city to look for a sort of resurrection and they have found it. Pouring across a drugged nightmare of a violent sky we watch the crystals fall. Drifting flakes of poison. It touches to sere the skin with the light acid kiss of the guilty beloved. |
| Sound | The music rises to its crescendo. It closes and begins to fade, leaving only the wind. |
And as the alien rains greet them the five are content; but they wait for a further fulfilment. They are not disappointed. Even as the song subsides the first alien insect ships come in to land. Here comes the new death! But not the known and soulless death, not the death of the city. They play in insect fever over the brown waste they are glorifying as their own. Here comes the delight of the vision and the rejoicing! Here comes the blessed death! Paint the sky! Here comes the terrible and cancerous spring - the chemical spring! Here comes the marvellous and desperate molten summer - the mythic summer! “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away; and there was no more sea.” Over the horizon........ Here come the warm jets. DMFW 06/04/88
Inspired by the title track of Brian Eno’s album “Here Come The Warm Jets”. There is certainly room for a variety of perverse interpretations of this particular track but no compelling reason not to wander the fields of ambiguity and distance. I find this music hypnotic and unsettling at the same time and the story here is what goes through my mind when I listen to it. Here's the original version:- Here come the warm jets (original version) Here's a random busker version, just because it doesn't seem possible to cover this on an accoustic guitar, but apparently it is:- Here come the warm jets (busker's version) Both these versions start after the soft, quiet and irregular metallic clanking which preceeds the main theme on the album and is referenced in the story above. I guess you have to listen to the full album to hear this.
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