Wayward Son

The electrician is fixing the light bulb in my living room. It’s been playing up for ages.

I’ve taken a long time to book a professional, mainly because the light tricked me by playing hide and seek. And if you knew me well enough, you would know that I’m a complete sucker for games. Mainly, I didn’t know what the problem was. I bought new light bulbs, the standard ones and the hipster recommended energy efficient ones. The light worked for a couple of hours. Some days it wouldn’t even turn on.

Today, just as I stepped (on my way to the laundry) on a little square of carpet near the central heating switch, the light came on. Many days I just left it on, even though there was enough to still see what you were doing clearly. I secretly harboured hopes that someone would see the light and decide to come and in, with beers and a pack of backyard fireworks and hold an impromptu party. In today’s age these fantasies are punishable by law as invasion of privacy and property. Perhaps that is part of the problem with us today. There have been no parties for quite some time, ever since our two last flatmates moved overseas. They were the kind of people who picked up a space by simply walking in, tipping you out of your gloom.

I flick the switch and leave the light on for as long as it decides to stay, when it suddenly turns off I dial the number of the electrician. He’s up a small ladder, feigning hard work. I am praying that the sweat that is falling in beads down his back won’t decide to lubricate his generously sized buttocks, enough to allow them to pop out entirely from his jeans.

I am making a pot of coffee on the stove and Kerry Livgren’s Wayward Son is playing on the radio. I only like the first lines of the song “carry on my wayward son...there’ll be peace when you are done, lay your weary head to rest, don’t you cry no more”. There is something reassuring and tender about the way he delivers those first four lines. I think of how, I too-am a wayward son- a wayward daughter you may argue, but this distinction here doesn’t matter quite so much. In everything I’ve ever done, I have always every stayed on the fringes. Purposely or not, I just have. I interact with people just enough so that they don’t get to know me entirely. Maybe this song talks about death, maybe about drifting or perhaps about both those things. This attitude I have to life shouldn’t be confused for sitting on the fence, but standing with two firm feet on the edges, where its comfortable. A stranger once told me that this feeling of nomadism had a name, a name she couldn’t remember but it had something to do with colonialism. This kind of nomadism was in fact, to her recollection, genetic. So there you go. Do with it what you will. I like talking to people, generally. Discussing things they haven’t quite thought through or don’t remember the details of is a bit like Googling something or finding a scrap of scribbled paper in the gutter, but I still prefer it.

Letting people only know half of me and putting those who want to come closer through a rigorous exam probably makes me more like the fickle light bulb than I thought I was. The electrician is still fiddling with the cables, I offer him some coffee, he declines. Asks me if I have a beer, I say we haven’t had a party in a long time. If you want beer, fix the light, I say. He looks puzzled for a second then goes back to work. The song ends and Kerry’s voice is trailing out “…don’t you cry no more”