Painful listening

Back yet again in the dentist’s chair last week, where time compresses, yet elongates, into infinite present as if there were no events or memories in-between each visit. No ‘laughing gas’ these days (‘breathe deep: now blow it away — one, two, three’). Consciousness is unbroken, every sense screwed to its highest pitch — the swish of suction is Niagara, the whiff of sulphur in the oral salves, the rubber gloves against the gums, a personal affront, the battering at one’s ivories like Nibelungs at the rockface; and the pain — dull or acute — an amplified sopranissimo saxophone with lasar attachment at the threshold of perception.

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Lee Cohen

Mandelson is the wrong man, at the wrong time

Thus the foreground. The background is classical music. My courteous torturer placated my supposed tastes with Mozart’s Greatest Hits, an end-to-end loop of incongruous juxtapositions that would have had me roaring in protest had I not been pinioned supine on the deceptively easy chair.