Sailing to Byzantium

I am thirty-four years old, sitting in the Municipal House and Theatre in Prague, listening to a group of string players produce some of the classics. All is well, as I enjoy the experience and am obliged with nothing more than to relax and be on holiday. But there is a distracting noise on the periphery. Not the whispering old German lady, confused about the order of the programme, or the occasional cough from an audience member. It's something else, something more sinister. The sound, steady and continuous, grows louder as it dawns on me what it is — it's the sifting sound of sand passing through the waist of an hourglass.

Thirty-four is an apparently harmless and uninteresting age; it signifies nothing, offers no allusions or milestones. It does not bestow you the key to adulthood, nor put you at risk of joining the 27 Club. It is not the age of retirement or the age of Christ. It is just another event horizon, a point of no return. As I watch these older players perform, I cannot but think of the many years of practice it has taken them to get to this level, yet I could not name one of them. At my age, as young as it may seem, I am unlikely to ever be a musician of note. Another door has closed on life's corridor; it wasn't the first, and it won't be the last. At thirty-four, my dream of representing my country in football and winning the World Cup is a seven-goal thriller is also becoming highly implausible. When I consider how I haven't kicked a ball more than a handful of times since I was in my teens, it exhausts my supply of denial. However, the scarcity of TV channels in my childhood, lack of a love life in my adolescence, and rarity of honest days' work in my twenties have all left me with a formidable imagination.

It's all a matter of time really. I'll be kicking a ball around with my nephews, when a wise, old scout (with some sort of problem, in need of redemption and vindication) will notice my latent, natural gifts. The Luke Skywalker of soccer, having finally found his Yoda, will be trained within less than six months, and be playing Premier League football shortly thereafter. I'll bring Melchester Rovers back to glory, and take Ireland to the World Cup finals in Russia. The commentators will be all in agreement of my Galáctico status, surprised to find I am a day over twenty-five. "With his agility and energy reserves, he could have another ten years left in the tank." And what years they will be, full of trophies, WAGs, orange slices, and dramatic glory. A perfect cocktail of some of the shining lights from the pantheon of the greats: the mysterious longevity of Roger Milla, the wizardry of Zidane, the precision of Pirlo, the physicality of Bobby Moore, the brazen flair of Eric Cantona, and the astonishing flukiness of Luther Blisset.

The golden mane is the only fantastical part of this depiction.

"At your age, you should have long-since parted with such fantasies", I hear you say. I would heed your words, but I know well that mankind lives and dies by its ignis fatuus. Show me something that isn't the product of delusion, and I'll show you how blind you are. If you have accessed this article via Facebook or Twitter, you haven't got a leg to stand on. That said, I will admit certain dictums of the age. When you are thirty-four, things that used to come easy are now quite tiring, and I have difficulty reconciling all my unlikely goals into one vision. Will I ever see daylight shine on all of my dreams fulfilled? Can my aspirations to be the following all exist at once?

• a professional tennis player
• a master chess player
• a gymnast
• Calvin Klein underwear model
• an inspiring political figure
• a novelist
• an influential philosopher
• a popular blogger

I hear you mutter, "regular content, coherent theme" under your breath to that last one, but I'm done listening to you. Your criticisms only remind me of the mountain of exercise, practice, tenacity, writing, reading, network building, meetings, speeches, community work, downplaying of intellectual prowess, exaggeration of intellectual prowess, lip pursing while ruminating, chin stroking, and autograph signing I have to do. And that's before you consider that perpetual flow state I will have to obtain to achieve even half of these things. At overwhelming times like these, I remember half a lifetime ago, when I read, with some confusion, how W.B. Yeats wished to be an ancient Grecian mosaic. Now I understand. Make some space for me on the Byzantine wall, William, I'll give you some tips on how not to embarrass yourself in front of the ladies.

The despair and disillusionment passes. Thirty-four years has also made me wiser and more self-accepting. No person, after all, is complete without its subject's delusions and flights of fantasy, and the imagination can be a great ally. I can even project myself past death, though I will no longer be. I see myself, one day, dust in the wind, nourishment for the earth, recycled, dispersed, and melded with all class of things, alive and dead. Not quite myself, perhaps, but free from any delusions, I think.

Me and Yeats, where we should be. How Luther Blisset got there too is as mysterious as his transfer to AC Milan.

Calrissian

With Disney rolling out Star Wars films annually, and supposedly allowing some scope of storytelling, and with more films about the black experience in the United States coming to prominence (Moonlight, Get Out, Hidden Figures, Fences), the planets are aligning for the Lando Calrissian film the world has been waiting for. The story is currently emerging in my head, and I will soon start penning the film script that will disclose the underbelly of racism that so characterised a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Critics will identify my work as a new, perverse form of blaxploitation, especially given the homogeneously white background of its author, but — much like the Jedi mind trick — they will soon forget their criticisms, dazzled into a state of ahistorical amnesia by the corporate behemoth of Disney. Exactly how much of the story will make it past the play-it-safe committee of executives I cannot say. My hope is that if I bury it under an excessive amount of original trilogy throwbacks and lightsabre battles, the guts of the story will remain intact.

An innocuous, sanitised version of true events.

Our story begins with a vast array of stars, narrated by the elderly voice of the once Baron Administrator of Cloud City. He tells us of how, when he was young, he looked into the night sky and dreamed; he now knows those little spots of light to be nothing but empty promises. Throughout the film, we see his life unfold, from his upbringing on the streets of Socorro, through his struggles to acquire wealth, to his partaking in the downfall of the Galactic Empire. However, the events are not framed in the middle-class, white fairytale narrative, where evil is defeated and good and love triumph. Instead, we see a man unwittingly caught up in the family drama of powerful white people. 

Staring out the window from his heavenly abode, Lando has finally made it. Years of hustling, busting his balls, petty crime, dodgy investments, and debt has paid off. (His hustler's career is later shown in the film through a montage set to Lapti Nek.) "This is the good life," he affirms, sipping on his brandy. A remarkably smooth batch - Cloud City's distillers were getting better. As the descending sun turns the clouds pink, he muses on how self-sufficient the city has become, nestled away from the authoritarian gaze of the Empire. The recent rebellious uprisings have yet to manifest themselves on Bespin, and its denizens expect to be left unaffected by the conflict and its outcome. His idyllic view of the sunset is sullied by the reflection of Lobot arriving behind him in the window. The unscheduled entrance and look on his face tell Lando there is a problem. Within thirty minutes, the boots of Imperial Stormtroopers are marching in the city streets. Darth Vader himself, accompanied by a bounty hunter, is talking to him, apparently offering him a deal. Lando is too shaken from the revelation he's just heard to absorb all the information. An old friend is coming his way and he has to lure him into a trap. "Han Solo", Lando mutters in sustained disbelief. He never thought he'd see once again the man who practically stole from him, in a very suspect game of poker, the Millennium Falcon. 

Han Solo, stealing Lando's wallet to cover his coke habit.

That ship was sweet freedom to Lando in his smuggling days, allowing mobility, a roof over his head, and a hasty escape from the authorities. Prior to the very dubious loss of the ship, he and Han worked well as a team. During their many schemes and hustles, they got to know each other. Han was fun, except for when he got very drunk and tried to impress upon Lando that he could relate to his struggles as a black man. He couldn't. Lando knew he was from a comfortable middle-class family with military ties, which had got Han a position as a low-ranking imperial officer. Lando once considered becoming a Stormtrooper for the steady wage and a college education, but the idea of murdering the locals of a primitive planet filled him with disgust. 

For all his faults and sordid past activities, Lando has a conscience, and it bothers him greatly to betray his old friend, even someone as privileged and cynical as Han Solo. While Empire imprisons and tortures Solo, Leia, and the others on Bespin, Lando conjures up a plan for their emancipation. As he programmes Lobot to facilitate their daring escape, he pauses, lamenting the loss of all that he has worked so hard for, not to mention the trust he has earned from all the like-minded libertarian souls, who found an oasis in Cloud City. He can't risk warning them until he has sprung the rebels' breakout, and he knows well that their confidence in him is unlikely to return. Princess Leia shows her gratitude by setting her Wookie friend on him. After negotiating for his life, he flees with them in the Falcon - robbed of his city and his life by a family dispute between politically prominent white people, Lando now has to face the further indignity by travelling in the ship that was stolen from him, with contemptuous people, who disregard the risks he has taken for them. 

And so is his fate for the rest of the film, where he nearly gets consumed by a Sarlacc pit and takes point in a direct confrontation with a planet-destroying battle station. When he is leaving for what most likely will be a suicide mission against the Empire, his old friend Han can only lament that he may never see his stolen ship again. And there's no medal ceremony for him or his Kenyan friend, when he gets back, despite destroying the Deathstar and making the crucial decision to not retreat when it seemed the battle was lost. 

Nien Nunb: an ancestor of one of the Rubber Bandits. 

"But that's just the reality of life", old Lando muses, returning to the stars. The camera pans down slowly, revealing an asteroid prison, where Lando sits alone inside one of its cells. As the Force Awakens for Finn, Rey, and Kilo Ren, Lando finishes up a long mandatory sentence for possession of an illegal substance. Thirty years for a few grams of coke. The parties at the fall of the Empire were surprisingly dull, basically a lot of Yub Nub and standing around as though someone was going to take a family photo. A line or two helped make the whole process more tolerable and took the edge off the ever-prevailing anxiety that comes with the company of white people (even the ones who seem to like him and tell him how Mace Windu was their favourite Jedi). Released finally from prison, he takes a rickety, old transport back to his hometown of Socorro. There, he drinks alone in an empty bar on an empty street. The barkeep tells him to hurry on home soon, as the region has been afflicted by a new strain of zombieism, and the local posses can't guarantee everyone's safety. Lando tips him generously, and dons his hat. As he ventures out onto the street, a posse spot him and mistake him for one of the ghouls, shooting him through the forehead. His body is thrown into a pile of bodies, which are then lit on fire.

Next time: We look at Boba Fett and ask, what exactly was the extent his relationship with Jabba the Hutt?