As we were unloading the car for the Gobshite launch, I happened to look up and see a - drop-down, vinyl? - banner on the building at the end of the street. Two sports heroes, one black, one white. The banner was huge, so the faces were larger, even, than the heads of statues of Lenin in the Central Asian provinces of the Soviet Union. The further from Moscow, the larger the statues: in Central Asia and Mongolia Lenin was, iconographically, a god.
I was surprised, but I haven't been downtown for a long time. The images might have been there quite a while.
The festivities finished. We left in full dark. And there they were, lit by streetlights: the gods of the night and the city.
Night so much bigger than the other gods.
Night so much bigger than the other gods.
In the playback screen there was a white streak in the centre of a dark area, where I wasn't expecting one. I looked at the banner again, to see exactly what had happened to the camera I can't afford to repair.
There were strips of white light at intervals through the length of the black man's face - neon night-lights on the ceilings of the various floors the banner covers; under the banner - beneath the face, in terms of the photo - the lights continued on their way, obeying the laws of perspective.
Two brooding gods of the city. Both their tenures will be brief: sports careers are. But the godhead of the young black man is revealed as hollow, even while it's still his.
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