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six details of ophelia

“the poet says that by starlight / you come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked / and that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils / white ophelia floating, like a great lily.” — arthur rimbuad

Album covers by Jamaican illustrator, Wilfred Limonious.

It’s the mid-1990s, and I’m drunk. My friend, lounging in his worn-out chair across the room, also is drunk. It seems like every night inevitably ends like this, with us too tired and drunk to talk any more. Whenever one of us does muster up the energy to mumble something, the other replies with a similar mumble. Then we fall silent again. In the background, a silent TV is showing late-night snooker. Reggae music is playing like a softly brewing cauldron. 

The night usually starts with The Beatles. We yap and yap and point out lines, riffs, sounds. Whatever I don’t know, he knows; whatever he doesn’t know, I know. His favorite Beatles album is the White Album, mine is Rubber Soul. We play tracks from both albums to prove our point, like competing players in a courtroom drama, then agree that Revolver is their best album. We move on to Frank Zappa; my friend just can’t make peace with the fact I don’t like Zappa’s music and plays song after song, talking over all of them, like he’s trying to close a deal before a deadline. “Music for intellectuals,” he says angrily, repeating my assessment of Zappa’s work, adding his stock phrase: “Chrissakes.” The Smiths, Robert Wyatt, John Coltrane, the Velvet Underground—he’s surprised I’ve never heard of Lee “Scratch” Perry: “Chrissakes.”

He says I know next to nothing about popular music, I shoot back that his record collection only consists of critic-approved music and that there’s nothing weird, embarrassing or personal about it. Where’s the odd Wham! album, where’s the misstep, the madwoman in the attic? He says there are more artists than The Beatles. We fight, it’s never clear how serious we are. Eventually the alcohol prevents us from physically attacking each other and we sit and stare like we’re alone in the room, with the soothing chugging of reggae music in the background.

But now he suddenly comes alive, as if moved by a spirit. “Oh, wait,” he says, and stands up. He turns up the volume of his stereo. He picks up the album sleeve and stares at it, swaying, trying to keep his balance. He stares at it for a long time, like an alien to whom all things are new. Just when I suspect he’s falling asleep standing up, he mumbles something and turns up the volume even louder. Bass drums rock the room like small earthquakes.

He tosses the album to me and slumps back into his chair. I recognize the art style of the cover, I’ve seen many like these. Whenever we visit a record shop, my friend heads to some dark corner and crouches over the racks with old 45s and LPs, always dredging up stuff like this. So this is what those records sound like. I find the art kind of fascinating: there’s nothing glossy or commercialized about it, it shows cartoonish scenes roughly cut from Jamaican nightlife. They suggest dancehalls at the end of a dirt road, bottles of overproof rum, sound systems the size of apartment buildings, a blue fog so thick it’s as if someone has been throwing smoke grenades around.

“Always love some reggae,” I say, trying to make peace with my friend somewhat, and tossing the album sleeve back.

“Not reggae,” my friend says, annoyance breaking through his drowsiness. “It’s dub, fucking dub, not reggae. Chrissakes.”