The Henge >




A villager says, "These Mountains have secrets". By the timber yard, there runs a track of forgotten concrete. Broken trees disguise the elevation, and form a vail of curious light. In an area long since claimed by nature, fissures of thistle break through the road, and the air smells of electricity. Deserted rooms of grey dust, and crumbling mosaic floors, hide the secret of the Nazi Bell.
 
I wonder…where have all the people gone? Dissolved in bitumen. It seems they have melted into the very earth that supported them. Buried beneath ceramic tar and red soil. All that is left is aluminium foil.
 
Here, the black sun has taken the souls, of men who chewed the cable and scratched the earth, to deliver a device of unfathomable power. Secrecy guards a network of mines, where the teeth of the SS glow in a strange blue haze. A mysterious and infinite light. Cold-generating, inward-moving, centripetal and cruelly magnetic.
 
Violet mercury and liquid air are contained in putty and lead. The taste of metal feeds a temporal pain, and fingers tingle with static. In full rubber and heavy metal, they experiment with the forces of opposition. Bug-eyed and trembling. Wonder stretches across their faces, as they sway in the glory of its power. Stomach clenching, cell breaking, mouth oozing brown, peroxide mash. But for the soldier, the prisoner, the weak and the blind, all this is for victory. Anti-gravity is king and they bleed internally, pursuing Einstein’s theory.
 
Through deliberate holes in the earth, insects are frantically alert to the activity below. Black holes to black bunkers to black tunnels, beyond the eyes of man. I imagine the paper thin workers, from the nearby camp, lining the passage walls like ghosts. Their fate sealed in the cracks of mangled rock, and cavernous rooms. Prisoners of war preserved in electricity and sleepless terror. The vibration of their spent lives hangs in the ether. On the metal stairs and through the rusty rock, muted voices drown in technocide.

A deep cyan coloured gas hangs in the laboratory, where thick power cables snake to the surface, and into a curious structure. They talk in whispers of the concrete tower, the flytrap - The Henge. Its symmetry suggests a weighty function and industrial past. Thick columns support perfectly engineered arches, stained with the blood of copper. Nature has embraced its presence like a bad penny, surrounding it with foliage and vine. Ants and various bugs run the gauntlet of an irradiated life, as they participate in the process of hiding, and disguising its distant past.
 
The journey inwards reveals its scale. One of mystical proportions and temple height. Scars from its weathered endurance form a mantra, of hieroglyphics in the chalky surface. The  structure sits stubbornly on its ground. The centre opens to the sky like a gapping mouth, in a silent scream. Lying below its throat of twisted cable, the underground promises nothing. Black radiation stains its inner walls, suggesting the presence of a powerful machine.

Then, like the fleeting moment in a blurred photograph, we see a vapour trail. The glimpse of something flying...and we imagine victory.


Click to view a video based on 'The Henge'


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