Bits and Pieces

Before she can really think about what’s happening, her journey has begun, in much the same way that a story begins, that a rhythm begins. She has a strange feeling that things will happen to her on this journey, and she feels happy about this and starts to sing. Her journey is a song, a series of songs, perhaps all the songs in the universe. She’s on her own, but she senses that this won’t be the case for long.

The actress playing Kylie Minogue, who just happens to be called Kylie Minogue, is driving through an industrial landscape towards a city. She has to be driving, not walking, because her journey, a journey that is in the heart of this story, is all about her interaction with machines. She is driving at night or at day along a highway through miles and miles of factories. She is driving towards a city full of anonymous, mysterious lit-up buildings. The city is perhaps the capital city of pleasure. Or it is a city that resembles, in your computer dreams, Toronto or New York or Düsseldorf or Sydney or Tokyo. She’s in a fast car driving towards the city where everything important in modern life is happening. There is no great detail in this film of her drive into the city. On the other hand there is a lot of quite intense detail. So much detail it creates a kind of enigma; so litte detail as to add to the enigma. She drives through a digital world that reveals itself as she drives through it and then disappears as she passes by. (…)

She looks pleased with herself. Liberated from everyday. Her eyes reflect the fate-grey shimmering colour around her, so that her eyes seem the colour of her journey, the colour of a song, lit up by motion, the iris a sea-blue melody hinting at secrets and sensation, the pupils a simple but mysterious rhythm in the regular shape of forever.

Paul Morley – Music and words – a history of pop in the shape of a city