06/02/2025
As I was moving towards the entrance of the arena, in amongst the crowd of others heading the same way, I was quietly containing my excitement. To get the chance to watch a wrestling match featuring the legendary Carlos Chaotico - in my home town! - was a rare treat. Tickets had sold out within a couple of hours of the date of the event being announced, but I'd got in the queue early thanks to a heads-up from a friend who worked as the sports correspondent for a local paper.
I was nearly at the entrance when I heard a brief cry from behind me, and suddenly I was being flung forwards by a huge kerthwump in my back. The left side of my head, just above the ear, smashed heavily into a low protruding beam along the side of the building and I crumpled to the floor. I think I passed out for a couple of seconds; everything went grey, certainly, and the movements of the people around me were as if viewed in a stroboscopic, timelapse-manner. I won't say there were cartoon-like stars circling my head, but they weren't far off. Several people grouped around me asking if I was OK, and a woman in quite high heels was apologising profusely, saying she'd stumbled and tripped, fallen into me. I was helped to my feet and assured everyone that I was alright, telling the woman not to worry, these things happen.
I wasn't alright. My head was splitting, and my hearing had altered significantly from the norm. It was as if I was hearing through a filter, almost like there was a low strata of sound below a high one, with a channel of nothingness inbetween. Almost like I was receiving sound through two sets of ears.
I made my way to my seat, aware that people were speaking around me, a hubbub of disconnected sounds rumbling and flowing over and through each other. I watched the lips of a man walking alongside me with his friend, and could hear strange noises happening in sync with the lip movements.
I sat, and after a short wait the announcer climbed into the ring and took hold of the microphone dangling from above. I struggled to make out what he was saying; it seemed like it had been slowed down and was coming from a giant subterranean cavern. The sounds which I surmised were coming from the excitable people all around me were as far from human vocal sounds as I could imagine - high-pitched drones, rough static-laden bursts, warbles rising and falling in pitch, staccato noises - all intermingling and blending together to soundtrack the wrestling match I was witnessing which, thankfully, I could see clearly. My eyesight had escaped alteration.
My sense of time might have been somewhat scrambled, though, as I seemed to be leaving the building along with everyone else almost immediately. Was it over? It felt like I'd been in two places simultaneously - one viewing a very impressive wrestling match, the other hearing the working environment of some sort of excessive industrial factory.
I exited the building and saw a large pop-up banner alongside the walkway: "Awkward Geisha are pleased to have been the providers of your alternate aural experience".
I stumbled my way home.
https://awkwardgeisha.bandcamp.com/album/the-secrets-of-wrestling-exposed
Ade Cowzone Carlos Chaotico
1 track album
Pumf Records has been around since 1984, & has released much of The Strangest Music On The Planet.
