| Maximo Park Diary Entries |
| These are diary entries by Maximo Park members from the Official Maximo Park Website. |
Midnight Train |
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| 21 May, 2007 |
Travelling through the night leaves me uneasy, though I felt a thrill as I approached my first ever sleeper train. I thought of greasy hobos on freight trains, aimlessly crossing state boundaries. I even thought of murder on the Orient Express, but the actual experience was rooted in the modern world, albeit an already dated one.
I was provided with the kind of thin, tartan blanket that teenage runaways hug close to their frightened, defiant bodies in big cities.
The mystifyingly patterned, carpeted walls could have come from any form of public transport, but the chunky little sink in the corner was
a shade of piggybank pink that surprised me. I've never been nostalgic for a sink before...
The nightlight was stronger than I would've wanted, but I couldn't complain about this tidy, partitioned space. I made a couple of phonecalls that were eventually obliterated by tunnels and I settled down.
Slowly I became entangled in the starchy white sheets that were supposed to provide me with warmth and comfort on the long journey. As the night wore on, my linen stuggle began to resemble one of the more epic battles between ragged, storm-beaten sailors and some mythical, salty sea-beast.
My only solace was listening to the song Midnight Train by Peter Wolf, an artist I know nothing about. In the song, there's a sense of escape and flight, but it's vague and I've no real reason to run, myself.
I suppose I've become a professional wanderer rather than a fugitive, but I still connected to the line, "Nothing much else to do, but wonder if you're running, too".
Hundeds of new thoughts and old memories kept me awake 'til my eyes felt like cartoon black holes, a new thought clicking into place with each swerve and buckle of the track below the carriage.
After a time, the early morning gleams snuck under the door, alerting me to a new day in a more rugged country.
Paul Smith
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