DECAPITATION OF A SHARK was written and recorded in April 2020, based on a dream had in the late summer of 2019.

'I awoke to a vast and empty beach and the sound of lapping waves. Far off in the distance, mountains black as charcoal lined the horizon. As if pulled by some magnetic force, I was somehow moved closer and closer, and with each step of proximity, the mountains must have crumbled and dissipated. I noticed my feet were engulfed within sand now utterly black from their remnants. In stark contrast, the sky was utterly white - no cloud formations, no beams or rays of light casting meticulous shadow, only a panoramic stretched white canvas. And beneath this canvas, everything was dark as though covered by nightfall. As though the sky were in fact not cloud at all but some hideous pale strata that allowed no light to pass through it to the ground below. 

All of this became secondary to the momentous force that pulled at me - a sharp wind bit at my face, clawed at my limbs and tried all it could to wrench me from the earth like a farmer cultivating a winter vegetable. My weight was only just enough to anchor me - and the thick granular sands engulfment provided crucial aid in this endeavour. Nevertheless, it remained a visceral struggle to plant myself steady and a further struggle still to attempt forward motion in the face of its brunt.

I tried to discern as much as I could about me and I came across what appeared to be a large shack. It was a maple colour, discernible as if in a twilight. At the front of this shack stood an old man in a black kimono. The shack appeared to be of traditional Japanese architecture. He motioned towards the entrance. I cannot recall how it was possible to struggle towards it and enter - or even that I did - I simply recall being amongst the interior after he had motioned. Was there only an instant between the two, or did I experience some lapse in memory? The answer felt like a nebulous haze, impossible to catch with strained fingers that meagrely waved about for it, much like the answer behind the backwards physics of the outdoors luminescence.

Inside, our eyes met and he directed me further still, towards the centre of the shack, where a large wheel-shaped contraption stood on the floor before two additional men dressed similarly and of similar age. This puzzling machine looked like some kind of weapon - it contained sliding chambers like the barrel of a pistol would. Into these chambers the men loaded large sharks. Their manual labour continued, operating the machine to load the sharks as though they were bullets.

The men did this silently but my presence alone spoke something implicit to us all - and without knowing the reason, I slowly paced closer to the wheel to aid them. To my own horror, I helped them in removing the heads. The mechanism of the machine churned under physical labour - and the crystalline sound of slicing pierced the air as a blade pierced skin and bone. I stood and held the sharks heads to provide them the leverage required to separate the heads from the bodies. A deep sickness settled firmly in my stomach. ' - Transcribed by James Shearman

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