MRI

by Ian Tallach

‘Right! Lying comfortably, Sir?’ the radiologist is asking.
‘Good to go!’ I send my voice, as best I can, beyond the plastic shield that keeps my head in place, up to the shiny metal inner-workings of the scanner, then on down the tunnel to the room outside. Hopefully, she’ll hear at least a whimper. But there’s no reply.
Her voice, when it eventually comes, is like a whisper in my ear. ‘OK. That’s your scan about to start. What music did you want, again?’. It must be coming through my headphones. I take it she can hear me too.
‘Ehm. Music? This thing, you say, is… ehm… loud? So, Bach… might be the boy. Sort of a counterpoint, maybe?’ I chuckle to myself… inanely… never mind.
I hear the first few bars of Toccata and Fugue, before it starts – first, metallic grinding, then machine-gun fire and something like a sawmill, only louder, then all 3 - white noise - every amplitude and frequency at once. In the seconds between salvos, Bach’s organ masterwork is an enfeebled squeak. After perhaps five minutes, there’s another whisper in my ear. Only one word - ‘Loud…?’ is understandable to me. But still, her voice is reassuring, I must say.
‘Louder, please,’ I tell her, just before the onslaught starts again.
I’m feeling strangely relaxed. Some folks I know who’ve had an MRI say they would never come back here – not for a million pounds. ‘Too claustrophobic,’ they say. ‘Deafening.’ So… I’m smiling with the knowledge that I’m actually quite grateful for the chance to disengage from all responsibilities and expectations, for an hour. Thoughts come and go. Breathing is slow. Hmm… this “mindfulness” - it must be working.
But then, I realize she must have meant the SOUND – she was asking me if the MACHINE was loud, and not the music. And I asked her to turn it up! Ha! I laugh again. Then the notion that it might be inappropriate to laugh, or move at all, whilst an expensive, high-end, micro-millimetre-perfect reconstruction of my brain is underway, makes me laugh more.
Right! Mindfulness! Thoughts come and go. Observe them from a distance. I wish they’d have a little narrative sometimes, though… that they’d be more meaningful, connected… relevant, maybe. Thoughts - where do they come from?!

In the coffee roasters, last week, I had a chat with Heather – the wife of the proprietor. (Lovely guy. He doesn’t mind – she chats to everyone).
‘Where did you land this time? She asked me.
‘Well, pretty close to Peru, albeit in the ocean,’ I told her.
‘Cup of Arequipa for John!’ She shouted back to Kevin. (Kevin’s her husband, by the way. John’s my name).  
And I see I must explain another thing. (These thoughts! I told you they lacked narrative.) At the coffee place they have a globe just to the left of the entranceway. As a half-ritual-half-standing-joke sort of thing, I spin it every time I go there, close my eyes and point. My finger stops the twirling world, so to speak. And the closest coffee-producing country - I get beans from there, if they have them in stock… which, so far, they always do.  
I remember thinking ‘Ah! Peru!’ I closed my eyes and thought of memories of toucans in the jungle, musty smells and howler monkeys, sun so bright between the trees I had to blink.
Back in the scanner, it occurs to me, my eyes are very closed indeed. Closed here, of course, closed in the coffee roasters and the jungle.
‘And… how are YOU?’ asked Heather. She had a coffee too.
‘OK. Could do with a little structure to my life, though.’ (I don’t know where that came from.)     
‘Ah! Structure. I need a lot of structure,’ she sighed like someone envious of those who have it.
‘You need more structure too?’ I asked.
‘No! On the contrary.’ She took a sip of coffee, smiled and then said - ‘can’t go through a day without it – planning, to-do-lists, frameworks, blueprints for everything. I’m very organised! (It sounded claustrophobic – more so than this MRI). ‘Just ask Kevin,’ she swivelled her chin slightly, to indicate her husband, who was busy with some beans from Ethiopia, behind the counter. It impressed me, her economy of movement – just her jaw and not her head, or eyes, which never left my face.
‘That true, Kevin?’ I asked, turning to look at him.
He nodded gravely.
‘Well, that’s very strange,’ I said. ‘Heather, you’ve always struck me as… ehm… temperamentally, the opposite of that – refreshingly so, if you don’t mind me saying. I mean you’re spontaneous, warm, empathic, always flexible enough to accommodate the wishes of another… genuinely interested.’ (I use too many adjectives, I know. Sorry.)
‘You listen to jazz?’ she asked, incongruously.
‘Sometimes. Why?’
‘Bill Evans, the pianist on ‘Kind of Blue’ by Miles Davies – probably the ultimate jazz album – writes on the back of the L.P. about a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous.’
‘Forced?’ I blurted.
‘Yeah, forced. He must paint on a thin, stretched parchment, without lifting the brush, not even once.’ She held up one index finger. (At the time, I thought that was to emphasize the word ‘once’, but looking back now, I can see she meant to symbolize a lifted brush.) ‘The result,’ she said ‘is something immediate… free from deliberation. Takes a lot of practice.’
‘But, pardon me’ I scratched my head. ‘I’ve always thought Japanese art was… ehm… characterized by rigorous discipline, austerity, maybe… sort of a stoical detachment.’
There was a pause and a curious look from Heather, as if she wanted me to think instead of speak.
Eventually, she said ‘Ex-act-ly.’
‘Hmmm…’ I scratched my head again. (That must have been my itchy-scalp beginning. Here in the MRI, there’s nothing I can do about it.) In the coffee roasters, I continued ‘So… you mean a lot of structure and discipline has to go into the… ehm… preparation of your… ehm… canvas… before any direct or… spontaneous action… which makes it SEEM to me… that… ehm… everything is undeliberate?’
‘In not so-many-words.’ (She has a way with gentle mockery. Can’t say I don’t deserve it.)
‘Alright. I must be going,’ I said. ‘Bye, Heather. See you later, Kevin.’ He nodded and gave me a languorous wink from behind the counter. Very cool – I think the man has reggae in his head. They make a perfect couple.

‘Five more minutes,’ the nurse says in a chirpy voice. I open my eyes, but only for a second. Bach is now Stravinsky. Rite of Spring – the Sacrificial Dance. I can just make out that final plunge of the dagger, between cycles of metallic grinding. Consider me menaced. I laugh again; I have to.        
Someone sent me a map of the universe on Facebook, recently. It’s theoretical, of course, but looks remarkably like the inside of my eyelids. I imagine it looks like the inside of an electron. Reminds me of Hamlet - that’s the Shakespeare play I’ve read – ‘I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space…’ Ha! That’s better than mindfulness! I think I’ll be alright – the MRI is almost finished.