Golconda (It's Raining Men)

Introduction

This is just a series of observations on this painting and its influence on me and others, flying off in many directions. An obvious choice of music is "It's Raining Men" by The Weather Girls but I saw that someone said that "It's Raining Men" and "Let The Bodies Hit The Floor" are just observations on the same event from different perspectives. Two very different types of music, I do like both songs although Drowning Pool's song may not be to everyone's taste as it is loud and violent.

On one of my first attempts at a website, I created an animated gif of the painting, but unfortunately, that seems to have been lost., but I found this short animation for your enjoyment.

Details on the painting can be found here, Golconda s a ruined city in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, near Hyderabad but that will not influence my story.

So on to the painting by René Magritte.

Golconda

And so it ended.

After decades of living the same way, doing the same thing, and reading the same paper, life became totally homogenized. Elections had stopped, there was no need, politicians needed big cars and mansions, they deserved it, that is what the paper told us.

I think there used to be more papers but more than one was wasteful, it tells us what we need to know. We go out, go to work, come home, eat, watch the box or listen to the radio, sleep, and then do it again.

We don't question this, it is what we do, it is what everyone does.

Sometimes we think we see things that are wrong, people getting promoted, given a new car or apartments, and we may question it in our heads, but never openly, because if people do they become floaters.

The floaters are the ones who hang like ghosts in the air, black-coated, bowler-hatted, a reminder of what we all become when we have served our purpose or outlived our usefulness.

There are no children anymore, or were there any children, is that just a dream of mine? Was I a child? I can't remember.

Children would not fit in this world, this is not a world of play and learning. This is a place where everyone follows the rules and does not rock the boat.

Every day there are more floaters.

I used to think that they were taxmen or specters coming down to Earth looking for lost souls, but they just hang there in the air not making a sound, or moving, just like static helium balloons. I don't know if they are a warning or just that no one can be bothered to bury them. Maybe this is their purgatory, but there seems to be more every day and I do not think any are going to heaven.

We live in a world without color, well if there is it is a very washed-out idea of color.

This is my life, it is the same every day. I have no ambition, I do not question anything and I always do what I am told to do. I know one day I will join the floaters and maybe I will find out what they think, and why they are there, but I am frightened that I already know the answer to that. I think that they are empty soulless shells that just sit and wait for nothing to happen.

That to me is the ultimate idea of hell, a place of no hope, where nothing happens, and there is no escape, ever.

This really is the end.

Appendix

The Prompt

Write a story inspired by a work of art. Make the artwork your featured image and give credit to the artist in the caption.

You can read about the challenge fully here.