‘He didn’t take a lot of money,’ Gráinne Seoige tells us in the Crimecall excerpt featured in the pilot episode of Symphony of Stone. ‘He took a bus ride. Have you seen Patrick Douglas?’
As it turns out, some did. But they failed to notice a crucial detail; the missing man took two buses, not one. The first of these, the 27 to Dublin’s city centre, was expected, routine. The second, to Howth Summit, was not.
In this episode, Patrick’s existential journey to that summit is recreated in meticulous detail. You will hear him zip up his wind breaker, depart the house he could not call a home, and close the door behind him. You will listen as he boards the bus, money he no longer needs jangling into the driver’s ticket machine. You will catch the sounds of passengers young and old flowing all around him, ignoring him, not knowing that he is not like them, is not going where they are going, is soon to become a ghost, a dream, a misremembered melody.
You will catch the sounds of passengers young and old flowing all around him, ignoring him, not knowing that he is not like them, is not going where they are going, is soon to become a ghost, a dream, a misremembered melody.
Each stop is akin to a Station of the Cross. Fairview Footbridge is the site of the First Fall, where Patrick debarks to ride the bus that Crimecall missed, the one that will take him to Golgotha. This is where the real journey begins, an intense inner travelogue that spans the entirety of his personal history; a bittersweet medley that recalls the highs and bitter lows, successes and regrets, the people he has loved and lost. But it is over all too quickly: the site of the Second Fall, Howth Summit, comes swiftly into view.
Children play and adults chat as Patrick leaves the bus behind, lost in games of make believe as he faces the last leg of this terrible pilgrimage, alone and unnoticed, no Veronica to wipe his face or dry the tears that well up in his tired eyes. The sandy gravel beneath his feet sounds like bones, breaking.
He sighs, and stumbles on, towards the terminus of his Via Dolorosa, the site of the third and final Fall, a Calvary of jagged crags.
The precipice.
If depression affects you or someone you know, help is available.
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