MORNING SOUNDTRACK

After she'd left him, he'd often sit with his morning coffee and listen to film music first thing specifically the scores of Ennio Morricone and Maurice Jarre. There was a saccharine melancholy to both the Italian and French film composers' Euro/Hollywood music that suited his post-break-up mood lately. Currently, he was listening to the main theme of 'The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean' and feeling as dusty as the movie itself. There seemed a nobility in heartbreak back then in the old days (as in old movies) and Jarre's score captured that wistful sense of love slipping through one's fingers perfectly.

Sitting in that momentary bardo between leaving the house and heading to work, Mosco closed his eyes and meditated, imagining he was sitting in some old-timey saloon in the old west with an ice-cold beer and a toothpick resting between his teeth. The question was could he sustain this macho vibe from the house all the way to the office or would he submit as he always did to the pressures of conventional reality and become cucked once again? Mosco knew any subtle adopting of outdated masculine tropes would be shot down by the progressives at his workplace and the usual accusations of  "misogynist" and "bus pass incel" would be casually thrown at him like linguistic grenades dampening any ideas he had about being an old-style movie star.

The 21st century was no country for men let alone old ones and in this sense, Mosco felt increasingly self-conscious about his fantasies of being a more grizzled male than he truly was. But in this very moment, sitting with his cafetière listening to 'Roy Bean' he could be the assured, unbreakable hero/anti-hero he needed to be to help him through the painful loss of losing her, the only woman apart from his late mother he'd ever truly loved.

His very own Lillie Langtry.