MY FANCIES

My fancies are like fireflies
Specks of living light twinkling in the dark.

In spite of its relative rarity on Earth, due principally to its lightness [no pun intended], neon is the fifth most abundant gas in the known universe after hydrogen, helium, oxygen and carbon. The excited light of neon has always... excited... me. Extracted from air where it is found in trace amounts, neon plays a grand role in Glasgow's nocturnal landscape, all the more evident from seventeen floors up.

At night, the city spreads out like some grand cadaver with a constellation of illumined vessels. Car headlights become the corpuscles moving along these neon-lit arteries. The body of the city breathes quietly at night. One could say it almost sleeps. The initial orange glow of the neon slowly shifts into red as evening gives way to night. This 'redshift' doesn't just cast the city in a strange glow, it allows us to see the dark too. Great swathes of impenetrable darkness... here, there.... here...