I no longer have a language to
describe this age, or summer, like my
mother, I have become mute, as if everything
fails in the end. So, I sit around in
the evenings listening to Prokofiev
and Debussy, reading Mallarme and
westerns – this all becomes a refusal,
to refuse the experience of life.
Why is it I have this feeling that I
just want to be lazy? I want to blow
a hole in the blood red crimson of the
sky – this summer I have regained my
freedom, yet within this freedom I have
regained my sadness – I am nothing
but dust to be remodelled in a
different image. Only grief is valid
for certain types of people, the rest of
us have a greave in silence, behind locked
doors, behind silenced voices: there is a
lostness to these times – this is an
August of black and whites, Matisse reds, and
precious azure blue lapis lazuli.
Today I am feeling absurd: am I
for some constructed paradise
of pleasure? I am feeling uncontended,
free falling, and rumbustious! The one
thing missing this August is sweet doxy
to keep me entertained. How do we
embrace this stagnant tormenting sadness:
time stands still, emotion almost invalid.
I’m in need of simulation of some
kind, before I begin to fade to nothing:
I just want to get lost and disappear –
no longer do I have a map to
navigate these lands, for I am stuck in
one location. Words today melt in my
mind: blue, esoteric change – this is
slowly turning into a self-centred
gnostic journey. I wonder at which point –
it must have been the last eighteen months –
did I start to become such a narcissist?
This is such shabby-chic living that even
Any Old Iron, a junkshop below the flat,
keeps turning the water off! Marllarme’s
slightly jaded and faded dark blue world!
They were new odd dreams against which I don’t
want to fight – I just want to do something
stupid to fill this time, a need to
reconnect with my creativity,
and self. Art is important as it has
ever been: Zelenka’s Trio Sonatas
mellow, transcendental calm,
to the realities of this year – I
only wish to talk to extraordinary
people. The past no longer interests me
anymore: I only want the new, the
unexplored. This is the dividing line.
This is the point of change. There is no turning
back; for this summer is the end time – this
is the end of an age only memory
will be able to articulate. So
now we have crossed the precipice of time:
there is no going back now…
Nick Ingram
Illustration Nick Victor