and maybe some faith would do me good
Belladonna of Sadness (1973) dir. Eiichi Yamamoto.
Something’s in the ether, babe - ash, tar, aconite - as unease pierces deeply. I search for meaning in the ink-black, pen to paper, sword to stone, and feel and know an unwavering urge to disappear and start anew: wide-brim hat and cat eyes. I hover at the brook contemplating loneliness, and what still, now, draws me into that big sleep of his. Fatally, I cannot contend with my own company: in this here age of half-living online, I feel a cheat, a charlatan. I sit alone at 9:30pm, watching 1933’s King Kong and yet again miss my father.
That great-grief-chasm - once pertinent, burning - has now softened and frayed at the seams, awash in salt water.
I fear death. I always have, and I always will.
I look out unto the night in search of a cat I do adore, who I have seldom divulged to you. Her name is Layla, and I love her. She, frenetic and feeble, has become my anchor. In the some twelve and so months since the big sleep, I have come to understand myself as an entirely different person - hot, hollow, sinew, grime. When all falls before me, she flutters beneath my feet, and home begins to feel whole again.
How do you contend with loneliness? Run out into the dark, wild abandon? Search clubs, pubs, bars - fall into a stranger’s arms? I’m stifled, reader, and this feeling I fear cannot be remedied by works of art, film, literature. I seek escape with urgency. I seek to honour Stephen, awash in a glow of English sunlight. I don’t know who I am without him.
A red-velvet husk, marred by soot.
A sense of self wrapped up in finger waves.
Patricia Arquette in Lost Highway (1997) dir. David Lynch.
Death is a peculiar thing that I still do not feel inclined, in any way, to accept. Vice-like, it looms a perpetual force. Satin-clad I stand in the street, lost and godless. I still wish for him to sit next to me, on this here sofa. At times I wade through the air and picture a glimmer of him, there. I try to imagine the weight of his embrace in all its fullness, fat and bone, pre-pathogen. I fixate for a small moment, and once again the image escapes me.
That once distressing delirium - the howling whine for morphine - is now replaced by a slight, light inkling of a kitten soft as cotton begging to be held, sat in the darkness of the living room. I come to her and glassy-eyed, she pines. I have purpose, now.
In all this fearful fate, I am planning a new show, slowly so: For you, forever and always, I hope to be at Forth. You may recall my epithets of ‘darling’, ‘sugar’, ‘little one’ in the days and months gone by. Terms of endearment I have come to miss dearly. Baby-pink walls, “imperceptibly”, says Adam. Red velvet floors and velvet-flocked frames a-plenty. Cursive, drop-shadow, impasto. When I look to the future, I see a gallery, too. Ishmail, Dinosaur and I are working on something special: an eighteen-month curatorial project space, Prayer Room. The name, in all its pretences, feels true.
The gallery as a site of community, of solace, reflection.
and maybe some faith would do me good
Until September.