Your eyes move downwards as you play (drawn downwards like me), the seconds between synapse and signal whittled down to nothing until sound is a reflex to symbol; high, low, high, higher, low – pause… the pause is your specialty, the trick that distinguished you from your predictably talented peers; silence was a symbol to them, a cue for the crowd to clap and cough and sigh and shuffle on to the next diversion, but you knew the lull was a sound in itself, the way the colour black is a mirror: absence prompts the creation of a presence – you make artists of everyone, you like to think, and with each performance your pieces are born anew… now, as the length of your bow runs out, the lights dim for the first time, and quiet rushes in like the tide; Stephen had to haggle to get the technicians to midwife, even had to spare a few more crumbs from his loaf of wealth, but in this artificial twilight you know your vision was right; we sit there in the darkness of the theatre, no line between performer and audience, suspended in a moment of reflection, staring back at ourselves… the execution is never perfect, of course, there’s always someone with a cold or a critic scribbling notes on their pad, but it’s the ideal that counts; and what I think as we sit here in the darkness together, holding still, counting the seconds until you begin again, is that we could almost be endless… (I wonder if, after this, perhaps sitting in the police car with a blanket about your shoulders, you will ask yourself, “if she had had darkness then, a pause to play her out, would she have been suspended?” but of course, where I’m going, I will never have darkness again, no synapse, no signal…) but now the lights make us mortal and you begin again, slicing through the seconds of your life, until the symphony comes to a close; spotlight gone, and now you see me, sitting in the third row, bejewelled and bedazzled, smirk ready and arms outstretched on the back of my chair, like a cocksure Jesus about to be crucified; you gift me a brief meeting of the eyes, measure drops of your warmth like a pipette, discretion from an open face and a frame that could shatter like glass (and fragile things only survive when when they’re put up to be pretty and catch the eye, while paving stones and concrete simply serve to bear the impact of a body on the ground); now you move on, eyes landing on Stephen & Sandra & Daphne for a beat each, all lined up in the front row – the hall, overseen by beatific statuary and redolent in marble garlands, both equally eroded and dirty, is not fit for modern heating, and Stephen’s insistence on wearing a cravat at all times (“aaahisma silk, darling,” ah lingering in the air after it lazed from his mouth like cigarette smoke; “its faar more humaane”) has made his face grow red and moist (like the open wrists of his white ingenue, reclining with a plucked violet in the frame behind him; the lights in the warehouse were glaring down, and the starch sheen was still fresh on the canvas) – still, he smiles broadly and openly as you take your bows, up and down and up and down, then exit stage right; now you emerge from the veins of this fine building, the unadorned passages through which the lifeblood flows, and skitter through the puddles in your unsteady heels – unmaking your reflections with each impact – into the open door of the cab, heralded by the pop of the champagne cork, clapping, and cachinnation; rain has rendered streets into pavements into windows into phones in a scroll of vertiginous lights: as Stephen tries to raise a toast, posture perfect and pits slightly sweat-stained, Daphne with a devious, desperate smile, reaches into the pockets of her patchwork coat and produces a twist-tied bag, bulging with scandal – and the admonishments begin; Sandra practically leaping from her seat, I could 'ave reshot my film with the money Steve's wasted on your miserable halfway house! a giddy grin, peacekeeping in a velvet coat, and the champagne fizzles out on the floor while you stare at me, a million miles away leaning through the corner window, respirating nicotine, raindrops flecked on a face carved like regal basalt, sitting in a pharaoh's tomb, eyeless, silent,
unseen majority,” the pasty white man on the television proclaims to a swollen microphone, pulped sign clutched in hand and teeth bared like a baboon, “we’re the voice of the people, everyone’s thinking what we’re thinking but they’re too scared to speak out ‘cause– cause– well, we aren’t afraid anymore, and we’re not going to let these bloody media moguls and climate lobbyists shut us up…” his protestations slither through the cheap darkness of the warehouse, small, slimy and tinny in the vast space; Daphne giggles and guffaws at every opportunity, running commentary as if she’s the one on screen; Stephen is amused by this, head balanced on his palm like a sovereign’s orb, smiling indulgently; even you can find some comedy in this, the absurdity of a man so certain of his persecution unable to identify a persecutor – but now you turn away from my smoke and see Sandra, hunched over, brow dark and mouth grim, staring at the screen with focused contempt, and you avert your eyes, unsettled and confused, tuning back into Daphne’s monologue, “ohhh myy goooooodd you idiot you can’t send those people back anywhere Daniel Ronson isn’t going to fuck you you’re such an idiot isn’t he such an idiot Sofia,” blindly grasping at your tights like a toddler “isn’t he such an idiot? how could anyone think like that like he’s so stupid i mean he’s crazy he’s an idiot he’s right though– and you all look over to her (I remain, falling, staring at the distance ahead), still hunched in the corner, but more open now, as if asking for a blow, “he’s right and y’know it…” the cameras cut to the rest of the march now, Albion Party banners waving high, a zoom in shot on a cluster of black people with signs screaming Go Away If You Won’t Earn Your Pay, (A billboard stands across from me now, the buildings jutting up like innumerable teeth from the valley between us – it makes me think of the magazines my parents always placed opposite the fruits in their little shop, catalogues upon catalogues of well-groomed actors pretending a blender had changed their lives, another thing to consume; my parents hated them, but they sold well, and they had needed the money badly, bleeding cash and bleeding freedoms, mourning a dried up lake with dried up tears, staring at how much further there was to fall) and Daphne laughs “Sandra what are you on about?” and she turns her head up, auburn hair hanging like a flag, “You're not paying attention to what he’s saying, just how he’s saying it– fact is, we can’t handle all these bloody immigrants from Somalia and Syria and the Pacific Islands and wherever the fuck else, and we’ve said as much, and yet they keep on coming, and i’m sick and tired of it, i’m sick of 'em acting like they can just c'mon in and take our stuff, it’s not fair, it’s not right,” and as they argue you feel me pull another cigarette out and light it on the end of the last, breathing from it like an asthma inhaler, and Stephen says “now Sandra that’s not appropriate” and she stands up and hurls her bottle on the floor, white foam splattering Daphne’s face like a money shot as she laughs in an ascending scale, “don’t you tell me what’s appropriate you ponce, and you – STOP LAUGHING”, and she ceases and “you two just think this is funny 'cos you don’t 'ave any skin in the game – Sofia agrees with me” and spotlight up, all eyes on you, “don’t you Sofia, i mean y'know what it’s like to work a day in yer life, why don’t you tell us what you think” and crisp as a lighter I cut in – “I’ve worked in my parent’s shop since I was old enough to walk – pause – why don’t you ask me what I think?” and Stephen stands
up the girders curved, bending as they reached the ceiling like stifled plants – surrounded by a world of corrugated steel and synthetic lighting, you could have pictured yourself adrift in an alien sea, a lone thing passing through the ribs of a decaying leviathan, drawn elsewhere by the current (gravity is like a riptide, wrenching the oxygen from my lungs and drowning me in midair, exiled from choice, rejected by solid ground and safety, my life collapsed into seconds) – and that’s when you met me, composing aloud, and asked me what I was crafting; “an epyllion,” I told you, “how long?” “four years - it’s slow going,” a wink to smother the sting, “good thing I caught a rich guy: who could 'ave guessed he’d be a fan of the Classics?” (shouldn’t have been on the roof)... you remember how surprised Stephen was when he had learned that you had dropped out of the conservatory because you couldn’t pay, that you scribbled compositions onto napkins with an English Breakfast in the other hand, that you went busking – “Wasn’t your father Ambrose Kyriakopoulos?” he smiled when he said that, from satisfaction, bemusement, disappointment, or all three, you couldn’t quite tell: but he had struck that little string of shame all the same, so you stared at your shoes and muttered “my father was a self-made man, and he believed his children should be self-made too”: “an admirable notion,” he chimed in – you chewed your lip, “unfortunately, he had us later in life, so he died before I went to university - he donated his fortune in the will - one part went to constructing the Kyriakos–” “And you weren’t left a penny?” (did he crane across the desk then? did you see the call of the void in the dilation of his pupils?) You bent your head lower, like humiliation was a world on your back, “Only what he gave my mother; she had to get a job,” and that was that: he said he would be happy to help, you shook hands, and then you went to the address he emailed you a week later (at least, that’s what you told me – looking up from halfway down, I don’t think I got your mannerisms quite right), and you thought of this as he led you away from the party, the rest of us departing, to discuss “the next steps in your career, I’ve really been meaning to ask you, I think you’re the breakout star of this group, you deserve another drink, how big do you think we should go? because I have a man at Royal Albert Hall – huge fan, worked with your father – just dying to get you up on that stage – oh, by the way, how much money did you make from that performance? because you do owe me a cut, maybe not now, maybe not all of it, but I do need some form of payment after
all, what we stand for is progress!” an uproar of cheers from the centre crowd, knowing smiles and rolled eyes from the people at the fringe, Stephen and the other organisers smiling like diplomats and politely applauding – now Jason continues “a return to a purer form of creation, liberated from the referentiality and mass production of the mainstream: but progress cannot come without freedom; to further our movement, it is vital that we practice tolerance, that we engage in conversation, that we allow others their individuality, in both art and opinion, as human beings…” The space beside us on the sofa is unoccupied; Daphne’s sculptures levitate in her place, an elephant graveyard of copper wire and metal sheets, drifting in a row like an ellipsis – opposite, as if scorning their naked industry, Stephen’s paintings stretch feet to head, large enough to embrace the viewer in alien corn and nostalgic rusticism, crimson blush and tanned ochre on countryfolk only a wealthy man could paint: I notice you staring at them disapprovingly and (reaching for one last purchase on the way down) I tell you “my parents have to leave the country”, and you snap your gaze back to me, applause starting up again for a triumph you didn’t catch: I continue to stare straight ahead, arm poised casually on the sofa arm [semaphore for don’t-pity-me], “it’s not safe for them here; they can’t go back to Chad either; and I don’t have enough money to move them to Ireland; all I have is what comes out of Steve’s pocket,” a bitter exhalation through the nose, like the splutter of a drowning diver – you tense up, back stiff, fists in your lap and legs pressed closer together, “and what’s in my life insurance, I suppose…” and we stare off to somewhere past the jubilation – twin drivers on opposite roads; I read nothing out for the party, you notice, just migrate between the bar stools and waltz with tobacco as the evening draws on and on, evading him like a feeble dove until he finally catches up with me, and you watch us walk out of the venue together, and the murmuration of artists
circles up and down and around, the whisky overbrims, my bracelets and beads and belomorite swinging and clacking in a beat you’ve heard before: in a pendulum; a metronome; a heart rate; a symphony without sections – a movement with no end; in this characterless hotel, the moon new as pitch, our pulses ached like a funeral dirge… “time is space, right?” my eyes still lie over your shoulder, gazing at an object hiding in history or fantasy; you have no answer prepared – audience participation has never been necessary for my soliloquies: yet the repetition is a unique invitation to respond, so you indulge me with a “yes,” and the motion of my wrist drones on and on… I had come into your room without warning earlier, stumbled in at around four in the morning, reeking of booze pasted over shower gel, hair still wet; I apologised for startling you, and you just stared at me in silence, unreadable… “Have you noticed anything about Stephen’s paintings?” my voice is low, almost a whisper; there’s a precipice in my tone… “That’s a very general question” you tell me, and I see myself in the dark of your eye, light distorted on your surface – how much is lost in transmission… (and now I realise how hardened you were as the bottom of my spine hits the unfeeling concrete…) a smirk creeps across my face like a knife; yeah, I nod, and my vacancy grows – I lift the dregs to my lips,
Yeah, your fingers dance across the surface of the glass, let’s meet up and talk this over –it’s important that we don’t do anything hasty, and you smile up at Stephen; he asks if it was me; you nod; he moves on; you’ve got the place at the Royal Albert Hall; he hopes you know how much “good press” this will bring the movement; you assent, gratefully, and promise to give your best performance yet; as you walk out of his office, you see Sandra furiously sketching out storyboards, on commission for a certain ‘DR’; Daphne lies on the tattered sofa and stares, utterly absent, at her sculptures on the ceiling; you walk down the deserted streets, crisp packets and streamers flattened under rain and foot, the sky bleached a dull navy with excess light, and an ambulance screaming out to no-one, praying anyone will listen; you move like an arrow through the air, half an hour westward, a quarter up to the fire-escape, past midnight on the thirteenth
storey, and a few minutes prior on the roof,
near the edge, seeing me thinking
better to jump
than to fall.