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something else
I’ve left the balcony door open. Wrapped up in my mum’s knitted jumper the length of my knees, a moment ago I met a world that spoke of something else. Stepping into a snow globe without the snow. Sky illuminated from beyond its glass, the winter branches melting like ink against iridescent pearl. Bare trees less menacing, a warmth in the air. Is this a spring whisper at 5pm in February? The blackbird’s note-jewels flood the strangely lit air, I imagine his song is just for me. A moment later he chastises someone, a warning siren. Perhaps the cats hidden in the grass, the birman and the moggy, sapphire eyes…
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The Goldberg Variations of Allen Road
Number 34 sings to me, a dusted blue layer cake, charming trinket box, the perfect townhouse. A Georgian-looking thing of perfection, snuggled duly in line with its bigger brothers of Allen Road. A stage-set faded shop sign reads ‘Mr Harvey’s snack bar’, barely discernible. I scroll in vain with one frozen finger, in search of who Mr Harvey may have been. How is it that just a few weeks ago the corners and secrets of this road looked entirely different? Stories sing from their walls and new eyes become accustomed, but on first meetings we are blinded. A big poet once described a train journey he had taken, the landscape…
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magic trick
Älvedans, ’fairy dance’ in Norwegian. Also their word for fog or mist. I think it is one of the most beautiful words on earth. Wrapped in black, my heavy fringe almost meets the cashmere python around my neck as i dissolve into the älvedans. There is something soothing about this morning. The mist lets me glide without expectation. No stark edge of light and shadow, no boundaries to try and squeeze into or indeed find oneself pushed into. A lockdowned morning in central London where one can perhaps sense a veiled enchanted garden, just beyond a dreamed up eleborate rusty iron gate. A figure suddenly appears ahead of me as…
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Exactly as I feared
The glowing cups of glee, labeled as aperols or gin & tonics, clutched by the hands of giddy silhouettes, blindingly free in the white backlit light. I hate them all and there I say it. Pavements full of them, these newly released beings, absurdly buoyant, treading air. Where is my place in all of this? I feel deceived and long for the stillness of just a few weeks ago, that vacant pause. Now they’re all charged with a new lease of life and mockingly so, to musicians without work. My shadow steps lightly just behind me, ever present to highlight the darkness – I want them all to go home…
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An ode from a hollyhock
My translucent arms stretch into golden light that has poured into the cracks of your misshapen life. I am a hollyhock seedling and I grow in defiance, of your broken routines, of schedules ticking like an unbalanced metronome. You picked me last summer from a secret garden, nothing more than a seed, one of many hundreds. Scattered like uncut gems in a jewellery box, each of us harbouring a future unknown. I was shoved into soil in a terra-cotta pot, a garden spell thrown in for good measure. And then the sudden lurch from one day to the next, a strange new windowsill to call my own. I was hidden…
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inspiration
I know you are there somewhere, you silk-lined thing, bejewelled in secrecy and fierce in spirit. You elusive, absent creature. The sky glows gold and I hear voices outside, a few trails of existence smoking up. Up towards the giddying heights of Flat 13, my sealed off kingdom, mine and Luna’s. The music of these words seeks something beyond the shadows yet where are you, snow leopard of the imagination? Impressive tales of online concerts, scores studied in depth, these newly discovered climes, zoom and zig and zog or whatever, where did others find you? Luna stares in his water bowl, perhaps your amber eyes return the gaze, I hurry…
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The art of being late
Fashionably late, beautifully late, dripping in jewels with diamonds at your feet, irrationally late, debatably late, whispered cocoons of well-spun envy. The art of being late. Something intrinsically alien to me, an acquired taste, inpalatable somehow. And here I am, at maida vale studios next to some band on their coffee break as I consider my two-hour wait. Why the *%# did I not receive the message? Lie-in, my brethren, magic away that jetlag! I stare down distastefully into my swimming pool coffee and hear my mind whir into battle. Find the library, the music you need in a month’s time, Boring Solemnis by someone called Beethoven, use your time…
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ficus
Why the machinery? Dig deep and there you are, little jewel buried in layers of silt. Water, ice and wind your enticing sirens, floods and glacial activity spur you on. ‘Lotus plants take root in muddy, silty wetlands, but their large, showy flowers blossom above water.’ Show any flair of personality and may the devil take you. Last night I dreamt of ficus oil, sold in little glass tubes amongst frankincense and cinnamon. I have learnt that the ficus stems far back into the magical world of the Bodhi tree, a symbol of awakening long before the Buddha sat beneath its leaves and gained enlightenment. ‘Ficus religiosa’, the Bodhi’s botanical…
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pondering woman
Does everyone feel this way about hands? A prequel to the story, the illustrator of everything unseen. Embodying our very nature, does anyone else see this? I explored the Frieze Masters today, a sparkling white world beneath a sparkling white tent, sparkling wine in sparkling glasses and flowing clothes to die for. Actually, what really grasped at my throat was a world of wonder, things of beauty adorning temporary walls or glass cases. A pair of sculpted, dark life-sized hands intertwined at the fingertips balanced delicately upon a pillar. I sensed personality within them, unspoken words and expression. The kindling of the soul. Hands tend to be the most difficult…
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spiritual djinn
There’s an elf in the house. I’ve become acquainted with the view from my angle on the floor, Kano bashing in my ears and the mirror so beautiful in its electric jewels. The pretty elf quotes “spiritual gin”, and “opium for the soul” as i pour a huge g&t. We were on the way out together, some jazz dude in Camden who had captured a flare of light for her. But I’m flat out, literally and she has work to do. Opium for the soul, words for the jewellery box. “Religion is the opium of the people”, that’s the one, forgive my miswording. I beg to differ. Opium, the opiate,…
