Notes

Notes on a loss of control:

Only one fell-swoop needed to push you to the brink, to shred nerve-endings and decimate personal stability. From clear crystal ripples to a storm of unpredictable tides, that leave you stranded on an island with no discernable direction in which to swim. Unlock the bars to your cage of inhibitions, send your fury and prejudice marching down the hall.

Out on a street, the kerbs illuminated at intervals by lamp light, you come face to face with an altogether more reserved individual on his way home from meeting a friend for a quiet drink; he is bookish and self-contained, a consumer of glossy newspaper supplements and documentaries on a culture of which he harbours contributory aspirations. You will be forgiven should you abandon your elementary grasp on claustrophobic control, and exact savage repudiation for reasons better left unknown. Reasons are worthless when honing the basic art of aggression, for nothing is solved on the apex point of knowing why.

Notes on a lack of belief:

You are held hostage in a prison of nerves, where jailers jangle infallibilities before your eyes. Not half as important as you’d like, nowhere near as popular as you imagine you ought to be. We’re at war with the idea of oneself, battle-lines marked in the sands of the mind, divisions drawn and then amended as the passing of the years work to deaden the fight.

Notes on an infringement of choice:

Why allow yourself ambition when forever being coerced into accepting a VIP pass to a non-too-prestigious exhibition of what you will eventually become? Working yourself to the rhythmic drum of underlying heart attacks, chasing a quick buck like a greyhound to a racetrack rabbit, drinking far more than necessary to make up for previously-established lack of belief.

Scaling the barbed-wire fence in deference to roving searchlights, in pursuit of the perfect body, perfect soul-mate, perfect kids, perfect cloistered existence, perfect sex all of the time, early retirement and a flashing green EXIT sign when it’s time to leave the show, inevitably devoid of any ringing applause.