I treat my fingers as nascent nomads trekking between oases. Their journey of enlightenment is never ending. They move constantly, treading sensuous landmarks and soaking in the succour of skin. Swami of sensation still reticent to teach, they learn all they can reach, locusts swarming a beach, rampant yet methodical, their knowledge poised beneath thin dermal frocking, never frolicking but at peace with the pace they keep. Their journey has been steep, moving from sleep to the summit of a third eye’s awakening, quaking with philosophy. I treat my fingers better than myself, offering them only to the worthy.
When I’m empty she feeds me little morsels of care and reminds me I was starving. I still sigh too much but she’s as patient with me as she’s ever been, always asking what’s wrong with actual concern. Once, I told her I was scared that love might have an expiration date, that I might wake up one day unknowingly disqualified from standing next to her. She took my hand, shook her head, and looked at me seriously. ‘Love doesn’t work that way,’ she said, ‘it’s got a longer shelf life than any ration and only spoils from mishandling.’
I’ve been hurling myself at the concept my whole life, an unimpeachable pragma, a word very much like love. The laughter of ludus, hatsukoi coy but uncoiled, more amar. That achai longing and its painful encantar. Cuddled like katl wrapped in the flames of anurakti, ishq fuelling shaghaf in the searc for one’s priya. The ur well of grá feeding the flesh pits of pure kama, riotously gratifying rati and unapologetically unpainted anpu. So plaintively pinnariyok but unabashedly ungayok, it is to liefde forever, more mehr than man, wondering if wǔ èr líng says more than I love you.
Arris fell out of time and landed in my lap. I was so surprised that I charmed her. Something like you belongs somewhere romantic, I said. Paris in sepia or a courtesan’s lace, an uncanny valley or gypsy caravan. Some place idyllic and far away. She laughed at me with social freedoms long since won in wars we forgot. ‘From hereon out I belong next to you,’ she said. ‘Whenever you need me that’s where I’ll be.’ I started counting my blessings and asked for seconds. ‘For you, I will always make time.’ After that, forever was never enough.
Her breath feels like a pollinated breeze, rustling sunflowers. It gives goosebumps and shivers, brings growth and joy. She seems too alive for her skin, more than an auras ostentation, a potential explosion calculated but barely demarcated. It’s almost unbalanced, tilt shift technicolour on a greyscale backdrop, she pops out and drowns the world. The whirlwind whipping round the eye, stillness in chaotic check. Her presence expands beyond bounds, the paint on the brush, the stroke on the canvas and the easel itself. She is pure life, elemental and unbridled. How the world copes with it is a mystery.
I find her reading palms by the light of a thousand paper candles. ‘Give me your past,’ she says, ‘and I will offer you a future.’ I take my place among the silk and linen trappings that furnish the floor. Her eyes absorb all that is about us yet hold no reflection nor judgement. I lay out my life in fitful spurts of recollection and scaled memory. She listens in patience and stillness while a warm autumn breeze licks at the canvas tenting. When I am done she smiles and says, ‘There now, you have years ahead for lightness.’
Article originally appeared on The Music 24 October 2018
A soundtrack is a tricky thing to enjoy; supposed to augment, supplement or transcend its accompanying art, but taken out of context it can sometimes feel inadequate. Thom Yorke soundtracking a Suspiriareboot is so incredibly difficult to decouple from context, it’s hard to say if it can stand without the weight of the movie or the man.
Some parts scream Yorke, or rather, Yorke laments across them in a vaguely hallucinogenic way, while other elements list from faintly eldritch to outright sinister with the help of synth stabs and Gregorian chants delivered with the guttural malaise of noise-rock in a foley room. It’s a lattice of semi-irrelevant ambience and isolated SFX that gives Suspiria a disconcerting feeling like it’s the ghost of Radiohead rattling chains on a haunted house tour. Though deliriously long, it is a wonderful tour punctuated by some suspiciously charming songs that wouldn’t feel out of place on a The King Of Limbs successor.
Overall, Yorke’s take lands on a softer side of psychedelic than Goblin’s original, for better or worse, featuring far less saxophone and its own diffident kind of flamboyance.
She pours thoughts upon me in the morning like sweet molasses creeping in the sun. I grow sticky with her residue. ‘I want to make the world beautiful,’ she says, not realising her presence is a progenitor of belief. ‘I want the world to be better, so badly,’ she says. ‘Why don’t people understand that the world can be art?’ I place my hand over her heart, breast adjacent with no connotation, and misuse her borrowed words. People don’t want more than they can understand. Pure beauty, as you want, as you are, is more than most can take.
A mash up of mannequin legs and interlocking clams like body horror by Botticelli standing on a plinth totalling maybe two and a half metres high, fitted with a reticulating feature intermittently spurting gouty clots of lumpy red liquid. I ask Mikey what it’s supposed to be and he smiles at me for the first time in months. ‘It’s my period piece,’ he says, folding his arms. I can’t help but laugh and ask if the joke was worth it. ‘An artists place isn’t to value art,’ he tells me, ‘but yeah, it was and is totally worth it.’
Eventually I run out of bullshit to say and tell her, you‘re beautiful. Arris gives me one of her soft looks and says, ‘I know.’ Her words stick in my heart as the most wonderful of splinters, I collect them now and forge little tableaux with the material. When they are ready I unveil them to her like proud popsicle constructions of architectural marvels. ‘This is good,’ she always says, and gives me tips toward their betterment. You’re not merely beautiful but right, I tell her. ‘So are you,’ she says, unloading a fresh batch of structural substance.
We lay in bed holding hands like main stream otters and drift into sleep. We meet then in dreams where the visage can be hazy but the intents are clear and carry an undercurrent of the day’s rumination. At times our faces are other, garish masquerade or marvellous gall, but only for the objective of the interim. This then is important for the process of understanding purpose, of distilling the chameleonic collation that coalesces in headspace. Who are our minds at rest. In the morning we wake, in arms or at odds but always together, and pool our experiences.
Jennifer took every part of the man she loved and put it in a blender. She poured the contents into a milkshake glass and drank. It was sweet at first and thrilling, possibly wicked, but after several sips she grew to hate the taste. So, she placed it on the counter and left. Several women passed in this manner, drank and discarded the drink, excitement turning to disgust and the glass always empty. Arris, upon seeing the receptacle, remarked upon its craftsmanship. ‘Exquisite,’ she said, ‘and practical,’ then took it home with her where it was filled every day.
Piece by piece I removed my soul and arranged it in the shape of a man in front of her. It’s fragile, I said, and worn. Please take care of it. ‘Forever,’ she said, ‘but first things first, lets put you back together.’ She set to rearrange the pieces then and place them back inside, making me whole again in new and unexpected ways. It is perfect now, I said, but she just shook her head. ‘It was always perfect, love, you just needed to see it for yourself.’ I embraced her then, finally comfortable to be simply myself.
I gather my wares as might a mynah. A few scraps of song, some things not necessarily like sonnets but substantially poetic, perchance some art pieces, various vows, of course, and affirmations made of strong yet supple cords, spider silk possibly. I bind it all together with countless fine devotions and shape a nest around us. I coo, heedful of pride, as you percuss the air with a pleasured display of span. We preen each other of free of woes, flock together, and roost until sunrise, when I fly, as might a mynah, knowing my mate ever awaits me.
Arris looks out over the waterfall and is still for a moment. ‘The sound will never be the same,’ she says, ‘every trickled note is a new iteration of combination and intonation but the effect over time is homogeneity.’ I suggest it’s one of natures menial magics and she shakes her curls against my neck. ‘It’s us playing the trick,’ she says, ‘it’s too beautiful for us to handle so we drown it out.’ I look out over the waterfall and listen to the world move through time. I tell her, I can hear every moment of our lives.
A Few Short Words 