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Flame by Claire
Felstead
. . . about a city.
Small, silent, grey, black: streams of adjectives form
buildings, houses, cars, heavy goods vehicles. If I am
clever enough, sometimes I can make people. Yet this
requires concentrated imagination: the vividness of the
creation has to be a knife into reality. Touching, making
invisible beings that can come into your bed at night or
haunt your kitchens with the smell of baking bread and old
aftershave. I press buttons or paint paper, creating worlds
out of my head so that I can live - through my egotism - by
writing myself into every single worthy character: a witch,
a mermaid and a single mother fighting the system with a can
of baked beans and a toilet brush. Yet most nights, I would
much rather sit down and think about myself. Instead I
pretend I am this, that or someone else capable of making
the perfect noodle dish and knowing what to do with skate
wings. For a little bit of background, a description of my
internal allotment - two rows of cabbages and endless exotic
vegetables that are moulding into obscure organisms - I have
two diaries, social and work, that each have nothing in
them. As I have no life. So henceforth, I create my own
world where I can flounce around in pretty creations, laugh
hauntingly and hold forays into the spiritual
world.
Therefore I suggest that all
words and letters that are pushed out of my mind onto a
flickering computer screen are born out of the assumption
that life is boring. Where is the hedonism of yesteryear?
Where are the adventures of Enid Blyton once you have grown
into adulthood? Where are the fairies of Tolkien and the
dragons of myth? They are lodged in a state of innocence
that passed long ago in favour of alcohol and the pleasures
of the flesh and it seems that most of us spend our lives
trying to retrieve them through the use of narcotics, films
and looking forward to retirement 'to be our own person
again'. Yet by that time, we are too deluded to go trekking
into the Amazon jungle and prefer to stay at home planning a
world cruise that never quite happens. We hopefully watch
our grandchildren, praying that they don't journey down the
same parquet corridor their grandparents took whilst
absent-minded and thinking about existentialism.
The time ticks on and as every
second passes, the world seems less magical and people less
wonderful. The illusion is words and pictures born out of
someone's wish for whimsical beauty. We all sigh and carry
on doing our shopping or going to work or dreaming about
what we might have been or driving the car or picking up the
kids or taking another happy pill to get us through the
night or day or week or year. Until the next time we are
grasped by the phantasmagoria of someone else's made-up
fantasies: the distant memory of those innocent thoughts we
had as children come flooding back. They disappear; we sigh
again and again, each sigh rising higher and higher, lifting
the dreams further into the sky, carrying fantasy with them
and sometimes. . ., sometimes, a sigh can reach the heavens
and fall onto some unknown person, making them cry or wonder
where their feeling has come from. In this world of knives,
sighs seem to fall from every angle onto every corner, just
waiting to be brushed away or consumed by somebody's heart
for somebody else pleasure. At times these sighs or notes of
a melancholy chorus will form together and embrace a body
that has no strength to push them away. It has meaning in
every language. It is called the way things are. And it
wasn't really supposed to be like this. Or so they told us
at school.
A sharp morning in a crystal
city has sounds resounding down the streets. Does it? Ever
noticed? There is a flurry of the sharp tonic of life
dashing past faces into mouths of black goddesses or white
smoking devils. This city is everywhere and anywhere and
full of invisible voices, singing to the dust. It is the
beginning and end of all that breathes. So do I notice this
and muse? Never, for myself, it does not exist. I carry on
my way as the clock ticks. A second for a stair, a minute
for a corridor. I go to meet someone and on the way, they
become revealed, I can see their feet and then their legs,
and then their clothes and for a brief . . ., I wonder if
the person to which I am giving so much scrutiny is actually
a stranger. I now know every turn of their calves and
thighs. They are not aware that someone is embracing their
figure with their eyes and reaching up with invisible hands
to grab some sign of recognition. Do I know that person now?
even though I don't know their name or anything about them?
Just their legs and their ankles. . . and it is the person
that have gone to meet. I am embarrassed when I look at her
face and I falsely give a big smile to cover the fact that I
have just contemplated her limbs in a faintly perturbing
way. I think people can tell as we stand together . Yet it
remains with me. And I cry when I get home. Any
home.
That's a lie, I don't cry. I
think I'm sick.
Like I'm sick when I think of
when I met his mother. She was not like I had expected. I
wanted some thing I could recognise. So I built her, created
her out of old bits of eyes, ears and legs. A bit radical.
Well, I thought I could. Anyone is anyone and I could make
anyone. But in this city - well - I don't live the way
others do. Where are you? Trapped in a somethingness, lost
in a peace of prose. That means I have no reality experience
cos I'm not alive. Well, fuck experience. I wish I
could.
So smile, I think there's
got to be another way. This men and women thing. Ohl I don't
want a man. I want something that's not there so I make it
up to satisfy my boredom. An excuse to live in a shadow, an
excuse I give myself for wanting what doesn't seem to ever
be. Her legs. No. Ankles. Was it her? Or just a nothing her?
Was she there? Where is she? Well, I'm a nineties
everything. And I have everything. Sad world, isn't it. I
didn't always have everything. But then, I was a whipping
boy for a while. Well, a girl but what does gender matter
anymore. These days, girls have no breasts and men pass on
the after-dinner cognac so that - to me - makes us all the
same. A whipping boy? A birch child? A Pinochio for
violence? I talk to my brain all the time, so changing the
focus to radiate out of a covered stall - a theatre of the
violently absurd - I don't really think is strange. Did Judy
ever hit Punch? Or did she just dress quietly in her
bruises, not forgetting her rib crunching stays? I didn't,
tighter and tighter that black satin corset got until I
could feel my lungs in my throat. Archetypal martyr. Yet
aren't we all archetypes? We all wear the same clothes and,
. . .my train of thought has just pulled out of the station
and I am not on board again.
Laces. Laces lacing my skin
together and lacing my drink with rohypnol. Lacing the
shroud of the city together. This city, this city is dead.
Blank faces and too many drugs. Let's fuse everything, why
not. Tie them all together. Nothing is pure. Only me and
that is because I have felt sighs that fall from my mouth
and have become the only person that feels. So I can
appreciate retribution, I guess. This is why I was a
whipping boy. The whipping boy. The somebody down your
street who is punished for someone else's skeleton in the
closet or selection of bones in the bottom drawer. If you
listen carefully, you can hear the tears. Are you aware of
that sound? It is the city again. All the city. It goes
round and round, the sound of the city. It comes back to you
like a muffled siren and you hear words you have just said
but they don't sound like your voice so you walk humbled,
stepping in time to your panic. No-one can ever hear you.
They've got wax in their ears. . . and then things really do
go round. I suppose I went round being a whipping boy. I
certainly did a lot of mental and psychological
floating.
1 wasn't the only one. There
was this girl called Danielle. She was from Mauritius and
did this weird thing with her hands, like she was stereo in
Cinemascope. All purple and blue. She was the medieval
shit-taker for others, like me but I knew my violent
doppleganger. He was a being from the other end of the
phone, an old skin-head with a flaky scalp. Anarchy with
dandruff. Better cultural icon than a woman with blow-up
breasts. Nasty - vindictive - I know but I can't help being
cynical. l'm like this because I'm a Taurus and that equates
me with William Shakespeare and Saint George, the saviour of
England from hideous raping dragons, except it didn't work -
they're still here. And their breath smells.
Anyway, I got rid of pressure
and now I stand and wait in the streets for my friends that
never show on time. If this was a black and white photo, I
would have black shadows under my eyes and scraggy hair. If
this was a photo, it would be raining. Rain all over the
photo city. Right at this moment, I want rain and I like to
exercise my feeling potential. So maybe I will go for things
I don't want just to make sure. I do like somethings. I like
breathing, reminds me 1 am still alive. I like
rain.
Have you ever been to one of
those faux French cafes? All those young kids with cocaine
eyes? They are all going to be whipping boys, one day. Some
maybe in a more literal sense - like calling me a bitch. I
mean I am - in a sense - but I don't express it in public.
No-one can hear me unless they are in a direct wind flow
from my mouth. I suppose I could speak without breathing
much but then how would I know I was still alive? These
modern problems. Les probleme moderne. Maybe if I speak
backwards I would be able to find what I want. I know I am a
soldier of fortune, a fight for good luck in my life. If I
stand on this street for long enough, then some person with
God in his eyes will tell me what I need.
I need a life. And some sort of
territory to excel in too. And a Balenciaga coat. It is hard
to get over being. They should have some sort of support
group for the people who hide the problems of society and
incorporate Nicotine anonymous with that. Every whipping boy
I know smokes like it is keeping them alive. And it probably
is. And that - I know now - is the saddest thing in the
world. But this city needs us. I am necessary. I should be
paid from peoples' taxes. No, I should be on the civil list.
I can touch people with Aids and wear expensive gowns that
could feed a family for a fortnight or fund a safe house or
re-build womens' lives because they walked around for years
with blue skin. Blue and purple skin. Peeling skin. Black
skin, white skin, yellow skin. Skinless skin. When you are
finished with you don't know who you are, let alone where
you are. You have to pull yourself up. Out of the marsh and
the city's mud. You have to cling onto reeds, pipes of banks
where the beyond is slippy. You have to tell your story to
your mirror. No-body else listens apart from you. What is
the moral of this? Wind it up. Don't go on too long. Don't
sell yourself. For anyone. Be an old maid, but keep your
head. Listen to an old whipping boy, in a black and white
photo. And you're still not sure what a whipping boy is:
well, you're not supposed to be. According to me and
official statistics, I don't exist.
©
2000
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