The Plague & The Cure

My Plague essays are something that linger in my imagination still, and although I haven't had the ability to publish them in recent times, I refer to old posts and I appreciate the beauty and the bravery, the vulnerability and the insight. Each one staggers toward some sort of clarity in way that scares everyone else, and I often remember the circumstances in which I wrote them. I typed Desire Lines into my phone whilst in the basement of the Parisian club, Les Bains. When I finished it, I looked up to find a new group of strangers, poised to make friends with me. I wonder how many more friends I could have made had I stopped to look up once in a while.

I have attention span problems now. I can really see it when I try to write anything. I can't go a few lines before grabbing for my phone and checking things, researching, generally figuring out what the rest of the world is up to. When I read, I feel bad for not writing and when I write, I feel bad for not reading. My mind is a like failing hard disc, my heart is a tangled mess of cords. I sometimes revisit conversations in the knowledge that it's all extremely fragmented, and I grieve, knowing that between the two of us, I am the only one who bothers to remember. As such, I redirect my attention and make synthpop at a frantic pace, all sugary and hectic. I love it completely. I do it for my younger self. 

I often think Plague essays are essential, and they would cure me, but I wonder if my heart or mind is really up to it. I think of how I'd still give anything for his name on a screen. It's a slogan for my ultimate fucking cure, and I wonder if I could commission someone to catfish me and lure me into a state of artificial peace. I long for this ineffectual casualness, a dialogue which discharges the connection of all its electricity. It needn't be so electrified in my heart anymore. I want to see a cad for a cad, and to relieve myself of some grief. I've earned myself some relief after all this time.

Disorientation

I remember that moment of vague consciousness, when our bus steadily wound round the steep cliffs of Como. It was night and I could no longer see the lake or the mountains, only darkness and distant pin-pricks of light. We weren't saying anything to each other, we were just listening to random selections from the folder, Italo Disco.

I put on Lost in the Night by Costas Charitodiplomenos. I had been singing it constantly in Milan, especially, much like I had sung Roxette's Fading Like a Flower in Stockholm. He would never tell me to shut up, in fact he'd often join in, perhaps in an attempt to create some future musical association.

In spite of my singing its lyrics over and over, I had never paused to consider its poetics: lost in the night, walking alone, lost in the night, left on my own, lost in the night, looking for love, lost in the night, drifting I'm looking for your love...

All of a sudden, I became inexplicably captivated by the tragedy of Lost in the Night. I fell in love with the idea of wandering through a city's back streets, disorientated by grief. There was something beautiful about his desperate and relentless imaginings, hearing her voice, seeking her ghost.

I would soon drift off, but I would later revisit those lyrics, again and again. I doubt I can ever faithfully identify why I am so drawn to it, especially since it had taken so long to develop that personal resonance. It somehow means more now.

He is condemned, forever haunted. Never to find his way back.

Witty