We agreed to attend the writing course together; of course I knew you wouldn’t appear. ‘I’ll make my own way there’ was a sentence bound in fatality, a lonely sentence. I acquiesced; possessed as I was in the belief that we two may change the world with pith and pen, me almost present – you as Mr Benn in constant flux, but vibrant from afar. Your bowler hat too big for your head, your absence – a black star. What you missed I can barely express, which I’m sure you’ll agree, must be irony? You’ll know better than I. All those monumental words, meaning massive things, so hard to keep track of, so hard to remember. But anyhow:
Mr Beckett explained how to be still and listen
to your own thoughts. How to find meaning in the
mundane. How washing the pots can be a form
of prayer, and how falling asleep is always an awakening,
believing you belong, just where you are.
Of course he rattled on about enjamb
ment, and how rhyme is a crime when delivered out of
time. All that stuff, but man what a fellow, what a bellowing
breach of bewilderment he blew, what internal thoughts
he massaged out and laid bare, right there, beneath the
LED lighting in a room full of pale faces 16x16m square.
You’d have hated it.
I wish you were there.
Listen
