fear

 There are moments of fear… not a fear of being alone, but a fear of being disconnected from everyone to the extent that, if I were to die right now, there would be no funeral, there would be no gathering, there would merely be sadness for my father and brother and a wondering at what happened. People say ‘give my name as your emergency contact’ but even I can’t get a response out of them. An emergency contact is someone who should suspect something is wrong. If that person doesn’t hear from you for a full day, they know something is wrong. 

                  It is difficult to relate to people. They seek marriage, children, ownership… they don’t like music, they lead such lives of convention. I have always been a loner. I have always sought and loved the solitude of a quiet room at home, far from the crowd. Inside the room, as a child, I would play with figures, making them play ‘soccer’. I’d use a marble as their ball and build goal posts using two pencils and a ruler (the crossbar). I'd stick to my cupboard door with plasticine. Hours would pass that way. Then I turned to the pencils themselves… and paper. Writing the words buried deep inside that captured my fear of being so different that I simply didn’t think I could cope or develop like other people. All I had was my imagination, my love of stationery, the love of the site of letters forming on paper and, later, came computers and keyboards with the digital page. Every page is blank and it can be daunting but it can be a beautiful portal of inspiration and creation. 

                  But this was the late 70s and early 80s… it was almost a disgrace to like writing and dreaming and being alone. It was considered the activity of dropouts and failures. In many ways, more than 40 years later, I suppose it still is considered this way. And, at the moment, we seem to be in evolutionary reverse. Today, the pen, the page, the keyboard, the screen, the letter, the word are even more important to me than they ever were before. They are the powers that ground me and remind me that everything is not simply a rush and a race, a competition and a fight.