"Sometimes you see right through me!" howled the figure on stage, eyes closed and knuckles white around the microphone stand, strangling the black plastic. Rolling drums and crashing cymbals urged them on, guitar chords tugging them forward and up, heads and hands and hearts raised in a quivering, shifting urgency as the front rows pleaded for... release? Love? Acceptance? Comfort? Something individual, personal, powerful.

Summer nights, berkshire vice, no ring to that turn and no heart to price. Long they last, the nights where the day has delayed the onset of darkness, the productive time, closeted behind curtains and dimmed lights. The monitor's bleached glow demands me to write, hypnotises me into filling my time with whatever I care to spill out onto it's pixellated visage.

Sitting in his chair he let the music wash over him. Every crescendo saw his balled fist hammer his leg; every beat made his head nod. His voice, so quiet in speech and manner when with others, dragged lyrics from his throat in serrated, raw timbres. His other hand raked through his hair, drew it's nails across his chest, tapped out the maddened melody on the air and squeezed the flesh of his shoulder, a self-made hug. In reality, alone; mentally, his was the voice that screamed in pain, the creator of tortured anthems, the wronged who cried for succour. As the song peaked and the instruments were welded together in a fury of harsh dissonance his movements became more frenzied. Emotions surged though him and red marks blossomed on thigh and chest and shoulder. And then, subsidence. The song ended and he was alone again, left only with the sobs of unbound catharsis.

Flowers. Stars. Scars. Blood. Eyes. Hearts. Tears that fall like rain. Rain that falls like tears. Razors. Red. Black. Pink. Fire. Bone.

Everything means something, nothing exists in isolation. My tools are words, and every word is linked to something whether it be physical, emotional, intangible, whatever. Words must be chosen with care, complicated by the variety of images and associations each person has for their own private lexicon. I say door, and you 'see' a door, you imagine it. But your door is not my door. Properties, those that define 'doorness', these are shared. But variables exist, colour and size and style and shape. Simple example.

Love. I love pizza. I love skiing. I love my niece. I love my parents. I love you. One word, many meanings. What is the commonality? Strength of feeling perhaps (forgive me, I lack a dictionary), toward... something.

"I love you" he said, and her heart leapt at the words. How she had longed to have him say that, how she herself had longed to hear that from his lips and his alone. But behind him there stood a sign, and on it there was writ large "I want to have sex with you, I want to fuck you, I know if I say this you will be more likely to suck my dick. I love having sex, and by extension I love you". But she doesn't see.

So she, in turn, as lovers do, repeats the phrase. "I love you too" she says, and he smiles and they embrace. And again a sign shadows her, letters clustered together to spell out "I say this to bind you to me, you are mine now, you and I are one. I love the way you make me feel, and I want you to always be here to make me happy". But he doesn't see.

Symbols and signs are the bread and butter of modern life. That woman in the white lab coat and the glasses, she knows if you are ill and how to make you well. That man in the well-made suit with the sober tie, he will tell you what is going on in the world and what is important to know. A lesser scale: that girl with the three Xs tattooed into her skin and the stretched ear lobes, she doesn't drink or smoke or have promiscuous sex and listens to songs about solidarity and struggle. That boy with the peaked cap and the Kappa trousers, he drinks cider and laughs at freaks. Symbols signify parts of ourselves, provide windows on the self, visual summaries of part-identities. They breed expectations.




I want to press ctrl+a, then delete, and see all this go. But no, I click 'post', and now you read, and see what I thought, and what you think, and maybe tomorrow I'll write some more.