Sinister: With Love and Squalor

[Nicholas Passant]

So I got bored of other people having things to do,
and I got bored of writing in a diary that claimed to
have shut down three times already, and I got bored of
sitting before an empty window in an empty room and
staring at empty pages.

“I was bored”, I say, and let the moralists scrap over
the cracks in my justification.  I have Jean-Charles
Denis on my side, and it’s not often that one can
claim that.

How to explain my protracted absence from Sinister.. 
“I was ever a misanthrope”, I remember claiming..  But
you shouldn’t listen to that kind of silliness.  It’s
the kind of thing I say in an attempt to make friends.
 

For one whose life takes the form of a succession of
skits based around the theme of old jazz standards, it
is dangerous to linger on descriptions and anecdotes
as a basis for common ground..  It is dangerous to
pinpoint moments of clarity and eloquence and place
these at the heart of relationships.  It is dangerous
to do anything but shake hands now and again and say
“how do you do?” and then lapse into a silence of
broken glasses and late night discos.

I began writing a book instead, and became scared that
people would read it.  One of you might have profited
had I retained my willpower in that respect, and I
regret too much to say more.  I sat up until the wee
small hours instead, reading.  In the whole of North
London, only one bedroom light was still visible as I
finished..  “One other and I seeing out the darkness”,
I thought.  “Only one other.  And I bet they’re not
reading Dostoyevsky!”  That’s what I thought.  

I began to hatch plans instead, more in hope than
expectation.  But hatching plans, I discovered, is
very different from having ideas.  Plans presuppose
action on my part, a pushing against circumstance, an
idea plus friction.  Hatching plans is a dangerous
business too, and you know I try to stay away from
that kind of thing, like moths to a flame.  

We shall move away from London in a few weeks now. 
That was the plan, the plan I crept along with, when I
wasn’t speaking to you.  Still, we muddle along with
our own jobs and our own lives and everything in
London seems to have seconds ticking away on the face
of it.  A countdown.  I used to write songs about
countdowns, about the time until the future starts or
until the past stops.  The songs were just ideas, and
bad ones at that.  But a plan is a good thing.  All
plans are good if they come to fruition.

Some of you I might see in Glasgow.  It would be a
delight.

And it’s not often that one can claim that.

Nicholas Passant x


=====

------------------------------------------
The <passantconsiderable at cwctv.net> account is now defunct. 

All replies here, or to <npassant at hotmail.com>.


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