Places I’ve Never Been.

That live inside me.

There's great pleasure in squeezing solitude out of time. Watching the phone ring whilst blowing O’s and listening to records. I don’t hear her voice anymore when the turntable spins. When it goes quiet, I can’t help but hear, now—the silence.

Time doesn’t exist save for the repercussions of punctuality. Too much solitude will make you believe that. It’s not true but it sounds good. When time goes out the window, so does space, so does all the furniture, so does anything that holds any fixture on reality. I keep my eyes straight but the world tilts anyway. Love droops along the navel. It settles somewhere between her thighs, and I don’t know what I want anymore, but it’s closer than I ever could have imagined. It’s as close as one breath is to the next, as subtle as the snowflake that breaks the avalanche into motion.

The right song will do that. It’ll knit movement into the fabric of now. It’ll pull me closer towards moments past, make me feel the whisks of old air on my skin. I’m left gripping the carpet till my nails break off. Flying. To a room with walls as strong as air, paint as dry as water, nothing fixed, nothing clear. I’ve never been there, but the sofa shows prints of where I’ve sat, the floor holds scuffs from the black-soled boots beneath my feet, and the disposition of these objects unmistakably requires and implies—me.

The right song will do that. It’ll coax nostalgia into the moment. It’ll make you live inside it the way you live inside your body. Seamlessly.

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“They live for today
For tomorrow they may
Not be able to walk in the skies”
— Florence, Italy.

Italian laughter in the rose garden, lipgloss sweetness in the air, her eyes strike sharp and dark and deep. Cloaked in shadows the way I slid through the entrails of Galleria dell’Accademia, she hid coward truths in wandering eyes. It was never real the same way those statues stood, immobile. Juncture, the way she loved the idea of me.

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“I was down for you
At one point in my life
Down for you”
—Aventura, MIA

Jealousy haunted me slowly, then all at once. I couldn’t stop looking for answers in the pool. Couldn’t stop hearing whispers between the palm leaves that rattled over one another. A blue and purple blip in time, Miami club lights meshing into my heart. I hid unwelcome thoughts behind Piña coladas and half-moon slices of watermelon. Only lunatics look for purgatory in paradise.

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“Express your love
Express your love
Express your love
Express your love”
—Naaldenveld, NED

For most of my life, I mistook the cries of pigeons for owls. In the cries of ordinariness, I imagined magic. How many times did I fall for it? The way fire bristles when you blow it, her beauty flittered into black smoke. The cloth around my eyes shifted, and the greatest tragedy was pretending I didn’t notice.

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I picked apples in the field and discovered a spy between the leaves. The breath of my conscience moistening the back of my neck. It was me I’d heard in the rose garden, me, whose sweetness festered in the light. My coldness curled in smoke. I was forlorn.

The feelings that engulf you as a youth stay with you all your life. Martin Amis said something like that, and it made me wonder about all the lands I’d been banished to. Whilst I felt these moments in sharpened clarity, I can’t tell you for certain that I was there when they occurred. They exist as replicas of what once was. Places I’ve never been. Ruins to another time.

There’s a perilous comfort in inhabiting such space. Perilous because it’s not real. Comforting because it feels like it is. A kind of consolation too, in knowing that when exiled from here and now, there’s somewhere you can turn to. Somewhere you can go to pick up the pieces. Recollection.

So what if it’s not real? Such moments are alive, inside. The way shards of laughter and frozen tears hold the weight of a life lived. We all travel within—yet few can draw from recollection the way a painter draws paint along the hairs of his brush. Few find séance in the blurred truths between reality and fantasy. Few utilise recollection as a path towards congruence. Those who do, find a road in hidden tracks.

-iL.

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Thank you for the immense support i’ve seen over the last few weeks here on Substack. It was unexpected and I’m grateful for all the new faces that have joined, welcome.

Alongside continued writing, Bluezone will be publishing short films every month.

The second film will be releasing next week (!) for all patrons. In the meantime, here are a few screen grabs from the upcoming film. If you’d like to watch the film, you can become a paid subscriber and receive it as soon as it’s out!

-iL.