Rerun in Silverlines

an ode to the artist who owns my heart

picture taken by me

The sound vibrates through my body as if I am the instrument it’s playing, I let the music carry my weightless body as I defy the laws of gravity.

The beat is steady, grounding, soothing, all-consuming and ever-familiar. I let this fever dream take control over my body, and every thought of war and politics, injustice and uncertainty, blood and tolerated criminality, fades from my grasp until all that’s left is the moment playing out in front of me.

Blinding lights, striking views, the sun in the middle of a darkened room, her solar system, oh how grateful I am to be her planet, amongst so many different planets, unique for their moons yet ever-the same, as we orbit and admire the star that keeps us centred, yet moving, solid, steady, swift like a soaring bird in the sky, graceful, grateful, alive with no thought of ever wanting to die.

She burns and her light lights us up, she sings and her song softens our souls, she dances and twirls and we follow her trail, a path of flowers, train-rails with no train but a purpose, a destination, a goal to leave this world a little lighter than we found it.

And it works, it works so well! And I’m feeling, can you tell? I feel this silk thread of happiness weave itself through my bloodstream, I feel the sunlight on my face give me all I need to keep going, I feel time slipping and memory coming to life, and think of how lucky I am, to have moments to remember, to gather the fallen petals of flowers I memorised, they won’t live forever, they can’t, you see, but the flowers are but part of the blueprint of me.

So I let this moment reform the outline of something unsustainable, let the ink of the imaginary blueprint dry, tend to the garden so that the trail of flowers is clear and let the sun burn bright in my memory.

For eventually, Closing Time must

knock   on     your     door,

and you must open up, let reality in once more,

but keep in mind, sweet star in disguise,

if you’ve lost [yourself] again in a world of lies,

you can always draw a

---

I feel like I all too often get carried away by this dense cloud of sadness and see writing as my way of keeping that cloud stable, but I deem it equally important to tell you I do find ways to make it rain sometimes, of finding that lost elation and letting it fill me up.

As some of you may know, on Monday night, I went to see one of my favourite artists ever live (Asha Banks) and it was one of those moments memory can’t do justice, nothing truly can, but if I try hard enough, I might capture glimpses of it through my writing, which is what these words you just read (which I thank you for!) are. I generally write these kinds of things in my diary, but I wanted to share my joy with you, for I’m just so so happy! So I rewrote this fragment of my diary for you, I hope you like it! Have a wonderful day, my loves!

With love, Ella