LET

Let there be light.

Hard to tell when it started to feel it getting darker and more claustrophobic on our island of shrivelled dreams and partitioned visions. It’s almost impossible to see anything on the horizon or the horizon itself but that’s only when the eyes are open. Might be  better to look forwards with the eyes closed  and  keep hope harnessed to deeper lights .

Out on the street Lenny talks about his education, his ability to read and write (not books) , his possible flat next week and  time round the bits of London we have both lived/loved and even while I am looking at his half mouth of teeth he talks me into visibility and the light in his eyes flickers as he calls me A Lady of Leisure. He can see the waste of time in my days .

Watching the Messiah recently revived by Patrick Barlow from 1980 I am watching Hugh Dennis and side kick imprint themselves on a text thick with images of  prison visits, method dancing and a tangle of personal  and professional desire. A tangle that turned the Kilburn High Road into a schizophrenic pub crawl , an alcohol fuelled pilgrimage that arrived (until the day that it didn’t ) legless and wild eyed onto the stage .

We pictured , in as it were, the minds eye -the light. The hypocritical, hopeful, tragic and comic light. The clumsy, angry misguided light. The flickering, nearly going out visionary light. The stupid, inspired, pretentious light. I was watching a dead man stalk the stage in a dinner suit – ghosting the present version and when I closed my eyes Lenny came to me – sauntering off into the station laughing and saying –

Let there be light.