Some presences cannot be seen.
Yet they have an effect.
There are days when gentleness becomes a
discipline, a herbal tea, a few colours, a
piece of music.
Nothing makes the pain go away. Yet something
may appear alongside it.
I’m making myself a coconut-vanilla herbal tea.
It is no longer willpower that drives me; it is
discipline that gently takes over.
It leads me to the drawing.
The damp cold is outside.
I recognise it within me too.
Yet I know there will be better days.
In the meantime, I just have to get through this one.
I carry on, I persevere, I remain.
I remain in this day with what weighs me down and what,
despite everything, continues to reach me.
Mozart is with me.
His music is an invisible substance, a
form, a colour.
Each note passes through my sternum.
It spreads throughout my body like a
pink mist, a gentle warmth, a presence
without a face.
An invisible orchestra unfolds around me.
It takes nothing away from my pain, but it offers it a
counterpoint.
The pain is still there. So is the music. They
do not follow one another. They exist at the same
moment. One constricts, the other spreads. Two
intensities pass through the same body without becoming
confused.
In drawing, I rediscover this coexistence. A
line may meet another without making it
disappear. One colour can respond to
another without covering it. The page can hold them both;
together.
Counterpoint takes nothing away from what is already there. It
allows something else to exist at the same time.
