On Dark Horses

Originally posted December 6th 2023

I have stopped worrying about natural light for my paintings because there is none. We are in winter, when the sun does come out it is suffocated by clouds. I sit and look at the works and worry over the reflection of the light, I worry that when we reach summer it will turn out the colours were muddied and details were missed. I am working in the dark, trying to piece together images. Because where I work, my bedroom, has no windows, often I walk into the kitchen and find myself surrounded by black silhouettes of furniture. I’m surprised by the lack of light despite this happening every year since forever. I check the time and am shocked.

I am making myself paint again, not to seek out inspiration but to practice because I like it. I tried and failed to take an proper break until next year, thinking that if I decide to take time away, I could come back refreshed. But I grew restless, having not touched my brushes in some time. Sometimes you’re lucky and it calls to you, and it would be silly not to answer.

Now I find myself working away in the evenings, as if time is running out, trying to get what needs to be done before I wash my hands and make dinner. I’ll admit to enjoying the rush, the inexplicable need to finish a piece of art. Perhaps I don’t sit with them long enough, perhaps I should do more colour studies, more sketches, work out every minor detail before committing to canvas. I’ve never been one for such patience. Maybe the work is not that good but I have a lot of it, so you can never say I am not a working artist. There is a moment when I start up again of great relief that it was not in fact a phase but something I am continually driven to do. I still find it strange that I have committed my adult life to art, it never feels quite real. The unreality of it is because it’s quite simple: You observe and interpret. As I think is clear by now I tend to over complicate things, because to over complicate is conflated something with intelligence. Intelligence must be convoluted, wordy and maze-like. But then you meet intelligent people and there is no over-compensation. You overwork a painting then someone comes in and does one or two simple lines and fixes the whole thing. I’m finding it’s better to make a piece of work that might not be that great than no work at all.

The baby pink vinyl for Emma Ruth Rundle’s On Dark Horses spins midday Sunday. The pink does not suit the atmosphere of such a haunting album. Similar to the lime green of Fenne Lily’s On Hold, aesthetics over indications. I wish to listen to On Dark Horses with nobody there, including myself. I have thought to film my apartment as the music plays and I go out, to later witness the empty rooms. Perhaps I intend to see it as a ghost would, a still yet moving image. The music is anything but still. Guitars swaying, an absurd attempt at ethereal, as one would think the strings of heaven would not be so loud, but something about the style reminds me of Christian rock bands of the early 2000s. This is not an album played too often due to its intensity, a little Brooklyn apartment seems to be the wrong setting for it. It needs to be looking over the flats of the Midwest, the mountains of Montana or the swamps of Louisiana, far from southern California where the singer hails from. But sometimes it is necessary to play, more often my speakers are playing a lighter kind of folk or instrumentals, something that does not interrupt the space. Rundle’s music is too easy to get caught up in, one can’t focus on chores or painting, it demands you pay attention to it. So much begs for attention but not much of it actually keeps you in place. So I sit and pay attention.

I’ve been dreaming again. So much so that I wake up feeling as if I have not slept. In one dream it was simple, it was my birthday and many people were there, though no faces were familiar to me in the dream they were dear friends. The room was lit by many candles. It was warm. Someone hugged me and it was the most perfect hug. Do you ever wake from a dream and miss it?

I have been fighting against daydreams as of late. The temptation to stare off into space and escape. Often times, my daydreams are not too dissimilar to my actual life, just with more people in it. I have spent much of my 20s behaving selfishly. I used much of my “conditions” as an excuse not to show up for others, and now it is terribly quiet. I fear I will be someone on their death bed telling others to “open up”, though I would not be able to tell them how. All I can hope for is that my loneliness bumps into yours and disrupts it, even for a moment.

My dreams often involve walking on the beach with friends, some real some not. And then I wake up upset because we did not actually live those moments, that I have not spoken to that person in months. That perhaps, though I feel intensely tethered to others, they are not so much to me. And that is a very lonely feeling. It is embarrassing, to know that while others move on I feel as if it were only yesterday we last spoke and shared moments of clarity about life and love and everything. It is easier to feel that time is passing around others. The dreams merely remind me how long it’s been since I’ve sat with another and spoke with sincerity.

Is it just getting older that ones dreams go from fantastical to mundane? From rock stardom to the act of coming home to someone, who hopefully, understands you. Perhaps it has always been about being seen. And the pain of someone seeing you and choosing to look away. Maybe I’m wrong about love (probably), maybe it’s not two people stood in a room in silence. Maybe I’ve convinced myself it’s about silence because then I am closer to love, because no one else is here. Maybe love is noise, something to dance to. Perhaps my dreams are only dreams and not absolute truth.

I had a dream about taking the train, it was like the Overground but like any dream, it’s never quite correct. I didn’t know where I was going but I decided it didn’t matter, all that mattered was that I was on the train. Whatever happened it didn’t matter. I on occasion cannot help but fall into nihilism.

The other night I saw the devil in my room, I opened my eyes and saw the goat horns in the corner, the silhouette so perfect it must have been them. I turned on the light and it disappeared. I couldn’t figured out what had made that shape, so I left the light on until the sun started to rise. I took it as a bad omen, not that the actual devil is after me, but I’d wager seeing a goat headed man is never a sign of good health. But maybe I should treat it as just a dream, but then all my other dreams fall apart too. If it is just a dream, a vision in the dark, no standing in reality, then does that mean the dream of the candlelit birthday is not a vision of the future? To disregard one dream is to disregard them all.

It is now late afternoon on Sunday and the black vinyl of Nine Inch Nail’s Add Violence is playing. It has rained all day. The overhead light has been switched off in favour of the bedside lamp, shaped like an orb, and a couple candles. The final song on the record The Background World, has an intentional skip during the ending instrumental. I thought my record had a scratch only to learn it’s there in all versions, virtual and physical. And I thought “you pretentious bastards” with a laugh because the song cuts off satisfaction, the piece loops, as does the skip, getting more and more distorted, until it eventually becomes a fog of static. But the skip, a brief pause from the noise, does not allow you to lose yourself in the music. You are continually cut back to reality.

I got a new desk. It feels a bit more proper than the free white ikea one that was accidentally brought in the move, it was meant to stay in the old flat but it served me well these past two months. The new desk, well secondhand off Craigslist, is wood and metal. That farmhouse industrial look every cheap bit of furniture seems to be made of these days. But it’s big and a good height, so $50 well spent. My sister and I had to carry it for 20 minutes in the rain. It was not heavy but its weight is not evenly distributed making for an uncomfortable carry home. We were marching up and down the same streets we walked two nights earlier, but then it was midnight and we’d finished our time at the arcade and went to the jazz bar for one last drink. Our timing lucked out, as it was the final hour of music. It was not as busy as the last time we went, and there seemed to be a restlessness to the show that wasn’t there before. Maybe people just wanted to go home. For a Friday night at 1am, I was surprised how quiet the streets were, the clubs we went to not even at half capacity. We passed by what looked like a very hip club, lots of cool kids stood out front smoking. Americans don’t make an effort for smoking sections, you have to do it in the street. But even there there was no queue to get in, the glimpse I got inside looked about as full as the other places. I wondered where everyone was? Perhaps, due to the cost of living, the house party is making a come back, but then I considered it’s not as easy as it once was to have those. Maybe everyone is at home, asleep. Maybe everyone is in Manhattan. Is nightlife dead or am I just in a dead area? Perhaps I’ll know more once my brother-in-law gets to New York, as he is an event organiser, an avid maker of rave flyers, perhaps I just don’t know where it’s all happening.

Fka Twigs ending her sophomore album Magdalene with Cellophane is a subversion of conventional album track listing. Typically, the lead single is at the beginning, track 3 or 4, most albums final song have an air of hope or intensity, loud instrumental sections, proclamations of continuing on. All loose ends tied up, the story ended. I think of My Chemical Romance’s Famous Last Words, perhaps the greatest album closure of all time (arguably, but I stand by it) but it is a conventional album ender. Twigs instead ends her album with the greatest breakup song and you are left with it. It’s like she handed it off to you and walked away, now you’re confused as to what to do with it. “Didn’t I do it for you” ringing in your ear. It’s open ended, leaving you feeling incomplete, much like the narrator of the album.

Thank you for reading,

Enya xx