In The Night Factory

Ladies and gentleman, I have before me a person whom I had once befriended in the past. His name is Gary I think I remember. I knew him for quite some time in the eighties. You say that his face is not real but I say that that is not what matters. You see him lying there on the table with his eyes glazed over, a wooden doll you think, a mannequin, one that you might find in shop windows but no, watch this, watch my actions now. I begin projecting my thoughts onto him like this look, waving my arms like so. You can see immediately a small flow of blood beginning to run through the veins there, just there, look, where I'm pointing. The inert object will then miraculously become alert. Look! his arms, they are grabbing the table. No need to be alarmed, he won't hurt you. He is harmless, really.

I have now shown that I can project my memories onto limp body of a friend and resuscitate it temporarily to life. It is next my aim prove to you that it is possible to carry out some unfinished conversations or indeed say in reality what I had wanted to say long ago but could not. Now, with him there breathing in front of me, I can reflect upon bad ideas and apologise for my being so insensitive in situations past, no questions asked. I will take him for a trip out and around my home, explaining about my life now and how I’ve changed, how I’ve altered my clothing style etc. We will probably have to cut the odd sentence short, you know, try not to fall into the same old behavioural patterns. We attempt to break the strange new silences. We launch into familiar conversations, argue, fight, but then you cannot expect old habits to die just like that on the first night.

Finding that I have less common with him than I had thought I find trouble capturing neither quite the same atmosphere of rebelliousness nor the intensity of emotion that once first drove our friendship. Trying in vain to remember and recreate crazy situations that have been lost in memory we get increasingly frustrated. Inevitably, towards the end of the day he will get tired and slowly loose breathe, crumpling to a heap, head crashing loosely against the floorboards. In the end there is never enough time to say what you want to say. I place him back safely inside the cupboard, lean him up against the side like so. He will be O.K. there till later when I will probably resuscitate him again. Even though I know that it will not be successful I still try. Until, after a while, he no longer re-awakens and keeps perpetually falling to the ground.

# posted by Neil @ 3:23 pm