beauty, history, the freshest air,
no money though.
So between these residencies – which lasted a
week, two weeks, a month sometimes – I was on my
cousin’s sofa –
a buyer for a department store, a failed violinist,
an insomniac –
the space in which I slept was the space in which
she was always and very awake.
Main light.
Infernal, main light, Ava.
I tried to overlap these stays away as best I
could, but week by week, month by month, I was either
in some beautiful house – a guest, an interloper – or
attempting sleep on my cousin’s lumpy sofa
while she
paced around the room,
talked anxiously,
chain-smoked,
and played Ysaÿe with a sort of
vengeful vigour.
You play so well! I’d say, my eyes half-
closed. My brain a desiccated mulch.
Everywhere I was slightly in the way.
Everywhere I felt indebted and
embarrassed,
still,
to wander through the topiary at night,
to take a flower, specked with dew and gently turn
its head and gaze into its face,
to don white gloves and leaf the archives…
bliss, Ava.
And a response was all they needed –
something they could put into
their newsletter – proof of artistic nourishment and its
rewards – a modest harvest they could lay before their
funders.
I’m not complaining, Ava.
I mean –
technically I am,
