How can I put this? I dreamt Satan spat on me the other night. Not a regular demon or some fallen, confused angel. No. The father of lies himself, looking right at me amidst the crowd, at that corner of the street where I used to go and paint but can’t anymore because the police is after me now.
Things are losing their primal wonder. They’re getting complicated but that’s a good sign, a healthy sign. It means they’re are getting real.
I spent a whole summer living out of very little food and lots of inspiration and magic and wonder and work, oh Lord, what a work, to paint, and trust the net would appear as I jump… It did. And all these wonderful things happened to me.
But horror is back, crawling its way again into my bed at night.
I’ve got so many fears inside of me. And thoughts and terrors and unspoken anger. They’re eating me alive. It’s like a pet-cancer you can name and do nothing about. Just how many? How many notebooks are in my parents’ house, sleeping in the garage, filled with whatever non-sense I couldn’t handle on my own on a regular Tuesday?
In person, in the street, on stage or out there in the world, you will see me smile and sing, and listen to your stories and it will all be genuine. I’d fill of colours all of my paintings. Like the old man would say: ‘I care so much I’m sick’. ¹
But here… Between those pages, Lidy. I cannot lie. There is darkness in my mind. And the only way I know to put it out of my system is through this: whatever the medium, the first thing that comes to my mind! A verse? I’ll get drunk on it. A melodic line on the piano? I’ll sing my lungs out. A familiar look on an unknown face? I’ll paint, and paint and paint and see dawn before I figure out why I’m in so much pain.
Whatever it is, I once rhymed:
They are what they are:
poems.
Or better said,
I was born with these chains. ²
That’s why I write. Because I must.
…
Meanwhile, I’m writing all these things sitting on a bench in a IXth century palace patio, for free.
Isn’t it a crazy thing? I cry.
Being alive. —
The view from the bench — Museu Frederic Marès, Barcelona.
¹ : Fahrenheit 451, George Orwell.
² : Imperfect, a poem I wrote in 2025.
