A piece of artwork I made in response to what happened...
difficult to pin down... summer 2007...
July 2007 | Penryn, Cornwall, UK
When I look back and revisit the past, there were moments of epiphany when I knew things were never going to be the same. Meeting Shev was one of those moments - he taught me all that's good about love. And I was watching the madness slowly consume him. The mania slowly crept up on him and was accompanied by newly found delusions of grandeur. It took about a month. The lucid moments became fewer and fewer, and it was like watching a long, slow, torturous, painful death. He felt it coming, 'Sach, I know something's happening to me I just don't know what, but whatever happens, please remember I love you'. As his shadow-self emerged, his voice changed; and as his voice changed, the mania intensified; and as the mania intensified, he became sleep deprived; and soon he was caught in a loop tearing round Delhi trying to get it on with every woman who smiled at him for he was suddenly God’s Gift Incarnate. His most precious books along with my letters were torn up and scattered around the city that never sleeps. Sacrificial offerings to Shiva, the God of Death, Destruction and Reincarnation.
When he was finally brought round three weeks later, all that remained was a cold, closed heart
barely beating,
running on lithium
'questions of science;
science and progress
do not speak as loud as my heart
tell me you love me
come back and haunt me
oh, and I rush to the start'
It's been five years and one month since Shev flew out of his burning bed to dance with Shiva’s dead. There's not much left to remind me of us: one letter, a mug, a small picture of a naïve, or perhaps the word is native, dancing man, his Grandmother’s shawl, a handful of photographs, three silver bangles, Salman Rushdie's 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories' and four playlists, beaten with tears, scratched with wear and stuck on a loop. The second one we made together on my last night in India, 30th March 2007, and the last time I saw Shev. We called it 'A Moment a Minute aka Just Married'. That was just before I fell asleep whilst we watched Eternal Sunshine, our limbs effortlessly entwined.
For months, no, probably years those songs served as a conduit to transport me back so I could remember because I was so scared that I may forget. Today, five years on, I know I'll never forget. The details have faded and lie dormant in my cells, but Shev often comes when I'm sleeping to that liminal dream space somewhere betwixt and between.