I came from a very narrow place, you see. That has to be understood. I came from a very narrow place indeed – I am at a loss to say how narrow it was! You wouldn’t understand – how could you? How could anyone understand? You can only relate what I’m saying to your own understanding, to your own experience, and your own understanding or experience will simply not suffice here. What I call narrowness is actually a horror – it doesn’t exist in nature and there is absolutely no need for us to invent it and yet invent it we do, much to our detriment! Why would anyone invent something that is a horror, you might as? Why indeed. Why indeed. Is there a need for horror, is there some kind of unconscious compulsion to create it? If hell didn’t exist would we therefore be driven to invent it? ‘Don’t worry folks’, the official spokesman tells us, ‘we’ve got our very best minds on the job. We’ll invent a hell you can be proud of!’ ‘Did you invent that hell all by yourself?’ you ask incredulously. ‘Sure I did’, I reply smugly, ‘I came up with it all by myself’. I am however haunted by the feeling that I have been swindled, that I have been short-changed in some way that I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s like feeling that someone is taking the piss out of you but not being sure enough of this to actually say anything. You just have to swallow down your rage and try your best to put a brave face on it. You follow your dreams as you are supposed to, you follow your dreams as everyone says you should, and then – after a long, long journey – you eventually discover that they weren’t your dreams at all. ‘What is this shit,’ you roar in your confusion and despair – ‘what is this abominable filth?’ You stagger drunkenly down the street, unable to process the sheer enormity of what you have just discovered. You’re swaying slowly from side to side in an imaginary crosswind, a wind that only you can feel. Will you make it to your destination or not? Nobody cares of course. Nobody gives a damn. Why should they? If hell didn’t exist then we’d have no choice but to invent it. The days are long it’s true but not long enough to contain all the foolishness that we have contained in our heads, the foolishness that is waiting to burst out, wanting to burst out. That pestilential foolishness is always wanting to burst out, isn’t it? It needs somewhere to go; it needs to manifest itself. It has to manifest itself and we have no choice but to allow it to do this. We have to honour the foolishness that exists within us; we don’t want to but that is the task that awaits us, that is the task we can’t shirk, no matter how reluctant we might be.