The camera is rolling before my crazy blue moon eyes. Deep behind the black pupils the tears are welling up inside like a neglected mossy concrete fountain.
I am sitting in a room in the Corner House being interviewed by a charitable organisation for a media campaign being rolled out for a mental health project called Pathfinder.
A mic is fitted, the lighting is adjusted, and the female interviewer is running through the scripted answers with a fine-tooth comb. I feel like a Hollywood movie star, without the wedge, glamour, or self-entitlement. And, as the questions are posed, I apply a cast iron mask for the camera lens.
The probing nature of the question’s transport me back to a graveyard moment buried deep in the shadows of the memorial vaults of time…
…And a claustrophobic police cell where the trauma was already growing thick gnarly roots into the cold concrete floor. As I banged on the door demanding release, the tragic voices of my family and friends were being patched through the intercom. I was caged, brutalised, and on the pen pushing charge sheet. For the crime of hearing Voices. Lost, forgotten, and abandoned in the deathly hallows of the Soul Asylums…
The female interviewer is feeding me lines, prompting answers, and putting the corporate polish on proceedings, as inside I feel my long-suffering gut being ripped out and wrung out for the camera. But I am far from spilling my guts, busy deflecting and reflecting the answers she wants to hear. I am wondering if anyone really wants to hear the unbelievable truth behind my traumatic Pathfinder story.
The black mists from the memorial vaults of time are now cascading into the interview room – vaping through the crack under the door, rolling in through the open window, and pouring out of the abandoned Victorian fireplace.
As the camera films my side profile, out of the firing line of my crazy blue moon eyes. Tear ducts dry as ice. I am back in the room…
…And back in the solitary confinement of my prison cell where I am sitting on a hard plastic chair, smoking for England, tossing the remains of hand rolled cigarettes onto a growing mountain of ashen butts in the corner of the seven-by-seven-foot room. Soul in temporary decay. Waiting for the batons of the riot police squad, while tuning into the cool prison banter of inmates flooding up the prison walls like dry ice…
As the curtains are drawn on the interview, the black & white clapper board slams shut. We move outside for a few photos framed against some green foliage while sitting on a memorial park bench. Leaving the Corner House, I walk into the sunshine and sunbeams, left wondering how I’m going to find the true path back home.
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