The song that plays is Speed Trials. The first track on his album Either/Or. She doesn’t know the album will play in its entirety, and yet somehow, she does. The hushed vocals and delicate guitar have an immediate effect on her, the same as they always do. It’s one of her favourite albums, and she plays it whenever she’s sad, which is pretty much always. Breathing deeply, and calmly, she slows her rate of spin, and as her heartbeat adjusts itself to the new rhythm, the paintbrush in her hand becomes a part of her. Like an extension of herself, but also like a new limb, offering her a renewed lease of life while at the same time allowing her to balance her joys and suffering to a greater level of precision than she’s usually capable of. Saying that, she’s never capable of balancing her joys and suffering. Only when she’s in the creative act does she even come anywhere close. Coming to a halt, she points the brush to the canvas and lets it drift in search of a place to start as if it were a divining rod. With a life of its own, it dictates the movement of her hand. It reminds her of the time she used a spirit board, and how the planchette moved with a life of its own revealing to her the nature of the one she sought so desperately. Shaking the memory from her head, she gazes intently at the bristles on the end of the brush, and with everything she has, wills it to make contact with the canvas stretched out before her.

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon UK

X and I: A Novel and A Journal for Damned Lovers on Amazon US