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You, stranger! Why have you taken up residence in my head? You surface when I walk in the woods, when I hear a song, when I lay in my quiet moments? You entered my life with the briefness of a falling snowflake. Yet, you hide in my vaults. Friendly ghosts from other lives. Our ephemeral moments are as detailed as a 17th century Baroque painting. I ask, why are you there when all other fleeting occurrences dissolve in the liquid default of memory? Yet, you travel with me, shimmering in my consciousness like the gentle, mesmerising freshness of an energised snow globe. Transcending space and time, you share my passage in life.
1963: The Incongruity of Self-Awareness
I was six years old. You had this routine. Every Sunday at 11am, you would come round the back of my Govan tenement building and stand on a box. Wearing your bowtie and and suit jacket, you were out of place in a working men's environment; you looked like a music hall artist. You took a swig of wine and sang Mario Lanza’s Be My Love, a favourite song of my fathers. And every week, when you finished, my mother would open her purse, throw out some coins, close her purse and say, ‘why doesn’t that darn man not sing something new?’ she would say whilst wiping her eyes with her hanky.