Blue Nights
Because Nobody Is Owed Awareness
Every so often there’ll be a new, one off essay, something sent to paid for subscribers only.
“Who here is a police officer Lydia? You always have a good story…”
I smile nervously, covering my face. It’s after hours in Soho, the time of day when the outside feels alive. Attention in any form feels inherently incongruous.
Tiny buildings mean the usual suspects drink outside - an overspill often marked off by a cordon. A story is swapped here, contacts exchanged there, a joke woven between the two. It’s May 2022, a time when shadows dance and music plays into the early hours - “CHAMPAGNE!” cries a male voice at every given hour. People watching is almost addictive in this time frame - the gossip that spills into the open like fine wine, the unexpected stories collected in an arts space. It’s where TV began, an escapee from the train to Auschwitz plays live music weekly, the artist’s plot their art. You start to wish for more blue nights like this, moments in time suspended and captured while a world outside continues to turn. It’s a grubby glamour of sorts, a night like this.
The further the outskirts, the pithier the caption of the chalkboards, the more hipster an establishment:
It’s a few weeks after being declared free from infection, but Covid 19 still has its cards to play. In the end I’ll see close to 35 ‘experts’, the majority who lack an empathy in how to speak human, or who leave me to ‘just cope’. If we see a suffering, there is a power in saying ‘I see you’, and listening. Without caveat. I haven’t started to use a cane yet, but trying to maintain a dignity in walking is hard; learning to write again, like an adult would do, is a serious blow. (There may have been serious tears outside the Old Bailey on that one. My ability is still isn’t back fully. I so wish a colleague in any form had hugged me, I feel sad for that person.)
Friends of mine had taken care of me for four days, while every single colleague cancelled on me and didn’t bother to reschedule; they still don’t know how sick I am. Physically weak, continual commuting isn’t going to be possible for a long time - and any work or walk causes a collision course of spiralling symptoms. Such care from people outside of my family is a debt to be paid back in kind, a kindness of humans at their best. This is a magical space - a home stuffed to the rafters with books at every possible surface, posters and photographs everywhere. It’s where the craziest stunts have been dreamed and made tangible from a tiny fragment, where you feel as if you can just do about anything.
It’s now 2024, and one of those friends died 10 days ago. He never tired of my nonsense, the muddle presented by a body not working, while always having time for a good story or two. My heart hurts. He’ll be dancing up there, that much I know, the life and soul of a party that awaits - and what a cast of characters, too. He should have had longer. And knowing that is painful.
Be it a dissection of 1970s cop dramas (never Untouchables!) or a mediation on the news, stories would be traded with a finely tuned sense of humour. The person didn’t matter - anyone and everyone welcome - just as long as they had something to ‘put up.’ He spoke to it all, a wonderful witness as a standby person, without agenda. We are allowed to exist as ourselves and not a preset narrative, we are defined by what we tell ourselves and not the other way round. And the home cooked fish in truffle oil was glorious.
It’s been a while, but I am trying to write another book. There’s a sense of imposter syndrome about it, the re-drafting and shunting about, the lack of space to ‘speak to’ the method to the madness. It feels a bit like an affair - furtive, not to be talked about, something that keeps me awake until dawn. I’d love someone to speak to about it outside my agent.
The initial rejection by a publisher who didn’t promote my first efforts - work I’ve come to resent - was met with “Well fuck them, I think you’re great, so tonight we’re taking you out!” For the first time, it’s a project I’m actually proud of. I’d like to think he’d be proud of this, too. I just hope it’ll make it to the end, enough to make some fuss on its cause. But that’s for another time.
My friend never asked me once about me being Autistic, nor did they make it something reductive. Most of my work is actually not about this - nor would I want it to be. I’m not a spokesperson or an ‘advocate’, a ‘leader’ or ‘mouthpiece’. I was allowed to just be me, without any caveats or social rules of an arbitrary nature; any kind of professional offering like this is an immediate ‘no’ now. A world without tokenism is a world once better.
It was so easy. And it felt so easy.
And my God I am going to miss that.
Disabled women are statistically at greater risk of all kinds of abuse - typically VAWG and also economically. I need to use a cane sometimes, but there has been a lot of shouting. The childlike grin watched from the door: “I like your cane Lydia - it’s like a lightsaber!” Sound effects optional, with a dark sense of humour maybe, with an insistence on examining the glittery beast.
Nobody owes you awareness; it’s invasive to expect medical information from a stranger. I’m tired of this standard not being afforded to children, too, just because they are disabled. Wonderment is underrated, as is curiosity.
I’d commute to the Old Bailey from their residence, revitalised, or further afield; the drinks receptions were always a bit hit and miss, an air without the substance and sometimes lacking in grace. I prefer to be ‘on the ground’ or in motion - to find a way to another point. My favourite story will always be of the journalist who allowed me to record shop alongside them, though they’d never know - them the old school roadie, me the pop bubblegum upstart.
Anything he said sparked an idea, a start, a want - the last beautiful album by Halsey haunts what I work on now from that time:
“Take what you want, take what you can
Take what you please, don’t give a damn
Ask for forgiveness never permission
Take what you want, take what you can
Take what you please, don’t give a damn
It’s in the blood, this is tradition.”
Almost everyone has gone now. Too many friends are gone, too many are sick, and too many have simply stopped. The waking up has come at last - to an industry in decline and standing to its last hurrah, to spaces of culture decimated by a pandemic, by Austerity economics, by the simple fuckery of ‘culture wars’. Tempers fray and egos are too fragile now; step too hard, they’ll crack. And I am tired of feeling, of seeing, this, this grief.
Listen to the stories, watch them in motion, be curious and allow for the laughter. I was handed a story in this place, its first line so oddly prophetic: “Mourn the dead, and fight like Hell for the living.”
Write an idea in hope, bang that drum, shout it from the rafters - you cannot kill an idea. Hope doesn’t die, but it can grow in the dark. We just need to be curious, with better stories.
And love, there is so much work to do.
