24th February 2001 - 8:40 p.m.

You know, I do try to make this interesting for you. I do my utmost to follow the conventions of cinema, with problems swiftly followed by resolutions and the Happy Ending. But what should one do when all one has is a collection of nauseating camera-angles and a monotonous screenplay? Should I manipulate things until they cease to represent anything besides something I might quite like to read? Or should I cut anything that doesn't cohere to the pattern I hope to see emerging? And, if so, then why call it a Diary? Why pretend to be doing anything but rewriting history, forever snipping dissident moments from the official snapshot?

"I don't know that such music exists
As could comfort me on a night such as this"

Of course, one can always glimpse in sadness something of beauty - of course we, all of us, are always too forgiving in that respect. But one's patience for such things invariably has a limit - one trusts that one can leave the cinema after having witnessed two solid hours of celluloid heartbreak, and one would object were one forced to remain in the auditorium watching the same flick looping around and around for years on end. It's all about moments of contrast, you see, without which momentum disappears and dies away entirely. And what happens when one suddenly senses that things haven't moved on for years, not really? When one realises that, whilst names and faces and places have changed and will continue to change, all of this is bluster? And beneath it all, a relentless undercurrent of blankness, blackness..?

"And the pictures on my wall
They don't comfort me like before"

You take my point? Now you're thinking "Lighten it up!"; "Throw in some one-liners!". But there's nothing. I'm reminded of the line about 'a night where all the cows are black'. And nothing can come of it.

I recall a time, many years ago, when I bored a friend senseless with my worries, with my one great fear of the time. I remember sobbing in the street, and turning away from the roadside in order to escape the concerned looks of the poor sap in the parked ice-cream van. And what was I so terrified of? That I was a dull person. Ha!

"And now I can't write pop songs
It's all too sad for too long"

Tonight I pace the empty streets of the town, touring cul-de-sacs and dark alleyways, looking for something, just looking and looking. Ca Passant Considerable. Over the old railway bridge once, twice, again; scared to stop, scared that if I stop for even a moment, I'll never be able to think of a reason to move ever again. And on the walkman, again and again:

"close your eyes now
sleep until the morning"

The last song from the Webb Brothers album, which I bought, taped, and returned at some stage. I never wrote down the tracklisting and don't know the name of the song. I'd find out for you if I much cared.

"sleep if you can
don't try to change things overnight"

And the organ hums. And the languid strings emerge to ebb for a moment, before cycling around and around the final few lines.

"sleep like a dead girl
i won't try to wake you
'cos i can't care
if you don't care"