Art Intimidating Life: The Ruins of my Mental Empire - Part Twenty Eight

we're the only two people left on this planet - just you and i - for the first few years i tried to learn how to fly a seven-four-seven - i sat in the cock-pit pushing buttons and pulling levers - i could see you standing out on the runway through the little windows of the plane - it was cold and windy and you looked concerned - i kept pleading to you, asking you to imagine how amazing it would be if we could fly all over the world and see all the amazing things human-kind are responsible for - i read all the books you found for me - i drove the fuel truck and juiced up the plane - surely that'll be enough to get us to germany - i wanted to show you the berlin i read about and show you were the wall used to be - i didn't tell you, but i even looted some musical equipment and stowed it in first class - but it was useless - they fly themselves these days, people used to say - but i just couldn't work it out, and to be honest the fear of killing us both in a fucking plane accident, of all things, didn't sit well with me as navigator

for months we wouldn't see each other - sometimes i'd ride my bike past the small shack i assumed you were dwelling in - keeping my distance - i'd see a small fire keeping you warm and cooking your beans - i'd hear your howls and screams at random intervals - i'd hear smashes and crashes of glass and crockery - sometimes i'd see an object be thrown from the window or doorway, where a door used to be - id ride back to my top-floor skyscraper space with the knowledge you and i had finally found freedom and happiness

the lift didn't work, so anytime i wanted to leave, i'd have to walk the 63 floors via the stairs - up and down - i didn't mind, though the repetition of 63 flights of stairs would niggle at my sanity - a great way to start or finish my day - a year or two earlier i smashed out all the windows of my floor - we made an event of it - me with my bottle of scotch and hammer, and you generating and documenting the soundtrack - a windy, cold, dangerous wide open place high above the world - at time's i'd find things to throw to the ground - computers - desks - corporate art sculptures - watching the fall and twirl in gravity hypnotised and calmed me - the inevitable crash would excite me, but scare you as several times you were simply walking down the trashed and empty streets as an ugly and meaningless corporate-sculpture would crash and shatter meters from where you were - you'd scatter and hark into the alley-way shadows like a lizard-man - it'll be months before i see you again and get the chance to apologise

to celebrate the anniversary of us being the only two people left on the planet, we drove a bus to a neighbouring city and set fire to several massive buildings - finding a nice quiet spot to sit and watch the flames rise and eventually disintegrate as walls and windows flayed to the ground - i'd stand up and scream obscenities and you'd drift in and out of consciousness and fear

in the summer we used to follow the winter up to the mountains and stay cold - i'd remind you that it was here we became friends despite the fact we were friends anyway and i was drunk in the cinema - you said something about those trees over there, and i realised it was they were the first words i'd heard you speak for three years - we recreated the mercy seat and took turns tying each other down into it, throwing mud and rocks and taunting the chosen one as they screamed and thrashed, as the song goes

we organised a little system - you'd put things in a basket and each day i'd haul it up the 63 floors, pulling a massive thick rope up from outside - most of the time they were more books you'd found or read or written - i'd read them in a frenzy, walking back and forth as the high wind pushed and pulled me and everything i stored in my open-air top-floor - sometimes you'd leave little notes scribbled on dirty paper or cardboard - notes about dragonflies, medieval rituals and/or rust - sometimes you'd leave me clove cigarettes with some poetry you'd written - in return i'd loot some industrial strength projectors and project images id find and photo i took all over the city and sky for you - one night i projected an evil photo of n.cave on the deep black storm clouds that loomed over your roofless shack - that was the night you created your masterpiece - we both agreed to bury it in the desert

one day, and we both know it, the world will finally be left alone - it will endeavour to reclaim it's original beauty - everything with crumble over time and the vines and trees and sand and dust will blanket and smother - one day, one of us will be the only person left in existence, and our mind will finally reach it's total, complete meaning and potential - all human life, throughout all human history will finally narrow and zoom down into the last and only person left alive - and at that point, all thought, and any thought will be truth as it will be the only one left

how can we decide who gets that honour?