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John Lennon wrote that song, 'Nothing's gonna change my world.' I listened to it this afternoon when I finished writing, the first time for days I had finished before 2 or 3 in the morning, and for a few seconds afterwards I felt happy and good and then - Timor Mortis Conturbat Me. Doesn't anyone know? Anyone except Dunbar, I think it was, who wrote that, the line that repeats over and over again. I listened to that song because I was so desperate: I thought, christ, what's going to protect me from the emptiness of the unbearable ending? Not work or success, that's for sure, I've found that out by now; love, perhaps, but then that seemed like a stupid biological imperative, a means to an end cleverly disguised, very cleverly disguised but nothing's ever disguised enough to our ridiculous faulty consciousness, the consciousness which only needs to be able to make us continue from day to day, not disguise from us the horrible . . . but anyway maybe art. Christ, I believe in art. [Possibly offensive passage ommitted - and no, it isn't about you, I just have to be very sensitive] . . . do we have to sacrifice Kantian art, epic art, art that requires contemplation, devotion, sacrifice, but I'm so guilty of it myself, we all watch the pop charts and make ourselves get some kind of intellectual and aesthetic pleasure out of it . . . but there's a difference. There is art.

I realised because of Daniel Johnston and Jad Fair, sort of. Jad Fair has a song about 'Frankenstein.' He makes the contemporary mistake of thinking that Frankenstein's the monster. So, obviously he hasn't read the story; he's invoking something for atmosphere. (But how is atmosphere going to help me?) Whereas Daniel Johnston has songs about Caspar and King Kong, long songs that dwell on the stories, that have the power of epics, the strength of them comes from contemplation and a deep understanding of the narratives. I am alone; I'm completely alone; I need a narrative. Narrative is NOT about the rage for order. It is not about fixing meaning, about completing things. It is about turning a gaping hole into a monument. I should say, a monument into a gaping hole.

I can't explain what it means to read or see a complete work of art, but it is . . . it's for everybody, it's not for the artist, it is there to reassure you, it's like a parent. It's like a God, I suppose, what God really could be.

But I have to stop writing this soon and I'll be back to square one, all this writing only helped as much as all the other writing did. I want to give you something, I want to give you something like The Dead Christ, I forget who painted that, Caravaggio? A narrative, an epic, but I'm far too immature, but still I'll persist: Rosemarie Kocz*: 'Even when a human being is reduced to the worst stage of non-existence, a tiny ray of sunlight, a fly upon the body, a merest nothing makes it live.' She was born just before the second world war, as an infant she was held in the concentration camps, she makes strange drawings. I'm too scared even to lie still.

I'm adding this later - I meant that art is not individualistic. Based on my personal experience, anyway, therapy for a single person is necessary but undignified, group therapy is tragic and sublime, and so on.

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