Hello, my name is Sally, I am a banshee. Forgive me not shaking your hand, but my touch turns the blood of mortals to ice within their veins, and at the sound of my voice men writhe and scream. I prefer letter-writing. Email is useful too, but I spent so long learning how to hold a fountain pen in my talons and I struggle with keyboards. I also believe that the art of letter-writing is one which should be preserved, as it creates a more personal, thoughtful missive than many of these modern communication media.
I do not believe I have a problem as such. I am a banshee and being a banshee is all I know, so to suggest that I struggle with this identity is to imply that I either do not know myself or that I have awareness of another way of being, neither of which I believe to be the case. Problem is therefore a negative understanding; rather I am attending Magicals Anonymous for its opportunities and positive effects.
I wish to broaden my mind. Specifically, I am looking for evening classes that are friendly to my particular situation. I considered t’ai chi, but my wings get in the way. Cooking seems very interesting, but there are very few cuisines which cater for the pigeon lover. I would love to do pottery, but my talons ruin the clay on the wheel. But I think now I have found what I want to do, what I really want. I sleep, you see, in the cooling tower at Tate Modern. A lot of banshees use these sorts of perches–good view, decent air flow and the food tends to come to you, although the family of peregrine falcons I have to share my lair with does rather put off the average seagull. But I digress. A few months ago I was having a dream, and in my dream there was a howling and a screaming and a falling, and I woke and I too was falling, and in my confusion, by mischance, I fell through a window and into the gallery itself. (I’m most terribly sorry for the damage.) The gallery was empty, deserted, but I had never been inside before, and as I tried to sweep up the worst of the glass and remove any shards from between my claws, I saw for the first time the wonders that it held. I don’t understand art. I have never been introduced to it, never inducted fully, as you might say. And at first this made the experience the more frightening for, looking at the paintings on the walls, the sculptures on their plinths, the installations and the films inside that empty place, I felt feelings that I could not explain. Why should some splashes of oil on canvas induce fear, or grief? Why would a tin can make one smile? What is it in a jagged shard of metal that cries danger, or of a daub of colour on the wall that expresses longing? I do not know, and neither the peregrine falcons nor the banshees of my kin seemed to understand my concern.
So you see I am not here so much to express a problem, as to enquire into the possibilities of evening classes in Impressionist panting.