Like the moment between knowing you might nearly jump
and actually nearly jumping, I considered half-undressing
an imagined Joan of Arc, approaching to the stake with faceless
soldiers and a crowd of muted children like the children in the foreground
of a Lowry painting. The only thing she could get through to me was,
It’s not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens,
which, in the circumstances, we all agreed was pretty funny.
It was one of those rare experiences where you move into rain that’s already
falling somewhere else. In another place, but a place exactly the same
as this, I thought about the bit in Fargo (1996) where Steve Buscemi gets
stuffed into the wood-chipper until only his feet are left, imagining what that
must be like those first few seconds you’re alive, and whether you’d bleed out
on the snow or just lose consciousness immediately, the way some people
suddenly lose consciousness when a rollercoaster hits a loop-the-loop.
Standing before Manet’s Execution of Maximillian (c.1867) in the National
Gallery – damaged into sections pieced together on a canvas in the 1990s –
I watched the shooting in full view, despite the missing fragments on the wall.
The Emperor clasped the hand of his companion as an officer, hardly visible,
signalled to the firing squad, vanishing behind a stage-effect of rifle smoke.
I decided that it was the best painting I had seen for a long time,
despite having seen it before somewhere, and missed it.
Someone laughed the kind of unexpected laughter that occurs
when you realise how ridiculous it is that you’re disposing of a body
rolled inside a Turkish carpet, or hacked-to-bits and wrapped inside
a plastic bag to keep the blood from spoiling the upholstery in your car.
I could see a kayak heading for a hurricane, which was annoying
because I was in the kayak and I couldn’t swim, or think of how
to get myself to shore. Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering –
and it’s all over much too soon, I said aloud, which was annoying
because, in the circumstances, it would’ve been a lot funnier
if there’d been someone there to hear me say it. I could imagine
swirling around, not sure what it was that would actually kill me
but certain there’d be no way out of this one. As everything refocused,
like only realising that someone has left a room when they re-enter it,
it was late afternoon and the sun was in my eyes so I hadn’t seen anything.