The Unauthorised Biography of Ezra Maas by Daniel James

Author:Daniel James [James, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781911585305
Publisher: Dead Ink

Daniel James

Chapter Eleven

The world is all that is the case294

Rented rooms in New York and LA, Paris and London, all merge together after a while, same carpets, beds, and furniture, same tired faces at the check-in desks. I cover the floor of each room with handwritten notes, letters and photographs, phone and interview transcripts, emails, research papers, photocopies from books, financial and medical records, receipts, flyers, beer-mats, restaurant menus, post-it notes; a sea of information that grows greater and harder to control by the day. The contents of my mind, projected outward, expanding across the room like a virus.

I’m looking for the meaning between the lines, behind the words, the hidden connections, the points where competing truths converge; the prime narrative. It’s just like reading a book, only it keeps changing and growing, faster than I can keep up with it, its ever-expanding borders pushing against the limits of my mind. Only I can do it, only I can contain it all. I can’t break the connection for a second, I’ve got to live and breathe it, staying immersed in the world of the book, submerged beneath the text, from the time I wake up to the second I fall asleep. It needs to haunt my dreams, just as it haunts my every waking moment.

I must work alone.

Sam keeps calling. The publisher keeps calling. But I don’t want anyone to know where I am. I need to focus on the work.

The pale, blue light of my laptop illuminates the darkened room continuously, an artificial sun that renders day and night meaningless. I monitor and watch the world online, disconnecting from the real, losing more and more time as space contracts around me.295

I’m never alone. I’m always alone.

I watch the painkillers tumble over and over until they dissolve into non-existence, until only a trace remain s, but nothing is ever really lost – it just takes another form. I’m changing too, transitioning, but into what?

I can’t sleep, so I head out every night, stalking the bars and clubs, sitting alone in darkened booths, drinking myself sober. Ashes to Ashes296 starts to play. Its inverted opening chords call out to me, pulling me towards the dance floor until I’m at the centre of all those bodies, more poses than people, moving in slow motion around me, blank, trance-like faces bathed in coloured light. They’re not real. No one is. I dance with them anyway as Roxy Music’s Same Old Scene297 takes over from Bowie without missing a beat.

The women who appear in my room keep changing. Faces, places, names. I seek them out in every city, but each encounter makes me feel more alone. They flicker in and out of existence like glitches, just as the different rooms shift and merge into one another. Every room brings me nearer to the end, to the final room where all lines – all storylines – converge.

The closer I get to the book, to the truth, the more the world outside drifts away. I pull back the curtains and I can’t tell where I am anymore.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.