The Narcissist Cookbook
WILL YE GO
[Spoken]
I was married.
Her name was Katy and it didn't work and I haven't figured out why exactly.
I remember having a dream in which Katy died which is pretty normal when you decide to tie your life to someone else's
but in this world I dreamed up when somebody dies it's like their body goes into a kind of siege mode and they're locked inside their mind indefinitely, forever essentially until they decide in their own time that it's—that they're ready for whatever comes next.
The brain has to conserve energy somehow, to keep that last spark of them alive for as long as possible and so it jettisons all non-essential functions up to and including the sub-conscious, the ability to dream.
My wife had been one of the most creatively-driven people I had ever known.
But that last little piece of her that I’d never be able to reach, never be able to speak to, is now just floating somewhere alone, not even capable of dreaming itself a home.
There was, though, some forum of hope.
Whoever had known her best who has ever minded, become most entwined with hers over the course of her life could become a donor of sort through a process known as “dream transfusion”
through which someone could create a whole world for their loved one to live in — thing is
I knew that person, whoever it was, was not me.
However much I wanted it to be. But knowing that and accepting that were different things.
This would be my last opportunity to give something back to the person who had given so much to me; but more importantly my last chance to prove to her that I'd not been a total fucking waste of her energy.
And so I didn't correct the doctors when they assumed that my mind would be a perfect match for hers.
And I didn't listen when they told me what the risks were.
And as I signed the waiver before the dream transfusion, I told myself a story.
And the story became the song Papillon.
That I would build my wife a haven, make her happy and comfortable, weave myself into her eternity so that she would know in a way that I was out there looking after her.
And whenever she decided that it was time to go, that it was time to climb into the tiny boat I’d left on her shore and sail out into the unknown then, maybe, maybe I would meet her again in whatever place lies across the water.
I should have listened when they told me what the risks were.
I tried my damndest to build my wife who It'd became horrifyingly clear over the last year I barely knew at all, an afterlife that would not be a hell.
But anyone who knew us during that time would have told you that hell was the only thing we were capable of building together.
That last little spark of the person I loved stayed burning for less than twenty seconds before snuffing itself out.
When I woke from all of this and saw Katy lying sleeping next to me, it was like something had shifted.
I couldn't really see her anymore; all I could see was the dream and my failure to protect her from me.
I never really found a way back from there.
I think Papillon is my favourite song on the record, I think.
Will ye go, lassie, go?
And we'll all go together
To pluck wild mountain thyme
Going round the purple heather
Will ye go, Lassie, go?