‘I think we should see other people’, I considered saying to the deep voice inside me, my inconsiderate room-mate.

Swords clashed when I set out trying to change it. I guess nobody likes to be changed.

Something magic though happened when I sang to it, something from a fairy tale— an ‘open sesame’, a door in dead-end wall.

Music: the language of the deepest part of me I know, the part that doesn't speak with words but with tears and with prickles down my neck.

The cruel voice surprised me and slid into harmony. Turns out it loves singing, our common ground —the intersection of the conscious and unconscious, joy and sorrow, darkness and alchemical light.

I’ll meet you there, in that place where my weaknesses are windows, my failings, the fine details on a stunning work of art— the kind that makes you come back to it, wide-eyed, over and over, always seeing something new.

- Jeremy Palmer 27th July 2021