On the way back from my pottery class, in the car, I am unexpectedly handed back a chunk of my life I had put away perhaps, almost forgotten. Two men are discussing Echo and the Bunnymen and they play a chunk of All my colours. It is late when I get back but it is eerily easy to find the 1981 song online without having to dig up the vinyl or plug the record player that lives under the sofa. In a breath the person that I was then is sellotaped back to my present being : it is easy now to look up words that I had not then managed to make out—I was pretty French then—but I do not really need to know.
Beyond words this speaks to the depth of me as it did back then. This was a time when I was much closer to the edge of my sanity. I had not yet known the feeling of home or of safe. I may have seemed arrogant and proud but I was hiding. At times—with loud music or in books—I would have felt nonetheless on top of the world living with an intensity that could threaten all understanding, I did not need drugs to flirt with that kind of dangerous dimension, and I instinctively knew that I needed to hang on to myself as no one would pull me back if I stepped out too far.
I was a teenager then and I am getting close to being 50 now. I am potentially even more of a rebel now. Even more alive I’d say. I have managed to get to know myself pretty well in the meanwhile and I am quite happy to be me which is—considering where I come from—a fucking miracle.
Here is to you too enjoying all your own colours now or whenever you are ready.
Flying
And you know I’m not coming down
You’re trying
But you know you must soon go down
All my colours
Turn to clouds
All my colours
Turn to cloud
Zimbo zimbo zimbo zimbo zimbo
Yes !
so I gave a name to one of the goatlings, Zimbo Zimbo.