Finger snapping. Eight fingers on eight strings. Black and white echoes of crooked cops and damply reflective midnight streets. Quicksilver flight. Ocean surge. Pedantic, relentless deformation, forward motion. Fifth mode of the melodic minor, major in the bottom and melancholy on top, the supposed dichotomy of existence. Pull the wool from your eyes. Wool from where, and who put it there, from which monstrous sheep? Stuck in a groove, mutation every 33 and a third revolution, not a line but a circle.

When in dialogue with others, deviation represents the locus of discovery, challenge and renewal, ultimately world-making or -unmaking. Such junctures can be small, necessitating only a slight change of direction, taking a side-road or diversion; or they can be paradigm-shifting, ego-eviscerating seismic convulsions, tearing up the map altogether (did the map even exist in the first place?). Being open, willing and prepared to learn from these pivotal moments is to begin to see through the fundamental delusion of inherent existence.

My Dear Fly, I do so want to co-exist with you, but you’re making it terribly difficult.

Allan Holdsworth, a human who was gone before I knew what I’d lost, and indeed what the world had lost. An enigma to the very end, an artist in the truest sense of the word, equal parts mad scientist, tidal instrumentalist, visionary composer and reluctant sage. Holdsworth’s alien landscapes, oftentimes jarring, disturbing, nightmarish even, belie a profound spiritual beauty and an unshakeable integrity.