Gil Scott-Heron- the revolution will not be televised

and today all this week and yes possibly for ever more I am the architect of the revolution I am the sunlight in the middle of the storm I am the soul the centre the joy the hope, the life in spring which never goes, and I am power and I am running and I can jump and leap and skip and my mind takes in all things and makes them glow for me and I am magic and I am made of sunshine

PRETTY FUCKING MANIC

Trying to find a way to describe this which has for the past five days made me into the ubermensch of joy, just one big oddly dressed, fast-talking bunny of love. I've had on my dancing shoes, yes, siree, and I'm dancing on clouds, my friends, and dancing good.

Mania is the gift you don't know you have to pay for till the bill turns up, and it's part of its character and a little bit part of its charm that it doesn't matter how many times you get burned that way you never learn. It turns up again with the insouciant charm of Humphrey Bogart and the directionless energy of a red setter and tells you there's no bill you can't talk your way out of. It takes you by the hand and tells you to put on your dancing shoes with the ribbons and bows and come to a place where everything is beautiful and everything is possible and everything, absolutely everything, is free. You just gotta DARE. BUT YOU HAVE TO DO IT IN CAPITALS AND YOU CERTAINLY CAN'T USE PUNCTUATION OH NO YOU HAVE NO NEED OF THESE THINGS YOU JUST HAVE TO KEEP ON RUNNING AND YOU HAVE TO TELL EVERYONE BECAUSE THIS IS SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO SHARE BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND SO PERFECT AND FAST AND FREE AND PEOPLE CAN'T SEE IT BUT THAT'S JUST BECAUSE THEY AREN'T LOOKING YOU HAVETO SHOW THEM THE WAY. Your thoughts stop and in their place is an overwhelming screaming influx of bona fide genuine motherfucking JOY which just runs and runs and makes you run with it, the faster the better, and laughing at the same time, and if you're running into the sunset then that's just fucking perfect because there's nothing mania likes more than the picturesque. Mania is knowing you can drink until you drop and you'll never get a hangover; it's knowing your bank account will never run dry; it's knowing you're the most beautiful thing in the room and you're ten feet tall; it's knowing your stories are the funniest things you've ever heard; it's having so much love there just aren't enough places to put it. You don't need to eat. You don't need to sleep. You don't need to breathe. You just need to keep on moving, keep on doing, keep on making things beautiful. You can go anywhere and do anything and everything will be just fine because you are, at the end of the day, blessed.

Every year there's a day you wake up and it's suddenly spring, and everyone is suddenly smiling and holding hands and the summer is a tantalising possibility rather than a dusty sweaty reality and your feet just want to dance and you get out your summer clothes and wear the brightest colours you can. Manic euphoria is the first day of spring magnified a hundred- a thousand- a million- fold. Magnified by a million times a million times infinity- you can't count it, you can't measure it, it's off the fucking scale and if you get a bigger scale well it'll be off that one too. Everything is exponential. Everything is fractal. The simplest thing breaks into a hundred thousand beautiful pieces of rainbow which catch you and take you spinning with them out into a great blue love filled space.

The trouble is, underneath it all, although you feel like you are the absolute paradigm of control, it's not you that's riding the horse, it's the horse that's doing the riding and you're just trying not to fall. Somewhere there's a bit of you holding on for dear life and hoping like hell you head in a safe direction and not towards that big old cliff and, most of all, that you don't do anything too embarassing. I have done a lot of quietly bizarre things in my time. I have bought clothes I will never wear. I have decided to become a spy and taken it upon myself to follow people in and out of bookshops and up and down streets (forgetting that it's a thin line between spying and stalking). I have attempted to teach myself to read ancient Assyrian. I have tried to sell my house and buy a houseboat. I have forgotten that I am shy, that I am too chubby to wear leggings, that other people have things to do other than play with me, and that I can't dance.

This time, I haven't done anything too awful. I scrubbed my front yard with a brush from a dustpan and brush, wearing pink mooonboots and my pajamas, in view of a playground full of school children. I dusted everything in the house and sang very loudly and danced around but at least it was in private. I talked very fast and very big lot at lots of people. I headed to the other side of the city on the off chance some people might just be somewhere, and explained the plot of the ring cycle to an unsuspecting stranger. In full. With actions. And also dancing. I didn't eat anything except pasta and pesto because it was the only thing I could think of and also the most perfect magic food in the world. I drank two bottles of cheep white wine in two hours because you can drink a lot more when you are in this sort of state and still keep on going. I skipped everywhere and smiled at people and gave my number to some extremely strange men because they talked to me and I wanted to talk and they were friendly and I wanted to be friendly and they asked for my number and hell, we're all members of god's great family and I'll go anywhere with anyone who knows. That's all, though. No body count. Yet.

Tonight, I'm dancing through the night, much to the upset of the neighbours (although I've stopped stamping my feet and clapping and shouting with excess joy now). And I swear, this time there will be no cost. This time I will talk myself out of it. This time it will be different. And if anyone wants some love I've got so much it's escaping from my pores and making me glow, like gold, or like sunshine. I fucking GLOW, my friends.