The Dreaming of Mike Worrall’s “The Forgotten Expectation”.

Anna Morewood

 

The Dreaming of Mike Worrall’s “The Forgotten Expectation”.

 

Darkness, it is everywhere and I am nowhere. 

Where is this place? Where am I? Who am I? How did I get here? Who put me here?

 I feel nothing. I feel everything.

Who’s that standing over there, that woman, I don’t recognise her, but I know her. She is alone, yet not lonely. She is silent, yet speaking to me. She is immovable, yet moving through me. I stare at her, into her, through her, and suddenly, I am her. She is me. We are standing as  she once was.

 I cannot move, I don’t want to move. I am frozen. Time ticks bye, tick, tock, tick tock, a second, a lifetime, a second, a lifetime. How long have we been standing here? I think since the year 2011. I have no memory, but I remember everything. She and I, we have become one. I am other, and she is self. We are I, and I am...

I am standing, forever still. It is what runs beneath that never stills, that never fades, it can be obtained but never tangible. It is what transcends this place. It’s what they may take from me. They can never hold it in their hands, and their minds may only hold it for a fleeting second, but it is my gift to them forever.

 I know only the world within this frame. It is safe in here. Yet I am still unsure if I belong here either. But it is here I will stay.

I am staring forward, yet somehow I turn around. I am familiar with, yet lost in the scene that stands before me. This place is still, always still, as am I. It belongs to me, and I it to. It is all and nothing I have ever known. I am standing at a store front which has captured my reflection, as unmoving as her. She is forever staring forward. I see our reflection, not as I, but as her. We are at a crossroads, there are two streets, they are endless yet they vanish. It is now that I realise, that I am here, but also there. I am within but without, I am self, and I am other, and I (we) will never be as one. For we are each trapped, in our own frame, they are simply facing different directions, with different people staring back at them. I feel them now. I know them. With this consuming understanding of everything yet nothing at all I turn back around, and we are now looking outwards.

 

I hold my stare, my face is blank, someone has told me to stand like this. I am always looking out, at just one spot, I never blink, my eyes never tire, and I just stare. I see people sometimes, they stare back at me, and some don’t stare at all. Some stop, right in front of me, they watch me, they pull faces and tilt their heads, some cross their arms, some linger, and some glance at me and pass in a fleeting moment.

I wonder what they think. Do they wonder who I was? Who I am? Who I’m to be? Why I am? If I am at all? I wonder if they understand? I wonder if some will ever understand? Do they only pretend to understand? They talk about me as if I’m not right in front of them. Some say I am beautiful, others disagree. They comment on my clothes, my dress and my hair. They comment on my pose, my stare and my expression. Some of them are right, some of them are wrong. Some of them think too much, some of them don’t think at all. Some of them lie, and some of them boast, but only I know the truth. The answer to their questions, to my creator’s questions. Only I.  I hold all the power. But I will never tell. This is my secret.

I think I understand now. I think I know why...

It is then; I get this feeling, an ever slowly encroaching fear within me. It consumes my thoughts, my senses. I thought I couldn’t feel anything in this place? All this time I was teetering on the edge, and now I am falling. My mind and my body succumb to it, and all of a sudden, I am falling. It feels so physical, so tangible. This jolting unease, the dark decent into the black abyss below. I wonder when it ends? Then, without warning, I hit the bottom.

I am awake.

I don’t remember anything, just the jolting, my stomach dropping.

I cant help but feel like I’ve forgotten something, perhaps maybe, The Forgotten Expectation.

 

 

 The Forgotten Expectation. Oil on panel, 117x183cm, 2011. Mike Worrall. Image courtesy of the artist.