Pier 39 in San Francisco, where the gulls cry, and the sea-lions shunt comically back and forth on the raised platforms where they have lived since the earthquake in 1986.
I hear the gulls, over me and around me, their voices holding in the air, and think it is the saddest sound I have ever heard.
What music could someone with the correct gift produce with the long seagull-notes as the basis of an elegy? How serious, how moving, would it be to write the music of San Francisco's seagulls?
This will be my abiding memory of the city, for I cut my visit here short, miserable and frustrating creature that I am, and return to England tomorrow.
Since Saturday, I had not been able to shake the idea that I had no business here. Heavy-headed and heavy-hearted, silent and difficult company, the fear of the unknown was always stronger than the desire to explore, experiment, get lost, learn, interact.
Fear bolts me to the present; fear defines the psychological problems from which I undoubtedly suffer. Fear has triumphed again, as it usually does. It is stronger than I am, more resilient, bigger, and I can find no way around it.
Since booking the early flight home, I cried, felt better, and went out to do things, without a care in the world. It is only when the game is nearly up that I can summon the energy to topple the demon who laughs endlessly at me. He fell over with barely a fight, and just as I am ready to start an adventure, it is all over. Now I sit under the starlight and type myself into something approaching stability, with fear seeming to be a distant and unlikely adversary.
This version of me might have even been worth loving - open, able, creative, proximate. It only ever happens when it is already too late, for paralysis sets in while the opportunity is still live.
Your author's experience of life is that of pressure - a self-inflicted, illogical pressure which has no bearing on the situation at hand. At Pier 39, I was free to think, and speak pleasantly to strangers, and imagine what might happen if I knew anything at all about music.
Now the situation is beyond help, and I must exeunt.
