Neo-Mortalism
Some knots are tied slowly.

ALASTAIR LAAS


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      Walk A Mile (2020)

      Performance: Audio recording       I remembered the shoes first – black and white Air Max, the kind that made him taller than the rest of us. Back then, they felt like armour; now, they felt like a clue.

      So I bought a pair, slipped them on, and set out to meet the ghost that had followed me since school. Each step carried an echo of his patter – the boy who barked from inside smoke-thick rooms, throat hoarse from acrid smoke, whose anger was never his own but borrowed from the world that raised him. Youngest of three fighters, son of a man who spoke with his silence, he learned early that survival was a performance of force.

      As I walked, his shape shifted. The bully dissolved, leaving the outline of a child trying to stay upright in a house built on shouting and fists. The shoes told a simpler story: he wasn't a monster; he was mirroring the glory his tormenter demanded.

      After a mile, I stopped. I stepped out of the trainers and walked home in my socks, lighter and unburdened. Not because he was redeemed, but because I finally recognised the weight he carried, and the weight he passed on. He was only ever the youngest boy in a family's long shadow.

      Somewhere on that mile, I understood.