On International Colour Day, to the Pompidou Centre at Metz, to watch people dressed in black watching people dressed in white create stripes of colour on a wall in front of us. Possibly.
Upstairs – the flipside of colour, the other side of Mount Heart Attack: an installation called Darkness Had No Need. A pitch black disorienting room, silent at first, before I slowly start hearing things … rain? the ocean? wind blowing through trees? As I stumble around and around the dark space, searching for traces of anything which might provide me with some sort of grounding, I end up withdrawing deeper and deeper into the darkness of the box room installation wondering if this is what it felt like to be seeking out Monsanto’s cabin in the violent stormy murk at Big Sur and not knowing for certain if I’ll ever find any answers, or even just the exit.
When I do eventually escape the darkness it’s all I can to immediately head outside and sit down on a concrete bench, semi-dazed under the bright blue sky.
On the way back through the city streets to collect my car, I pass a sunflower yellow postbox which has ‘Trust Me’ scrawled across it in thick marker pen.
The day is sending me to doubt, so in an attepmt to ward it off I head to the Alsace, shortly afterwards arriving in the ridiculously pretty Colmar – a place so picturesque it must be where postcards were invented.
Wandering around the cobbled streets is an exercise in patience, with too many people also promenading but frequently dawdling.
The Irish bar provides a welcome retreat, even if it is half darkness and half technicolour.
I disappear into a pint of stout.
An Outside World 