I wrote this story back in 2004 after visiting the Tate Modern and being entranced by the painting described in the story.

There's not really a great deal to say about it. I redrafted it a couple of times, and then submitted it to several magazines without getting it critiqued first. It got rejected, and I decided to put it to one side for a while and look at it again later. When I did, I decided that although I liked it, it wasn't really right for any of the markets I knew of, and that I didn't really want to change it in order to make it right for them. So it's stayed on my hard drive, and now I'm sharing it with you. Reading it again, I find it enjoyable, but I think the tone's pretty immature and the protagonist's voice isn't really believable. Please take it for what it is and don't expect too much of it. I hope you find it a nice little read.

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Far, Far Away

Have you ever loved something so much that it seems to fill you somehow? A piece of music, or poem, book, story, painting? Something like that? I have. I used to, anyway. The attraction has faded somewhat over the last few years. I used to love all sorts of art. Some pieces of art were so perfect that I'd spend hours looking at them, learning every brushstroke or every nuance of light and shadow. I'd get so engrossed in a song or piece of music that I'd put earphones on, turn the stereo up as loud as I could stand and just let it play, over and over, for hours on end. Poems and books would captivate me so thoroughly that I'd sit all day for a week and read non-stop.

Plato wouldn't like the way we venerate artists so much. I'm not a great student of philosophy, but I know a little bit about some of it. Plato thought that artists were con-men essentially. His theory of forms, as I understand it (and I may well be reading it wrongly) says that somewhere ephemeral is the perfect form of everything (bed, table, blade of grass and so on), and that what we see are just imperfect copies of it. Plato said that mimetic art was worthless because it was an imperfect copy of an already imperfect copy. Of course, he said that only philosophers could ever see through to the 'Perfect Form' of things, so I'm not sure we can really trust him to be impartial. And I'm sure that if he was alive now, he'd think differently - how can you fail to be entranced by Yo Yo Ma's playing, or Hopper's paintings? I guess it's all a matter of taste, but still.

Where was I? Sorry, my mind wanders quite a lot lately, and I lose track of what I was saying. Oh, yes, I remember now. Art, in all its forms, used to absolutely enthral me. Didn't matter what medium, I loved some of it to distraction. That sort of thing can be very dangerous though.

Did you know that art is alive? Not conscious, necessarily. Not in the way we know, at any rate. But definitely alive.

Have you ever studied literature? There's a theory someone told me once, called 'reader reception theory'. It says that the author isn't important, because no matter what the author meant when he wrote the book, or poem or whatever, he can't control what the reader experiences when they read the piece. I suppose it goes for all type of art. Music, say. It doesn't matter who wrote a song, because anyone might be singing it, and it will mean something different for each person who hears it. Mind you, that sort of suggests that there's no point in studying, because everything depends on the reader, and each reader is going to be different. Or take art. Famous paintings get put on prints, postcards, greetings cards, mugs, just about anything you can think of. And each person who looks at the art sees it differently, and there are all those different versions of the art, all the same but all different. It scares me, frankly.

You must think I'm crazy, talking about dangerous, alive art that's constantly multiplying. It sounds crazy to me, too, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. The modern mind thinks that anything that can't be immediately explained by science is crazy, but when Darwin first put forward his theory of evolution, people thought he was crazy. Just because we don't understand something, or we can't explain it away, we shouldn't be so quick to condemn it as madness or foolishness. In our relentless drive for rational explanations to every aspect of life, we've forgotten or belittled much that our ancestors knew.

Don't get caught between two mirrors. It steals some of your soul, or essence, or life force, or whatever you want to call it. Someone with power can do a lot with some of your soul.

Telling people your true name gives them power over you, too. Maybe that's why the magic in modern times is so weak - we're giving away all our power. Names are mighty powerful magic, even for scientists. If a scientist discovers a new species, or a new microbe or element, they get to name it, and their power and fame are increased.

All words have power. Names are some of the most powerful words, but all words are powerful. If I write, say, 'France was destroyed in early 1968', and in some distant future, this text is all that's left of our civilisation, then that becomes true. France was destroyed in 1968. My words have changed history. Made history. Pretty powerful stuff, eh? Words have more power, power that's much more immediate and dramatic. I'll keep quiet about that, though. I wouldn't want to accidentally cause any trouble. I'll stick to safe words. As safe as I can, at least.

The most powerful force I know, though, is belief. If people believe something strongly enough, it becomes true. Slightly less powerful than belief is the power of visualisation. It's more intimate though, and more available to individual people. Have you ever been reading a book, and you get so sucked into the world you're reading about that the page fades from before your eyes and you're suddenly in the story? Lots of people have. I have, many times. But most of what you visualise then isn't written on the page. It's within you. And it's not limited to reading, either. Not for me, anyway.

I remember watching a play called On An Average Day on TV a few years ago. There's only one set in the whole play: a kitchen in a suburban house in the USA. Because it was a play, the set wasn't 100% accurate, but that didn't matter. While I was watching it, I realised that I knew the layout of the house, upstairs and downstairs. I could draw a map, to this day, of the surrounding streets, or a plan of the garden outside the kitchen. None of it 'existed' in the conventional sense. The kitchen was just a set on a stage, the doors and windows opened onto backstage, not onto a back garden, but I can still see out of the windows. The white painted fence is peeling a little, and there are weeds growing out of the cracks in the paving. There's a lawnmower rusting quietly near a scrubby, unkempt lawn. If you go out of the kitchen door and turn left, you can see down the side of the house onto the street. Turn right and you can see the back garden, brown and decaying.

There's a line in a song called Sons Of, which goes 'Children we lost in lullabies'. I think. I don't know who wrote it, but according to reader reception theory, that doesn't matter. It's a scary line, if you ask me. The song talks about children dying in various ways, as well as children growing up, but that one line stands out for me. Children lost in lullabies. Not dead. Lost. It's worth thinking about.

I was sat at home reading, when the intercom sounded, making me jump. I got up and answered it, and one of my friends yelled at me through the machine, telling me to open the door. He seemed really excited, which wasn't exactly unusual. He was always getting worked up about something, and then forgetting it just as quickly in favour of something else. I pushed the button to let him into the building and picked up my bookmark, placing it between the pages of my book.

I lived in an apartment building at the time. Did I tell you that? Well, I did. On the fourth floor. I opened the door, like Jerry does in Seinfeld, and started to make a pot of coffee. I'd just got two mugs out, and the sugar bowl, when my friend rushed in and slammed the door behind him. He was always doing that, and I kept having to apologise to my neighbours.

I turned to look at him, standing in the kitchen doorway, out of breath and flushed in the face. He must have run all the way up to my apartment, and that was eight flights of stairs. Two to a floor, you see.

"Hello" I said. "What's got you worked up this time?"

"Hi!" He said. "Listen-"

He used my name. I won't tell it to you, if you don't mind. I don't know who might read this, and like I said before, names are power. I used his name, too, by the way. I didn't just say 'hello'. I said 'Hello' and then I said his name. You know, the way you do to a friend. I won't tell you his name either, for the same reason, although I'm sure he wouldn't mind. He's not about any more though, so I can't ask him, and it's not polite to give away that sort of power without asking the person it belongs to. There's a lot less politeness around nowadays than there used to be. Especially among young people. Manners seem to have quite gone out of fashion. Table manners, especially. I was always taught not to talk with my mouth full, not to put my elbows on the table when I was eating, and to use my fork in my left hand and my knife in my right hand. I thought it was fairly universal, basic stuff, like saying please and thank you. Courtesies, you know? It seems that I was one of the few people to be taught that sort of thing, even at the time, and that was over thirty years ago now. When I see the young people eating, it often turns my stomach.

Where was I? Sorry. As I said before, my concentration isn't what it once was. I used to like nothing better than sitting for days on end, puzzling something out. When I was about six, I took my watch apart to see how it worked, and spent nearly a week working out how to put it back together again. I didn't get it right, unfortunately, and I got into a fair amount of trouble when my father found out. Nowadays, though, about ten minutes seems to be the longest I can keep my mind on something for. Then whatever it is blows right out of my head, like the head of a dandelion clock disintegrating in a breeze.

Oh yes. I recall now. My friend came in. I greeted him and asked what he was excited about. He said "Hi! Listen." Actually, now that I think about it, I can't remember what he said. Not the exact words, anyway. I can give you the gist, though.

My friend told me that he'd been in London that day, which quite surprised me, since London is a couple of hours away by train from where I was living, and I knew my friend didn't have a car. He didn't tell me why he'd been in London, but on his travels there, he'd happened to pop into the Tate Modern gallery and spent an enjoyable few hours in there. He was exploring the general collection, when he saw a painting that captivated him. He said excitedly "It's perfect! It's it! I've found it. I can't believe I've found it! You've got to see it. I'm going back tomorrow; you've got to come with me!" When I asked him what he meant by 'it', he wouldn't say. He shook his head and smiled. "You'll see, tomorrow. I can't describe it anywhere near good enough" (his grammar was far from the best, but you can't let that sort of thing dissuade you from a good friendship, can you?) "I can't describe it right. I'll just sound stupid. You'll see though. You're coming tomorrow, right?"

I don't mind admitting I was really quite intrigued. My friend was often excited about something, but I'd never seen him in such a state, and he was usually all too happy to tell me about his latest obsession. I thought for a minute or so. I was away from work that week, and I had planned to spend the week looking for a new apartment, because my contract was due to expire soon after that, but so far all I'd done was dived headlong into a new book and surfaced only for coffee and the occasional snack. Since tomorrow would almost certainly be a repeat of the past couple, I agreed to go with my friend to the Tate.

My stomach rumbled then, so I offered my friend dinner, poured two cups of coffee and set about making sausages, mashed potatoes and gravy.

Most people simply fry some sausages and mash some potatoes (or use instant mashed potatoes: a cardinal sin in my eyes); then possibly add some instant gravy granules to hot water, but I feel that the resulting meal both lacks taste and shows quite a bit of laziness. I prefer to boil my potatoes with herbs, and fry some onion and mushrooms and garlic in oil. Then I use the water I boiled the potatoes in to make gravy, with more herbs and possibly some beef stock. I add herbs to the boiled potatoes as I mash them, then I stir in the fried onions and mushrooms and garlic, and melt cheese on top of the mashed potatoes. I also grill my sausages, because grilling removes much of the fat, and with the cheese on the potatoes, I feel that the meal is fatty enough. There was an advert years ago, in which a chef climbs a cliff in order to tell some campers who are frying some sausages "the secret is not to prick them." That may be true of fried sausages, but I can assure you that if you are grilling them, you must prick the sausages. If you do not, they will explode. And I've noticed that most people tend to cook sausages until there is a thick layer of carbonised sausage skin and meat around a very small amount of edible material. I've never understood why this is. I know that with meat (and especially pork) it is important to ensure that it is cooked all the way through, but this does not mean the outside should be charred. Possibly people enjoy the taste of coal, but I prefer to be able to taste the sausage meat.

I've done it again. I really must apologise, and ask you to bear with me. I don't intend to wander in my tale as much as I inevitably do. I shall do my best to stay focussed in the future.

My friend ate his meal in near silence. I didn't disturb him because I could see that he was absorbed in some inner world. When he had finished, he thanked me, said he would come and collect me on his way to the railway station the next morning, and left. I returned to the world of my book, savouring a small glass of whisky and soda, then went to bed.

I was woken at half past six the next morning by the intercom. When I answered, I found that my friend was already setting out for London and had assumed that I would be ready to accompany him. I had to point out gently that the gallery would not be open until nine a.m. or thereabouts, and were we to get the train now, we would have to wait in London until the Tate let us in. My friend grudgingly agreed to my suggestion that he made breakfast for both of us whilst I took a brief shower.

He made porridge oats with raisins. It was very tasty.

The train journey to London was uneventful, although very expensive. My friend was excited but quiet. I asked him if everything was okay, and he told me that he was remembering the painting he'd seen yesterday, and wondering if his memory was accurate. I had my book with me, and I left him to his anticipation.

When we arrived at the Tate Modern gallery, my friend chivvied me along and almost ran to the second floor. We passed through a number of rooms, and I looked around in interest, but my friend was blind to any of the art on display. He went unerringly to a small room containing five paintings, and stood in front of one of them. He stopped so suddenly that I took a couple of steps past him before stopping. Turning, I saw that he was gazing in something close to ecstasy at one of the paintings. I looked at the name. It was called Keeper of the Dark Copse II. I remember it, because I did a little research but could find no information anywhere about a 'version one'. There seems to be no prequel to this painting, just number 2. I can't recall who painted it though. I used to know, but I seem to have forgotten. I've forgotten a great many things recently, to my eternal shame and sorrow.

My friend turned to me, his face alight with wonder. "Isn't it perfect?" He asked me. I looked at the painting. It was a dark, abstract scene, with clusters of what were either streetlights or trees, and a floor made from geometric shapes cut through with sharp-edged shadows. The sky was a dull grey, as was the floor, and the streetlamp trees stretched away into the background. In roughly the centre of the painting was a white shape that looked like the pictogram for a male lavatory. I looked at the scene for a couple of minutes in silence, trying to see what my friend was seeing, but I could not. The painting was, to my uneducated eye, perfectly well executed, and it certainly exuded a dark, mournful sense of longing, but I would never have described it as 'perfect'.

"Well?" My friend asked.

I smiled and nodded. "It's very good. Shall we look around a little more?" His face fell, and he looked at me resentfully.

"It's perfect. I've never seen anything like it." He turned to look at the painting again. "I suppose I can't expect you to understand. It's just... perfect." He said again.

After another five minutes or so, I grew a little bored of looking at the painting, so I told my friend I was going to have a look at some of the other paintings. He didn't even look at me. He just nodded, his eyes still on the painting, a look of worship on his face.

I spent a very enjoyable few hours wandering around the gallery, looking at the different pieces of art, and I began to get hungry at around one in the afternoon. Making my way back to the room where I left my friend, I found him still standing in front of the painting, staring at it unblinkingly. I suggested that we went to the cafe on the top floor of the gallery for lunch. He nodded, but didn't move. I had to say his name a couple of times to break the spell the painting had cast. He looked at me, blinking, then took my arm and dragged me, almost running, to the cafe. We bought sandwiches; and a cup of coffee for me and soft drink for my friend.

As we ate, I tried to talk to him, but his responses were brief. He was obviously still thinking about the painting.

When I was only about half way through my sandwich, he had finished his, and drained his drink in a single swallow. He stood up. "I'm going back." He said. "You don't have to wait for me. I just wanted to show it to you. You can go anytime you like. I'll make my own way back." Then, without letting me answer, he spun on his heel and strode out of the cafe.

I shrugged to myself. He had always been single-minded when he was in the grip of one of his obsessions. This one would surely peter out in a few days, perhaps a week, and he would find something else that was 'perfect'. I finished my sandwich and coffee, and made my way down to the second floor, where I found my friend back in his appointed spot in front of the painting. I bade him goodbye, and he nodded, hardly seeming to notice that I was there at all.

I didn't see my friend for just over a month after that. I was busy with work, and with moving into a new apartment. I had taken a flat in a small village outside the city, which made my commute to work almost half an hour longer, but I had an extra bedroom and a much larger kitchen, and use of a communal garden, which more than made up for the extra drive each day. I telephoned him several times, but always reached his answer phone. I didn't think much of it at the time, assuming that he was busy with something or other. He played the double bass in a couple of fairly unsuccessful bands, and was often found either playing small music clubs or busking on street corners.

When I finally did meet him again, it was pure chance. He was in an underpass, playing his double bass, and I was walking from work into the city centre to browse the bookstores during my lunch hour. My friend looked slightly unwell, with shadows under his eyes and a pale complexion. He hadn't shaved in a couple of days either.

He assured me that he was okay, and explained that he was tired because he had been spending most nights with one of his bands coming up with 'something new'. He seemed happy enough with the way it was going, and told me that he was playing some of the 'new stuff' that day, to see how it sounded in 'real world situations'. I pointed out that the other band members were missing, and he grinned and nodded, but did not give an explanation. He offered to play some of his new work for me, and I agreed.

It was terrible. Atonal, arrhythmic and, to my ears, at least, sounded nothing like music. I could only assume that when the other members of the band were playing too, it sounded much better.

He played for about five minutes, and none of the passers-by tossed any money into his instrument case. I didn't know how long he had been playing, but his case was empty aside from a few coppers. It seemed that the general public felt the same about my friend's new music as I did.

Not wanting to offend him, I told my friend that it was very interesting music, and invited him over for dinner in a few days. He grinned and nodded, and I went on my way to the bookstores.

My friend did not come to my apartment the night we had arranged that I would cook him dinner, and my phone calls to his house went unanswered. I left my new telephone number, asking him to call me, but I heard nothing that night or the next.

Two days later, I received a telephone call from a lady who had been at university with my friend and I; and who was worried about him. She hadn't seen him in weeks either, and had gone to his office to invite him for lunch. She had learned that our friend had not been in to work for three weeks, and was as a consequence no longer employed there. She had sought out one of his band members who had not seen him recently either, but had heard he was spending much of his time in London. I comforted her as best I could, although I was very worried myself and it must have shown.

The next day was Saturday, and I took the train into London and went back to the Tate Modern gallery. There, on the second floor, I found my friend staring at the painting, in a crumpled suit and with a haversack at his feet.

He looked dreadful and smelled worse. He couldn't have washed in a couple of weeks, and his clothes were filthy. I talked to him, trying to persuade him to come back to my apartment. I didn't say it, but privately I thought he needed to talk to a counsellor. He ignored me for five minutes, then turned to me and smiled brilliantly.

"Don't worry." He told me calmly. "I'm almost done. There's just one thing left." He reached down to his bag and took out an ancient Polaroid camera. Looking back at the painting, he smiled wistfully and said "It's absolutely perfect. I can't imagine any way it could be improved. There's nowhere to go from here. Nowhere at all. This is it. Perfection." He turned back to me and said "you know?" Then he shook his head. "You don't. But that's fine."

Lifting the camera to his eye, he took a photograph of the painting. He passed the photograph to me and asked me to look after it for him. I took it and put it in my pocket without looking at it, and continued to try to persuade him to come home with me, but he shook his head. "I'm fine." He asserted. "I'll see you later."

I couldn't say anything to move him, and when I took hold of his arm to try to move him physically, he pushed me away. Not hard, but firmly.

"I said I'm fine." He told me again, with uncharacteristic force. Then he softened. "Really. I'll see you later. Tonight, if that's okay. I'll come over."

I checked that he had my new address, then, unable to think of anything else to do, I left the gallery and went home, spending an unpleasant afternoon trying to concentrate on my reading.

Just after six in the evening, there was a knock on my door, and I opened it to find my friend smiling tiredly at me. "I'm done." He said simply. "Could I stay here tonight?" I stood aside to let him enter.

My friend showered while I made dinner for us. He came into the kitchen as I was cooking, wearing a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt, both of which were mine. In clean clothes and showered and shaved, he looked much better than he had when he arrived.

"Do you have that Polaroid I took?" He asked me. I had forgotten about it and it was still in my jacket pocket. He went into the hall and took the photograph from my jacket. When I left the kitchen with a glass of wine for my friend, he was looking at the picture, smiling. He put the photo face down on my coffee table and took the glass of wine. He didn't look at the photo for the rest of the evening.

I didn't talk to him about what he'd been doing for the last few weeks. I thought it might be best to try to take his mind off it for the evening. We talked of other things, inconsequential things. We listened to some music and watched a movie on my battered old television. At about midnight, my friend told me he was going to bed, and walked into the spare bedroom.

As I took the wine glasses and coffee cups we'd used into the kitchen, I noticed the photograph was still lying face down on the coffee table. I smiled, thinking that my friend's obsession had finally run its course, and I went to bed happier than I had in a long time.

The next morning, I woke to find my friend had gone. His haversack and Polaroid camera were still in the spare bedroom, as were the clothes he had been wearing the day before, and the clothes he had borrowed from me.

I spent a frantic morning calling everyone who might know where my friend was, with no success. Apart from me, no-one had seen him in weeks.

As I put the telephone down for the twentieth time, I noticed the Polaroid photograph my friend had taken yesterday. It was lying in the centre of the coffee table, face up. Something was written at the bottom of the picture. I picked it up and read it. In my friend's slightly scruffy hand was written the word 'Perfect!' I looked at the photograph and almost dropped it in shock. There was the painting, with grey sky and floor, and dark clusters of streetlight trees filling the foreground and moving off into the distance. But where before there was a pictogram man in the centre of the painting, now there were two white man-shapes, facing each other on either side of one of the trees.

My friend was never seen after that day. I was interviewed by the police, after informing them he was missing, but nothing was ever resolved. I returned to the Tate in London, and checked the painting. Keeper of the Dark Copse II has only one man in the painting, but my Polaroid has two.

I framed the photograph, and mounted it on my wall, looking at it every day. I swear, sometimes the second man was in a different place. Not much difference, but it was definitely a little larger, or smaller, or slightly to the left or right.

I have an explanation.

My friend loved the painting more than anything. He thought it was perfect, and he studied it every day for over a month. Eventually, he found a way to enter the painting. He couldn't enter the original, but a reproduction is never as strong as the original, and whatever bindings had contained the original in its permanent state were weakened. He could enter the photograph, and he did so willingly.

There is no end to the things we will do to achieve perfection.

I can tell that you don't believe me. You think me insane. I can see it in your eyes. I don't blame you. I would not have believed it either, had I not experienced what I have.

Read these words again. Look hard and long between the lines and the letters. If you look carefully enough, and if you really see, you'll find me staring back at you.

Have you ever loved something so much that it seems to fill you somehow?