It´s always three o´clock in the morning is an adaptation of the writings of Margery Kempe, author of The Book of Margery Kempe (ca 1438). The book depicts a woman who is actively engaging in devotional pain practices, in an attempt at a union with God. Travelling through episodes of intense pain, the "creature" is becoming what can best be described as a bordering phenomenon, gradually separating herself from the roles and codes of behaviour imposed on her by patriarchical society. Unapologetical and transgressive, the woman utilizes her body in pain to challenge and blur the lines between established societal and ecclesiastical institutions. 

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Kempe herself suffered long-term and episodic pain related to labour and post-partum pain, and her experiences overlap with Margery the Creature´s. Kempe was a layperson, unlike other well-known devotees, anchoresses, and medieval mystics who led their lives in solitude amongst the clergy. Kempe performed her body in pain in the public realm, without sanction or acknowledgement from the Church. She used her body and the affective powers of pain to cultivate her authority as a religious visionary, and to access religious authorities, and, perhaps more importantly, to create a room of her own. 

         

The text and video essay consists of descriptions and evaluations of pain experiences from several perspectives and different positions. The re-writings of Kempe is carried out parallel to negotiations of pain recounted by a contemporary chronic pain sufferer, focusing on the time that passes from the onset of acute pain until its settlement as a permanent bodily event. The essay gives expression to a subversive suffering; to women who are mobilizing their powers so as to create a line of flight from a life in confinement. 

         

The work is moving towards a profane interpretation of "The dark night of the soul", which is a theme in mediaval theological, scholastic as well as poetic writing. The term has been appropriated in modern literature notably by F. Scott Fitzgerald. In the novella The Crack-Up (1936), a series of events take place which lead up to an irreducible break after which the conditions of life for the author will never again be the same. ”In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o´clock in the morning”, Fitzgerald writes. 

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Swedish introduction here