Dear ~

Thanks for your letter. Sounds like you’re living life the way you wanted – and that makes me smile. No, I hadn’t heard Byon Borg reitred. Thank God one of us has a finger on a sporting pulse. No records left to collect, you complain. Borg, Brolin, and an unknown tennis trainer released something recently. No doubt your contacts in the Stockholm underworld can source that gem.

Come back the other day to find the pub on the corner had been burned down. A dark London street story that I won’t burden you with now. Determined as I am to write you some life affirming shit and not drag you on a regular troll through the night seas to see what crawls.

Yeah I know they cast in their lots to see who could get the old pub’s lease and turn it into more luxury flats. Brick by brick the infiltration has begun. I feel moved enough to take a spray can in hand and step to the boarding, but, as yet I can’t think of anything witty or important enough to be up there.

Yet the drunkards still own the park. D’s still there in your old flat makin’ beats and still owns the night. While this street can still shape-shift and make you quicken your pace on a late night return – so I suppose we still have time. But make no mistake my friend, I’m sure some barracade somewhere has started its calling.

I’m so sorry we missed each other when you last came to town. I heard from Linda that you sat with her telling stories for 3 hours as she put some extensions in her clients’ hair. She told me ’bout Cuba, cigars and sacred drums – of arguments in bars, Dante, the color of Christ and the only true poet… the South China seas… Remembered Vy Yung, the Buddhist master. “How could we obtain truth through words”. When she quoted your “immature writers plagiarize mature writers still”, I was back in a bar in New York, lower east side when you shouted that. Maybe it was yourself. Maybe I wasn’t there. Maybe it slipped down between the years. My memory is exactly that now. But my friend, you definately have a convert there. If you ever need your hair braided – and I know that’s a long shot, then she’s your girl.

As my man Scratch or maybe it was Ricky Nomonk – or more probably all of them at some stage said – you gotta check the new style. I assume you are still running an old testament blades to hair ratio and it hasn’t fallen rudely out of you. If that’s the scenario then my sincerest apologies.

Saw Mr. Brennen in the Holloway Road yesterday. Walked past with a sack of potatoes on his shoulders. I didn’t stop him for he wouldn’t have had a clue whoever the hell I was. He didn’t back then. Even when we used to spend months sleeping on his sofa, explaining every morning which one of his sons’ friends we were. I guess that’s the price you pay for any more than six children around the Holloway Road area.

I think of you often, and hope we see each other as soon as is possible. Until such time, may the winds be at your back, the dice be kind, and the gods turn the occasional blind eye.

Sincerely Yours,

Beyond the clouds. Beyond the sun.

The Rebel without a cause