Metamorphosis

It's been less than a week since I've had my desk. It's a cramped space, almost comically so. The yolk-coloured chair backs onto the wardrobe, which you cannot open unless the chair is tucked in tightly beneath the desk. The power points are located a few small centimetres behind the tin filing cabinet and any attempt to plug in a charger is fraught with difficulty. Doing most things in my new room is difficult, but I'm overwhelmed by the novelty of having a bed spread or indeed, a bed without someone above me. I unpack my belongings and stick up drawings and a postcard from my friend, Peter:

"The world is a magical place, where people build ball houses or hostels, so that people meet one another. Your soul walks in beauty and I'm very grateful to have met you!"

Every other night, I return to the hostel to pick up another suitcase and lug it back to Canonbury on the 19 bus from Bloomsbury Square. I furtively hope that someone over there will care that I've gone, make mention of a kind of love or a loss, but I know that other things are going on. It becomes apparent that they're making plans for a special goodbye dinner for two other departing staff members, but it's not particularly clear if I'm invited. When I made mention of it, we stood around awkwardly and my disappointment was evident. None of us really knew what to say.

There were lots of reasons why I stayed for so long. The dominant reason was that I had a fear of missing out. I wanted to document everything and I knew those who stayed would not properly report back to me. There'd be changes and I'd lose a sense of the narrative, the characters would change on me. Increasingly, I'd find that I'd have less of an idea of what was going on anyway. Going from staff member to guest, I found that my friends really didn't confide in me anymore. Conversations seemed trivial, rarely extending beyond the most flimsy and superficial.

I later realised that it was actually me. In addition to my frequent depressive fits and temper tantrums, I had stopped confiding in people. I instinctively knew how they would respond to my most persistent anxieties, namely, the expense, the terrible sleep quality and the frequent bedlessness at weekends. Their sympathy would be so limited that I just couldn't say anything.at all. I, more than anyone, knew the terms of that life. I spent days and months escaping, as far as I could for as long as I could, generating digital content that would suggest the most aesthetically fantastical existence.

I may be loved, but will I ever feel that love? Probably not, no. Yet, Peter's postcard hangs in front of me, it's evidence claiming a warmth and a regard. He's not the first guest to say such things, but I have never been able accept it for whatever reason. It's simply not consistent with the narrative I have running through my head: I loved and I lost, they left and they forgot. You would never know how much I love by the amount of time I spend on my own, but I'm fine with the isolation now. I'm happy to render it all, now that I'm here alone.

Pitch

I first became subjected to this pressure to be breathlessly articulate ten years ago. When my counsellor urged me to only see her once I had specific questions to discuss, it broke my heart. It became apparent that I had to frequently launch into an elevator pitch, particularly when I was compelled to speak with an important type with an impatient manner. Their inattention would rattle me, my chest would constrict when I'd see their wandering eyes search for something else, anybody else they'd rather be talking to. It happens in these momentary interactions, in chance meetings with musical heroes, prospective employers and BBC journalists. I speak quickly. I make it brief.

When I heard a recent recording of his voice, competing for space and attention, I was reminded of how this dynamic plagued him in the days when I knew him. We never discussed it, but I always thought his fast-paced delivery reflected a feeling of creative powerlessness. He was eternally pitching to the eternally distracted. We hadn't spoken in five years but I still felt a level of gratitude towards him. In spite of his cruelty, he checked back frequently to read my Plague essays. Knowing of his silent readership prompted me to lovingly craft my words. I felt relieved at the thought that I still existed in his mind, yet I struggled to obscure the fact that I no longer held onto his memory as I once did. I still don't know if he ever knew that I had loved and lost another.

In a moment of madness, I crafted an email to him in reference to his forthcoming visit to London. It drew heavily on my ancient fear of being in London and being denied the possibility of seeing someone important. I wrote to offer the chance to meet as friends but I never honestly expected a response, because I know that even the caring don't tend to write. Yet, in this instance, he did reply. It was palpably abrupt, condescending and needlessly harsh. What I had intended as a kind gesture managed to shake all the kindness that I had once cultivated in my heart and my head. In that moment, I knew that he would never visit this site again. I had lost my muse... and there's no one around who could possibly understand what that means to me.

It's a loving thing to be generous with your time and space, but I need to reconcile with those suffocating moments where there's no interest, there's no love or warmth. It's best to return to those friends who choose to love and listen and be kind. I need to return to them.

Sentimentalists

I often contemplate the irony of how a sentimentalist could exist in a hostel, a place where you are expected to connect and let go each day. I've always struggled to effectively manage the memories of those I've lost, but now I live in the wake of hundreds of such losses. The memories of departing guests and colleagues attach themselves to the physicality of this place, these rooms where memories are being written over each other, again and again.

The sentimentalists of the hostel fantasise about old guests returning. It happened to a colleague a few weeks ago as he dragged me to the reception computer and pointed at the screen: "She's coming, she's actually coming!" You felt and knew that relief in his cry could only be the result of months of pining and daydreaming. It's a sentiment that I could closely identify with, but I have to remind myself that the guest that I Iong for will never return, as much as I yearn for it endlessly.

One such guest returned. Not for me, not for anyone, specifically. He lived with us last winter and his hostel lover was once my colleague. She has long since left. As I sat at reception, I watched him look at the details of the corridor, the doorframes and the window sills. His reminiscence was largely silent. "Les fantômes restent ici..." I remarked. He didn't appear to be pained by it at all. He headed out with the new staff, unperturbed, dancing and drinking and then staggering back home to tell me all about it.

Others have returned. You take them in a sweeping hug and you asked them about life on the outside. Those who remain in London describe dodgy landlords and a leaking roof, mould and damp and flat mates from hell. Those who stay for a few hours tend to get sad at the changes, the unfamiliar staff and the rearranged furniture. Those who return and actually stay get easily entrenched in the microdynamics of the group. There are crushes and hookups and tensions that exist and disintegrate and the rest of the world falls away somehow.

When they leave, some say they will visit. Some say they will be in touch but it is never like it is when you simply exist together, living and talking and loving and laughing for hours upon hours each day. I write down the quotes that make me cackle maniacally, almost developing a moment by moment sense of sentimentality. We squeal at each other when we enter the room, scooping each other up, dazzled by this sense of gratitude that we actually exist together in this space and time.

When I long for him to be here, I have to remind myself: "He could have been here if he'd wanted to be..." It's a sentence that really touches upon what it means to be present with a person, to sit and to live and breathe with them without guilt or distraction. You can lose a life, squandering your love and energy on somebody who decided to be present with someone else. The challenge is to solely devote yourself to those who choose to be with you now, to reconcile yourself with the risk that despite your love, one day, you might lose them too.

Platform

A large throng of girls huddled tightly. Their school dresses were cut jagged and short, the fabric matted with dried blobs of red and yellow acrylic paint. They struggled to all fit together, some leaned outwards, threatening to topple off the two-foot high wooden platform. They held fast to one another, some girls held hands with their friends. Some pressed their plastic firemens' hats to the heads, others remained poised with party poppers.

I stood around awkwardly. Even in the last moments of high school, I never knew where to stand or who to be with. I never stopped envying those tiny microgestures of acceptance, a pose for a photograph, a pause for a moment's conversation. To be acknowledged meant everything to me, only because for those four years, it seemed as if I perpetually stood with some girl's back to me.

Once I received all the attention on that platform where we stood together. I had performed a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. I had never been offered the opportunity to perform in a play or a show, not even in the chorus. I had always been predestined for the orchestra pit. It was hugely gratifying to play Bottom, if only for those few moments. I screeched and hammed it up to excess. I died for as long as possible and everybody loved it.

The bell echoed across the courtyard. Girls screamed, arms flailed, confetti fell. Out of nowhere, Nancy suddenly hugged me tightly. She was a tough girl who boasted about hanging out with the Triads on the weekend. On Year 9 camp, she had pinned me down, straddled my mid-section and punched me repeatedly during a night time game. In Year 12, she was reprimanded for punching Amelia. Her swollen left cheek morphed from blue to purple and then black.

I never thought to ask why Nancy suddenly hugged me like that and it was funny that even during that embrace, she still couldn't bring herself to look at me. At the time I consoled myself thinking that the gesture was the apology, albeit the apology of a coward. In retrospect, I think she was just pleased that we would never have to see each other again.

In the years that have followed high school, I have spoken openly about the sadistic bullying practices of our year level. To each other, we used to joke about the widespread myth that every second year level at our school was particularly dysfunctional. It was funny that despite the heightened level of self-awareness (and lengthy group-counselling sessions), we could never get it together.

In theory, it should have all ended in that moment, as we stood in friendship and relief on that platform. In actuality, every incident from those four years seems to spin around in my head forever. The memory of it manifests itself in interesting ways, like I used to live with this insatiable desire to confront any and every bully. Even in my dreams, I wanted to embarrass and condemn those who are cruel.

In more recent times, I haven't been thinking about the cruelty, I have only been thinking about the classes. I loved almost everything that I did and I think back to how inspiring those classes were: Shakespeare in Performance, Women in History, Protest and Conflict, Journalism, Fashion, Photography. In my head, I continue to navigate those grounds, the hallways and the classrooms, but everything is empty. Everyone is gone.

When people ask what high school was like, I say: "It wasn't as bad as it was."

Eros

Andrew would always say that if you stood at Piccadilly Circus for long enough, you would eventually run into everybody. I imagine it from time to time, standing among the crowds, vying for a space among those steps, looking up at the flashing lights above. After waiting years (potentially), you would eventually see them.

If I could lead a dozen lives at once, I'd spend one life waiting at Piccadilly Circus, sitting by the statue of Eros. There would be that phantom prospect of a glance or even a weak smile from a friend, now long lost. There would be some kind of acknowledgement that something once existed, in one life or another.

Spycam

Absolution

He would turn to me for absolution. He would email from internet cafés and text as soon as they'd get off stage. He would confess every debauched antic, temptation in Leeds, lust in Edinburgh. He admitted everything, even his fears that he would cheat on his girlfriend and ultimately transform into the rock star cliché he most vehemently detested.

I was in the studio when I received his text. He had just landed in London: "I'm in love and everything's totally seismic. I haven't told anyone else, I don't know what to do..." He was always terribly dramatic, but even then I wasn't aware of the gravity of the situation. I didn't respond with comfort, as I had done in the past, I responded with anger. He had never told me about her.

He largely withdrew from contact, knowing of my disapproval. He'd sometimes call when he got really desperate. He bemoaned endlessly about the implausibility of the affair, she lived in New York City with her husband and he lived in London with his girlfriend. I let him talk for as long as he needed to, but I still felt his detachment increase. When I suggested we meet in London, he said, "I'll only see you if it means more to me than it would to you."

Needless to say, we never met.

He messaged me to say that it was happening. She was to come over for the week. The affair was to start. My jealousy resulted in a long week of silence. His band had their first appearance on Jools Holland that Friday and on Sunday, they filmed a promo clip, wandering through high-rise commission flats. He looked weak and sallow, tired and despondent. I always felt like I knew why.

I received my last email from him when I was in Hull, explaining that I would never hear from him again. They were together at last and it was time to grow up, it was time to stop knocking about like a child and giving bits of himself to lots of different people. I grieved as I saw him perform, only metres away from me. He never would have recognised me.

He never bothered to know who I was.

Disappointed Love by Francis Danby

Handlers

I had hoped not to attract any attention. I skirted the trestle table and I watched him concentrate on examining records and patting turntables. He was my first boyfriend and he had broken my heart six months prior, when he sat on my bed and said he didn't miss me when I wasn't around. I grieved and recovered. With glazed eyes, I looked on blankly, recalling his insistence that one couldn't just learn how to mix beats.

He suddenly swept up beside me, leaving his decks unattended. "Can I talk to you?" I shrugged and he pulled my hand towards the dilapidated back stairs. We sat close together and he smelt of cloves, still. Dizzy, I paid little attention to his apology, ignoring the questionable levels of sincerity. I flipped my hand dismissively and reassured him that it was fine and I was fine and it was really all nothing.

I'm unsure whether it was the dismissive reassurances or my staring at his glowing straight teeth which made him ask: "Do you want to take me home?" I smiled, shook my head and took his hand, leading him to the side of the crumbling weatherboard house. "I only want you for a moment." They were soft and ineffectual kisses, yet nothing had ever made me feel more empowered. I commanded it, all of it. It would be the last time I would ever see him.

Missy Laur and I have always discussed the notion of confrontation or rather, how we can ever expect to cope with seeing those we've lost. I've have dealt with it to varying degrees: I've approached, I've ignored, I've been visibly upset, I've been visibly indifferent. I have dreams where I am composed and untouchable and I can handle everything, even the most meaningless of passing contact. I have dreams where I am woken up to the buzz of my phone and a lost name on screen.

"You'll always want more, you'll always want them to love you again." She warns me. I sip my mocha and dismissively flip my hand. "I think I can handle it."

Itou Kittou

When I was young, I'd write stories in notebooks. I'd write even though I knew he'd seek out my writing and read it out loud, stopping to cackle loudly in my face. It was humiliating, but I would never stop. I never really could.

I would never finish a single story, but it never really mattered because all the stories were the same. Every story was about best friends running off to Europe together. They'd be so unspeakably gleeful - they would secretly gush to each other in French.

I dreamt of this mythical friendship endlessly. As a six year old, I'd look at my dual reflection in a pair of sunglasses and wish for another one of me. I'd pray for her arrival, next week, next term... but it never really eventuated.

I now find myself sitting across from my best friend, describing how we will fill our forthcoming days in Paris. We anticipate how we'll drink fishbowls of coffee and describe every detail in our notebooks. We share elaborate daydreams and use French slang to supplement our meanings.


It's weird to see how close it is to how dreamt it. For all my prayers and loneliness, I can't believe I've actually found her.

Sorbet

It was a birthday present Noreen delivered on the night of Eurovision, a bottle of MOR perfume called Sorbet. I sniff it occasionally but it's a bit too strong to wear. Its smell reminds me of my 16th birthday, when I received a great influx of candles and a blue glitter lava lamp. My Dad gave me The Freddie Mercury Collection and I listened to it, obsessively.

For my 16th, a great swathe of friends gathered to watch Ross Noble perform at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. He was still young and nubile, his hair was bright red and his comedy electric. We all sat in the front row, taking up all the seats. I hid the bouquet of tulips I received from Spiro under my chair and Ross mocked both Laur and I at length for holding our bags on our laps.

Andrew took this photo of all of us after the show, many of us with Slurpees in hand. It was perfectly configured, with many of us in complementary magentas, light purples and dark denim skirts. We grinned and hugged each other as if we were friends who really loved one another. I couldn't believe I managed to stage that photograph. It was as if I really belonged.

Those candles have lost their scent. Mr Bad Guy has since been ripped of its associations. I take a shot of Sorbet occasionally. It's similar, but not quite the same. It's like how I'd sometimes pass women in the street who have the same smell as that discontinued St Ives' moisturiser. It is the smell of reading my first Queen biography as a 13 year old.

I wish I could just accost them and ask what they're wearing. I might become reacquainted with that moment when I became so captivated... and everything became so completely messed up.

The Hypocritical Headband

Missy Laur and I would often preface advice with the expression, "please excuse the hypocritical headband". It was a reference to the large 1960s headbands I used to wear. Like the headband, the hypocrisy of the scenario was so dramatic that it could never be avoided and instead of being sensible and attempting to take our own advice, we would use the hypocritical headband as a mechanism to deliver lectures, guidance and comfort.

We wore the headband in good faith, we did. We were deathly aware of our mutual propensity to obsess, in spite of our reassurances that there would come a time when we wouldn't. She told me repeatedly that things would get better and after a very long time, they actually did. I would reassure others too, sitting across from dear friends at Sousou. I would tell them that no matter how painful it is now, everything will eventually numb out in time.

Those reassurances now seem so wildly insincere, so desperately hypocritical. I can't believe I ever forgot how painful it could be, but then I find it hard to believe I ever managed to endure it all before. I know on some fundamental level that it will be their words, the words of Missy Laur and Louise Sucre that will ultimately cure me. I have no idea what words could make for any immediate cure but I will try and listen. I will try and get better.

Concentrate

I don't remember much from that night. It was upstairs at Pony and we were there for a show. Some acquaintances were on stage and an unlikely pair of friends were hooking up in a corner. I'd occasionally see glimpses of someone I thought knew, but I was hopeful and mistaken.

For some reason, I think it must have been the second time we met. You bound up to me, breathlessly with a trademark enthusiasm. I don't remember what I was wearing, but you were wearing your AMIENS WHATEVER tshirt. It was a in-joke and I never understood what it meant.

We somehow got onto the topic of the words we weren't allowed to say. I told you about how, as a ten year old, my best friend told me off for referring to movies as films. It was in exactly the same way that my estranged brother told me off for using the term genre. Saying a word like that was just so embarrassing.

You met me with a similar anecdote, of how you casually and accidentally referred to cordial as concentrate and consequently, kids taunted you endlessly with that term for years and years. It riled you up and upset you, in the same way it upset me. It was baffling how an ordinary word could come across as nerdy or pompous.

My details of that night are sketchy at best, but I often contemplate that youthful compulsion to say a dumber word in order to convey a dumber image. I think of it more and more, now I am allowed to be as open and gregarious as I want. I live now without bullies and censors and I can speak, free of reproach and ridicule.

Scissors

My hair was short when we were last friends. It was so short that the hairdresser had to shave the back of my head to mend the botchjob I had done to myself, one night when I had been left alone with the scissors.

It was a chic style, a 1920s bob, not unlike Louise Brooks or Edita Vilkevičiūtė as Chanel for Lagerfield. It was the closest I could ever get to shaving my head, the true cultural signifier of being hopelessly depressed.


As I was complimented for the boldness of the cut by strangers at parties, I could only think: "You don't know..." When I left his Jolimont apartment at 4 o'clock in the morning, I could only think: "You don't want to know..."

My dark hair now reaches far, far down my back, in thick cascades of incidental waves. I describe its length as cinematic and I revel in how it somehow illustrates that time has passed and things have changed.

But when he glances at me vacantly, with his new frames and unfamiliar beard, I know nothing of what he thinks. To ease the threat of self-reproach, I imagine he is looking at my hair.

I imagine he is looking, not only to survey its excessive length, but to recall its similarity to a style I once had. The style I had when we would hang out together and laugh endlessly... and I would actually be happy.

Alignment

I'm not a great believer in fate, as such, but lately I've been noticing this feeling of alignment. This feeling that as one important person steps back, another important person steps forward. That every sense of loss is duly compensated by this overwhelming confrontation: I know we've just met, but I have this feeling we're going to be friends forever.

I feel great safety residing with my crew. Mini, Andrew, Missy Laur, Louise, Noreen and even OC at times. Even my exes, the greatest source of lost communication, have become supplementary members of my crew. They contact me when they witness a passing mention of the Smiths. Andrew says it is as if I have set them all onto Google Alerts and now they feel compelled to contact me, as I once felt compelled to contact them.

My crew are unrivalled in their patience, they are unrivalled in their compassion. They are more than familiar with my bullshit excuses, why I don't do radio, why I don't sing, why I don't write. I don't need to explain any of it anymore, because as we sip at our mochas at Madame Sousou, they understand exactly why I don't do it. Just as they understand why the hating gets as severe as it does.

I don't need to answer to my crew when I fall into a pattern of destructive behaviour. The levels of sympathy vary from friend to friend, but I ultimately return to the perennial advice of Mini: You are doing the wrong thing. You know what you need to do. Of course, it's true. I need to eat better, I need to sleep at night, I need to write essays every day. Unfortunately, it's advice I often ignore.

Inspiration, care of Pika Pika
I don't believe in fate, as such, but this alignment has come about from the rare inclusion of new friends in my crew. Strangers, sidling up to me, blinding me with enthusiasm and encouragement. Why isn't C&CM on radio? Why don't you make those documentaries? Why don't we start a band! My established crew have said exactly the same things to me millions of times before. Yet, I get off on the baffling selflessness of the gesture: hearing the same words from unfamiliar lips.

We may not be friends forever, sure. We may not even last the month. But I don't wish to forget this feeling I have now: People don't need to listen, but they do. People don't need to read, but they do. People don't need to care, but they do. Take responsibility for your art and start creating again. It's a miracle that they still care, long after you've stopped.

Evil > Slow Hands

I had been drafting letters in my head again. It gets worse when I am left alone at work for hours at a time. I become fixated with certain expressions, obsessed with the idea that I can clarify matters. I become obsessed with the idea that I can clear my name, not my memory. I really wanted to write to him. As time has passed, he has brutalised my character to anyone who cares to listen. He portrays me as a drunkard, a heartless selfish manipulator. His descriptions of me have become more and more malicious as months roll on. I suppose the lack of contact gives him that entitlement to distort the facts. I have done the same thing, the only difference is that I am compelled to pay homage to our friendship. I am compelled to value the ambiguities and the complexities of it, now it can never be restored.

I suppose we can never change how they feel about us, but I desperately desire control of the way I am perceived. I hate that he hates me, that he feels compelled to punish me as he does. I hate how that punishment is indicative of his own pain and suffering and that, because of his mandate on the subject, I am forbidden from contact. It frustrates me immeasurably, as I find more and more people are invited to judge. They are invited to comment and dispel my actions. Yet, I am not granted the right to defend myself. Instead, I exist in the shadows, cloaked in my trade mark trenchcoat, averting their eyeline, weltering in the knowledge that they hate me. They really fucking hate me. But should I even really care? I never even liked him, in any case.

What is peculiar is that one evening, it all felt so different. Instead of obsessing over my endless mental drafts, I spent the night laughing with a work colleague. We spoke of the Medellin drug cartels, maquiladoras, Keith Richards and kittens. It was a remarkable thing, because I remembered what it was to be seen as person, not as a monster. It was a blessed feeling, to have some kind of implied assurance that they would never bully or exclude me as I have been bullied and excluded. Yet, in a completely different way, the evening revealed the true extent of my self-loathing. It revealed how much I anticipate strangers and acquaintances to witness the same breed of evil as he saw in me.

I'll stop. I promise I will. I'll stop with the hating and the mental drafting and my earnest willingness to believe the hype. I can't control much, but I know I can control something. Even if it's cultivating a delusion that the hate isn't as severe as it really is. That somewhere, at some point and some time, he remembers all the laughter and affinity that I do. I hope, that in spite of everything, I will be able to convince myself of that fallacy. I hope that I will be able to live in the comfortable ignorance that he doesn't hate me as much he says he does. Maybe then, each night alone at work won't seem as painful as it ought to be.

All the Pennies in the Thames will not make it how it was

"I can't stay very long," he said to me. "I have to be back in Crouch End to move out of my flat, you see..." I nodded, silently. I was silent in a manner that suggested I understood, not silent in the manner that suggested I was offended. But I was offended, you see, for it was my first night back in London and I had wanted to see my old friend. I had wanted to talk about music.

He smiled and humoured me, suggesting that we walk along Southbank as the sun went down. I took note of the things I had missed, the OXO Tower glazed in a gooey sunset, the ruins of another nameless church and its pulpit, flooded with cigarette butts, but we promptly ignored the beauty and the ugliness of our surrounds and retreated to our own world of blazers, musical love and lyrical sincerity. I had waited years to see him again and just when I felt most grateful for all of it, he said he had to go.

I sat alone on a water-filled barricade at the door of the Houses of Parliament. I had treated myself to an 88p dinner, an imitation Red Bull and two bananas. The light grew dim, I could not use my phone camera in such low light. I could only watch strangers and chortling tourists pass me by. I attempted to get onto my brother Andrew, but he was raging at a party in Hackney and would not answer his phone. Neither would any of my other friends.

As I ambled slowly up the north bank of the Thames, I contemplated what it was to feel so ill at ease with my city. In the silence of my own company, I could only think of those I had lost due to carelessness and indifference. For all the beauty, adventure and promise of London town, it all seemed to mean very little if I could not have those lost friends alongside me.

I stopped when I came upon Somerset House. The cream-coloured Georgian bricks glowed in a sodium vapour hue and I smiled. Loud music echoed and bounced off the walls, I realised that it had been five years since my first love and I had been there. I cried at that concert, even with his arms tightly wound around my waist. It was not an emotional response to the music, as such. Three days before, a bandmember of the performing band told me that he wanted to end our friendship. He never wanted to speak to me ever again. At the time, I could scarcely describe that disappointment, not out loud anyway. Instead I took a photograph that said it all to me: the night was over, the courtyard was deserted, the spotlights stretched out to reveal bent cups and indistinguishable debris. Every foot of that opulent space had been desecrated and I felt so completely wretched.


I started to walk towards the Strand when a woman suddenly accosted me. She grabbed my wrist and explained breathlessly: "I have to go now, but here, have my pass. It'll get you in for nothing. Here, take it, take it." She desperately attempted to reattach a fluorescent pink paper bracelet around my wrist, then she ran to her partner who had already hailed a cab. Confused and uncertain, I walked to the security guard of Somerset House and showed him my wrist. He told me to have a good night.

It was Noah and the Whale. Everything happened as it meant to. The band performed, the audience sang and the lights glowed. Upon hearing the first few chords of Five Years Time, a baffling sense of serendipity crept over me, a true sense of wonderment. There was the promise of meeting soul mates that night, new friends who could understand my every feeling and intent. But as I stood there alone with my broken paper bracelet, I wanted everyone to leave the courtyard immediately. I wanted to be alone with that moment I had lost.

Almost immediately after I recreated that photograph, my phone shrilled and vibrated. It was Andrew, agreeing to come to the Strand and save me. I later told him of my riverside loneliness on the 2am busride back to Paddington. I told him in the knowledge that I did not know true loneliness. It was not possible to be acquainted with such a thing. I live in the certainty he will always be there for me, even when all the others have gone.

Isolation

It's curious how you can miss someone you've never met. You can mourn the memory of one who lived and died before your time. Today is the thirtieth anniversary of the day Mark Chapman shot and killed John Lennon. It's difficult to fully comprehend the horror of that day, outside the Dakota building. There is an indescribable injustice attached to it, a kind of tragedy that constricts the chest and twists the gut. For all his wit, his humanity and untouchable creativity, he did not deserve to die as he did.


We love John. We talk about him in the present tense, as if he were one of our old friends. We refer to his words with ease and due familiarity. We sing loudly to his songs. We grin, harmonise and implicitly agree that I shall always take the bottom part. His music has underscored the most compelling of friendships. It continues to be subjected to the most lovingly relentless analysis, I'm sure it forever will be. Even now, I cannot listen to Abbey Road without recalling our promises to cover I Want You (She's So Heavy). I cannot listen to Yellow Submarine without chortling at the thought of us howling, growling and barking to Hey Bulldog. I cannot listen to Rubber Soul without wanting to resume our discussion about Wait. It's been six years now and I'm still waiting.

Every song is a lost moment. Every melody is infused with a personal meaning, every rhythm a universal consequence. I'm so grateful to John for all of it. I know that with him, there is the possibility to fall in love with these songs, over and over again. There is the chance of finding a new interpretation, a dubious method to understand that little band that little better. I live with John in the present tense, both grammatically and temporarily, as I do with any friend I've ever lost. I know I am likely to think of him as he was in A Hard Day's Night, turning left at Greenland or else snorting a bottle of Coke. He lives in 1964, with his cap, tight grey suit and that moderately gleeful façade. He looks just like him, y'know?

In spite of all his presence, his relevance and resonance, it's impossible not to miss him.

I don't know how it's possible not to.