Though rarer by the boxset stream,
the realised plan of five close friends
guzzling through rounds so brief
puts a bounce in your step for weeks.
I cherish these men and our recycling
of memories, fears, hopes, dreams,
opinions, debates, wrongs and rights,
hate and horrors, hugs and love.
Nothing rivals the meetings of minds
reared on the same rich feed
of early 2000s UK hip-hop classics,
liberal media and outsider angst.
These warm embraces and cheers,
are the subtle bed-rock of life,
helping us hold tight and hang on
in tears behind our office screens.
Some form of dark magic lives
at the heart of a presentation brief
which surfs through the core of
31 twisting, troubled sleeps.
All that self-loathing, sweating,
worry, re-writes and insecurity
amounts to a simple nod of thanks,
and ‘you seemed so relaxed and calm.’
They’ve barely a clue how loud
my heart beats, stomach turns
and mind rehearses escape routes
whilst I actively listen in fierce terror.
We’re so far from cave paintings
but closer than we’ll ever be.
The walls are see-through glass now
and the wolves have ties, not fangs.
Thank God for Tom and Ed,
appearing once again every few years
with an astonishing new instalment
to an unrivalled catalogue of bliss.
You can read all the books you like
about the rise of the robots,
algorithm-generated paintings
and the impossibility of new cultures.
But the mother-bores have nothing
on the coming together of friends
celebrating and creating
in the under-rated, real world terrain.
As certain as the printer jams,
floor one lift drains, thermostat wars,
and auto-niceties scroll on,
perspective can’t be lost.
The mountains of minutiae
scale us to near insignificance
but bring us closer each step
to the face of a rising sun.
Steps that would stumble
were they not made possible
by the health cover and creps
of many a 07:00 AM start.
From the cluster of scribbles DISPATCH19