Dear Ernie, it has been a while I know, sorry for not replying but have been busy. My ears are ringing, a permanent fixture now it seems that may one day drive me to insanity, or at least now that I have planted that seed...I have been spending time rebuilding my nest, it had become a squalid affair and now I hope to rejoin the world of those who can bear to live with themselves.

How was the move? I saw Lucy the other day, she spoke of your times in Italy.

Have a new song, three in fact. I have been listening to Cole porter, do you like him? I watched a terrible Biopic about him - he was a man who seemed to enjoy worldly pleasures.

Been laying in bed much recently, fearful of a long trip I must make, it is odd that some things affect me so. I am terrible at being trapped in any way, like a claustrophobia that seems to be triggered by agoraphobic senses. I hate it and wonder how real it is until it hits me and it is a physical event. Perhaps this fear is the same as I find in the trappings of the sexual partnership, the relationship, perhaps that is just poor journalistic style psychology. What does that mean? Something.

What interests me is to make a place we can all hide in, I am aiming for something as pure as I can make it, with these new works. Just pure. Like the lust of a teenage boy. The anger of bitter old woman. The hope of a dying man. The purity of a single meeting. Something that validates all this. I know, oh I know, I have heard this before, but I have this want and need too to, and believe maybe I can. Fuck all these grotty half arsed gimics, no romance, no love.

You said it when you spoke of her. It was not contrived, it just existed, for the same reasons a million people before had felt it but this time it was yours. That is what I want to make, for the same reasons but this time ours.

Erns Erns Erns,

Pleasure is what I seek...pleasure. But I am not sure what it is, in a sustainable fashion. Are you? How and in what manner are we meant to approach this? Questions, questions questions. Maybe that is the answer. No its not. That my dearest of friends is rubbish, questions just bring answers and progression to another equally banal conundrum. Pleasure brings rewards - itself.

Why did you quit? Tell me more. Why did you walk away like that? I understand the fears, but I dont understand a man like you walking away, not like that. Odd I must say.

I saw the pleasure of Laura, blonde and lithe and sparkling smile today, married you know. To an Architect, last of the true professions. Smug git. He should be a doctor, do something worthwhile. I fear my sentences are losing any form, if in fact they ever managed to affect one.

It is late, night night my friend.

Erns,

This madness returns and I know you get it too, you are happy i guess -I hope- its the only thing that gives me hope; you, how you can be happy. You and Nila. You and Nila happy, it must be a wonderful thing, but you are a better man than I. I guess.
The Fuzz in the head, the doubt of the mind, its a scary feeling, a tormenting. Then the body of the girl. A welcome break. An obsession. How easy to ascertain, yet so hard, at one time. But pride goes and you find you have been hit by so many townies fists that it no longer matters, you turn around and spit and laugh and touch his girlfriends ample breasts, she likes it and so later on you fuck her in the park near the local nightclub, and that feels good. The smug fathers who poke at you with pointy public school fingers, you wrap their precious little girl up and make her wet and sweat and forever changed and she is ruined ever so slightly. She is such a pretty girl, such a wonderfully charming specimen. She is better now. You wouldn't know what I mean would you? would you?

Ernie old friend,

I am feeling lonely, someone I have loved has left, I am not sure the course of action. I have made choices that are confused and constantly (by me) questioned. I keep talking and as i talk the ideas disappear. They are vibrant and strong until...until-I say them out loud and someone lets them in, at that point they have no will to live any more. I must learn to bate my breath. To tie my tongue.
And at the age of 28 I realize I am a spoilt brat, in so much that I want in life I expect it. All the people I like also are. You are the worst of us all Ernest, surely you are the worst.
Tell me more about the trip. Do you feel that you are closer to anything? Tell me, are you finding the experience invigorating?

Dear Ernie,

Hang overs they last too long. Come downs they last too long. I never learn the simple things - you must eat. You will feel like this again.
New years eve, always a day of disappointment...is this a given? No I refuse to believe it, I refuse, but so far I am proven wrong. Curious I watch the days. Its unhealthy to eat alone.

So we have a meeting today, me and Finnigan and the man who will soon put the hat on our songs and clothe them. We drink half pints of Bitter in the Owl and Pussycat, he hears triggers and layers. Never remove childish enthusiasm. Always intrude on childish enthusiasm.

I am starting to feel human again, almost there, if I can just run the last few yards. Stuck in those days when the world feels owl-shaped, a life you don't even have is hovering and you float inside it. Shaking.

He has a face of his son- it is strange to see; you know it but its not what you know. Life, but not as we know it (oh dear).

Don't rest Ern, don't rest, we may still get there.

Dearest Ernest

Towards the duckpond of humility. The day begins, the year almost awakens, the battle of Alamo is almost won - revolution calls. Well work beckons, summons, haunts and flirts. I stoop loop the loop and who? Who. Its Just a simple call, the birdsong of the indecisive, the tropical heat of the nausea of fear, will I disappear? Oh dear. Its between you and me you know, its not something I want everyone to know, troubling times. Troubling times these. For me. I thought perhaps we could ignore the consequences, but times got a habit of recurring and gaining restitution on your time, and mine. Our time. Burning the history of Russia's soil in our motorcars. Burning the past to power my IBook  G4. Maybe I want peace, but it seems so very quiet.

My dear friend Ernie,

I am watching a man named Marlowe, private dick, in this film noir movie -Farewell, My Lovely- I am led to believe the film is based on a novel written by this Raymond Chandler, maybe I am right. 

'why me? Because I'm handy and know how to use a gun, or just because I wear pants?'

'If I knew what everything I said meant, I would be a genius'

The day after boxing day, 2009, I am in Hackney just off Mare Street. The end of the year, soon we start the last 12 month stretch of the decade, I am coming out of the Christmas coma and starting to feel restless. Tomorrow I begin to live again. 2010, sounds amazing, its a year from a comic book, and I am working on the soundtrack. 

'Was it murder? Or something serious?'