Lucid dreaming. Of who we are. Of where we’ve been. And who we are. Where we’ve been. Who you are. Lucid dreaming. You send me photographs of who we’ve been. You said you wouldn’t make it past 30, and I agreed. I didn’t think we’d make it this far. I don’t know why, I suppose we were stoned. Join a club. Be invincible. Be powerful. Famous. Fulfil our dreams. But they’re just dreams: made of air. Something sweet, that soured. But, we believed that we could have hours. And just drink for days and smoke for years. But you wouldn’t touch it - with your lungs, they couldn’t take it. That was fair. You made up for it. With that hair. Y’know? Long hair like Sebastian Bach. On the day that we met you were at the bar with a bass on your back. And I looked at you and I thought, “Yeah, this man, y’know, he’ll talk back.” You looked like the sort of man that I knew when I left home. But there we were, somewhere new, wandering around, drunk on fumes of hope and ambition. But that ambition ceased. Yours did too. In different ways. I never knew what you aspired to – what you reached for. Chasing Amy. And where she went. But you never opened up too much. You kept it hidden. We sensed - secrets – something all too dark, and those secrets went unsaid in shadows I thought would never end, but it’s got to end. Everything does. Remember that time? Not all the times. Times get blurry and I find some times too hard to recall – too painful. Especially when things went wrong, and they did go wrong, as they will over two decades of friendship. Man, we did things that we can’t do no more. It can be too much. I even struggle to think of these things any more. But it’s being brought to bear. And it’s crushing to think about. I don’t wanna face it. I know you’re facing it alone, cos that’s what you do. You never let anyone else face it for you. You stand silent. Don’t complain. Not with all the pills, devices, scans, hospitals. Failing organs. Mate, I can’t even explain. You scraped me up after excessive seasons. Helped me when I didn’t know I needed it. And I’d do the same for you. But time is this common enemy – sometimes it’s just the air that does for you. Sometimes it’s just living – like when you cough so much you put your back out. Shit. You think it’s an embarrassment, and all people can see are symptoms, but I know – we know. And all I need you to know, is that we’ve been here. Will always be here. Even when we’re not here, you are still here. Always here. There’s no rudder. No guide, no other, no steer. And yeah even at your wedding, I couldn’t control myself. Fell over a table, had my shirt ripped and made a fool of myself. But that’s what I do. That’s what I did. You did it too – in other ways. Like the shit that you like. The scripts you aspired to write. The long warm nights spending, watching Lara drown on Playstation. Man you sleep for hours. Wake up. Wake up. But you just won’t wake up. You lucid dream. That’s what you say. You lucid dream. And it’s Rice Krispies with no milk, sitting topless on the stained sofa. And we’ll play all day with nothing to do and everything to say. Hack in the park. Pub. Drink till we’re sick from laughs. Want for change, and want for the right diagnosis for you: a consultant that can change the truth that your lungs are filling, and I can’t see anything amongst these concrete buildings of Enfield. From where you are by the South Westerly club. In that Essex band. I remember the mascara, man. And Thailand. Christ. Sandy feet, helicopter, Bangkok, life-support. Short shocks. Consistent liver failure, and no transplant available. What does it mean? I can’t even glean a semblance of truth or meaning or understanding of this. But…who we are is all I have. So lucid dream of who we are. Of where we’ve been. And who we are. You lucid dream and you come and find me. After dark.