Celebrating a life, Allure again
Last week, I went to a memorial/celebration for a poet, AM, who died about a year ago. The Moms puts on poetry events for the council and, growing up, we would sometimes have poets staying at our house. Some of them became family friends. The poet we were celebrating was a sort of kind, mucking-in influence around the house. He joined in with our family activities – our friend’s gig, my Mum and step-Dad’s drunken supper parties – and spoke to us kids like we were adults. He was the poet mentioned in this post.
The event itself was a horrendous disappointment. I got no sense of AM at all. It was just all other poets and musicians reinterpreting his work. There were a few successful performances, but they simply succeeded on their own merit, rather than because they were “celebrations”. My Mum and our family friend and my Auntie seemed to love the whole evening, and I was baffled by their choices of favourite performances. My Mum asked me after the interval what I thought of the performance, I forced out a vacant, “Wonderful”, so I didn’t hurt her feelings.
Just as I was leaving the loos, I thought I saw Allure (1, 2). When I returned to my seat, I scanned the audience, but couldn’t see her.
On the tube home, I realised she was sitting opposite me. Fuck, man, this girl just keeps on turning up. A condensed history: we met via friend Hardcore Boy who fancied her, we kissed in front of him (what a dick), we met at least a year later at HB’s party, she pursued me, I had that amazing night at her party, she cut off contact, we somehow got in touch in London, she travelled the world for a year, and so it goes.
We had a great conversation, parted in Brixton and she said she’d Facebook me. We’ll see.