It is so much harder to write on a bus than it is a train. Wobble wobble boom boom bounce. Scenery’s not as good down here either, seen it all before. Shared that other thing last night, always fucks ye up. Marty wants me to write of mentalness, more in a certain kind of way, so I guess I’d better do it. (I do hold strong reservations about using the word ‘guess’ instead of the more geographically correct ‘suppose,’ but the cultures are all interchangeable now and mixed-up so fuck it.)

So yeah, me go mental. Me go cwazy in tha woodwoods. Me kick the fuck out of bitches that took advantage of my nature so gullible in days gone past, so criminal, so…euk. And the cheek, to come around afterwards with glazen smiles. Fuck ‘em. So yeah, I was always trying to go insane, trying to become a genius. I mean, some kind of spiritual lift. I got tastes most summers when the surge would come, what with writing and songs and stuff, but I was on a quest to find unfiltered access to this sacred stream. And I was so young! Little was my understanding of the laws of nature, those laws so simple, with every up a down. Makes perfect sense now of course, but sure.

So yeah, I broke up with a much too beautiful girlfriend to kick things off with. Could feel the pull in my guts, y’see, saying, ‘Eject.’ Yes, my creative instincts said, ‘Time to go!’ and so I went. Had just moved into a new house, East Belfast, was nice then. They’d recently switched my meds to something benign and sort of cosy, I can’t mind the name of the drug. But yeah, at that time it was plenty of drink, the occasional night’s partying, but not much more than that. I suspect that my consumption of alcohol then was not much beyond the average person’s, but given my mental and emotional frailties I was left pretty much dysfunctional from the intake. Also, I should include, two years previous to the period now being recorded, I had suffered a bad injury to my left arm, one that ended a more-than promising career as a guitar player. This may or may not have had a bearing on what was to follow. (I am glad to report that at the current time of writing I am a little more loose in my approach to near everything that I do and so have found myself able to fiddle with the ole six string every now and then, much to my surprise, and delight.)

But yes, here I was, late summer, early autumn, the life leaping up inside of me, a call to something. I think I may have smoked DMT once or twice in and around the period…They called it a drug-induced psychosis at first. The first of many diagnoses. The fellow I lived with at the time is one of the strangest people you’d ever be likely to meet. And I don’t mean in that self-consciously eccentric sort of way. He didn’t dress strange, or act off-the-wall or anything of that kind. He was just a strange guy. Still is. Good guy. Conroy. He had to put up with a lot, eventually, by the time I’d gone full blown. But it was a slow burn to begin with. Daily rituals when I felt the onset, praying with my eyes to the sun, reading six or seven different books at any one time, revelling in the accelerated brain function than I seemed to be experiencing. Deep spiritual truths raining down upon my head, seeping into my consciousness. Everything was a blessing, everything a gift. ‘I must hold onto this blessing. I must not let this go!’ I clutched. I held the bloody gift too tight and thwarted thus its golden light. I went mad, man. I went real crazy. And I enjoyed it. You remember in On the Road where Moriarty talks about letting go of the steering wheel and having faith that he wouldn’t crash? That’s how I felt. Cycling full-pelt down the Ravenhill road with my eyes closed. What a rush! Peddling flat out downhill in the dark on the grass in around Elm’s Village. What business did I have being there? None.

I went to a gig at some warehouse, skatepark type thing. There were some rabid hippie types there gathered. I went a bit nuts. Rab McCullough on stage, man that knew me well, a mentor of sorts. I spoke in tongues and he said between songs, quietly into the mic ‘Listen to that man.’ Standing buck naked in my living room chanting at a wall, Conroy’s remembrance. Concerned friends gathered by candlelight as I talk to them Christ-like.(delusion?) Ambulance men arrive, they see my eyes and disappear. Eventually the gig was up. I was speaking in a strange Scottish brogue, ‘ah to my bones I felt it.’ Friends a-many alarmed alacrity and so on. One night out at Lavery’s, drinking Watermelon Sunsets (A drink I had invented) speaking my strange Scottish to the patrons and doing little articulated dances. A bouncer let me go after a while with a smile, strange to say it. Little shaman boy comes a hustlin’. I was fascinated with shamans then, but it was only the start. I would say just a peek, but it was the real thing, strong stuff, 100 proof. The whole of it. I ran from Stevie and Mike that night. Stevie near cried I loved him. Emmy was in dire straits abroad. Mike seemed to understand, he knew I was striving to cry out finally in a voice that was my own. I had many miles to walk.

Some night soon after I wheeled a little girl’s bike to the Sunflower Bar with some brown earmuffs on my head. Kinda crazy yeah I know but that’s psychosis. When ‘spiritual awakening’ turns to crazed delusion. Conroy called my family and they all landed down in a van smiling in the doorway. He then took the bike home and met us for tea that I insisted on serving. I insisted also on espousing the many spiritual lessons that I had learned, somewhat ludicrously. Strange satirical Conroy standing in the shadows with crawed-open smile. Bless the man. I can’t remember how I got to hospital, a doctor’s visit first? Maybe. It wasn’t long anyhow. Anyway, that’ll do for now.