Adam Gnade

So it’s 5pm and I’m in London. Grey and raining. The red bricks and stone walls. A thunderstorm. The first thunder I’ve heard on this side of the world. It’s been a good couple weeks. I have two days left and five pounds to my name but there’s a half bottle of red wine and a hot cup of tea on the coffeetable and I feel like I’ve been places. Let’s recap some highlights: The Chad Valley set at the Lex. Two Jonquil sets at Andrew and V’s party in Cripps Barn. Lying on my back on the concrete, wine bottle next to my left shoulder, looking behind me—an upsidedown view of the grassy hill stretching below and then the whole spired, gray city, my friends on the park bench, talking low. The dusk coming down—purple, haunted by mists and torn shreds of clouds, the ghost towers of Alexandra Palace. What about the bats in the sky at Queen’s Wood? Or the witches we came across in the darkness walking back to the clearing—their chanting voices and fire in the middle, red thread in a safety ring around them. Highlights: Yannis’ speech at Andrew and V’s killed it. (“I think we can all agree, Andrew Mears is a prick.”) You can be a hermit all you want but sometimes the party is just what you need.

One of my big highlights was finding out it’s legal to walk around London drinking wine out of the bottle. Did a lot of that. A lot of time at the Lagertown house with Woody, Sim, Mike, Phil, Jim, and Tom. A lot of train rides. How ‘bout the kickass dinner table after the ceremony with insane Fi, insane Buffy, Jimmy Foals, Jack, Ichy, and the good Tom Katsumi? What about Best Kebab in Crouch? Or Falafel in Soho? One of my big highlights was the firepit by the wheat fields where Buffy sang for us and danced and was so drunk and happy she couldn’t stop. I liked talking to Andrew’s dad about Hemingway, swimming, and Africa. I liked watching Graeme dance with the burning paper hat in the middle of the night while we all wore alabaster-white animal masks and the darkness swam around us.

A big, big highlight was swimming in the Hampstead Pond with Mike and seeing the forest wall and vines closing in, the water as jade green as the trees, the vastness of blue sky, the silence. Then there was Cleopatra’s sarcophagus at the British Museum. (I saw that and thought, “My god, there she is. What a troublemaker. And only 17. She must’ve been fun.”) Or the goddamn Rosetta Stone? Kind of important, right? I liked opening for Calvin Johnson. We played acoustic to a packed room and everyone quiet, everyone drinking their BYOBs and being nice. (Big thanks to Upset the Rhythm for helping with that one. Huge thanks to Phil Holmes and Al English who are superbuffalo in the midst of lame bison.) Tomorrow I go to Oxford and play a show with Fixers and see all my OXX friends before leaving the country again. Hopefully Hollie will give me the Oxford tattoo—two parallel black lines on the left wrist, inch long, cut prison-style. The tattoo of all our friends, a secret society and cult.

I’ve toured all over this country so many times, one end to the next. But this time I really saw it. When you tour a lot people say, Oh, it must be so cool seeing all those places. Well, you don’t. You see the inside of the bus and then you see the inside of the club and you soundcheck for 1,800 hours and then you play and then it’s back to the bus. None of that is bad of course, and I feel lucky to do it. Still, this time I saw it. I saw a lot and I’m going to push the whole time I’m here to build some memories. I want to prove you can live well and see the world even if you’re broke. I want to tell people you can make a living with noncommercial art and you can fill your life with good things if you only push hard enough and live smart. Want the best life for yourself? It’s there—go get it. You can live any way you want if you’re fast and strong enough. Go be a savage and get hurt a million times and throw yourself to the wind and drink blood and make mistakes. The wins are worth all the bust-ups.

Okay, there, that’s all. It’s raining harder now. Water running down the glass. I need to go turn on the kettle and pour another cup of tea. Hello from London. Hello from Crouch End, Shandytown, flat 17A. It’s better than good here.

Love,

-Adam