Richard D James has always had a piece of my heart... Some human beings are just magicians and whatever they put their hands to becomes something beyond what mere mortals are not only capable of generally creating, but often fully understanding...

The track in the above video, Alberto Balsam, off the album I Care Because You Do, is for me, one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard... I think I was 19 when I first heard it, sat getting stoned with my mates in our dingy, shit bag of a house we shared... All of us not having a clue where we were going in life, all of us sharing a desire to escape from whence we came, all of us just stuck in the screensaver of early adulthood and the melancholia bought on by having no direction... We listened to a lot of amazing, beautiful music as a way to soothe that rift... A lot of seriously edgy angry music too, which Aphex Twin also supplied by the bucket load.

This song though, with an almost unfeasibly ridiculous name; all I can think is yes... It's fucking smooth and sleek and shiny like the Alberto Balsam adverts used to say it would make your hair... Not mine though... Being of the afro persuasion... But in my heart, it's always made me feel at peace... Soft... Home...

The Last time I fell in love (3 times in my life), this song ended up being one that reminded me of him, for a few different reasons really, but one being the way this song (and he) makes me feel like I am at once lost (in a vortex of emotions) yet at ease, home. On top of the world elated, ecstatic... Yet still achingly melancholic... Jouissance, yet beneath that, inertia... If à man could be a song, then he would be it, it would be he... 

The following poem is one I wrote during one of our many endings, that became another beginning, that set up the next ending, that slipped seamlessly into a new dawn. The endings obviously eclipsed the beginnings in the end though... I wrote it whilst listening to Alberto Balsam, on repeat, as I sometimes do, cos once is never, ever enough...

I CARE BECAUSE YOU DO

Yea, i do...

And so, it would seem do you

Against the kabuki of your

Sweet night

I still see it, shining

With is dim, frightened light

Sweetheart, i am beyond care

And you are beyond sight.

I care and no, not just because

You did

When the waterfalls encased us

When your vulnerability slipped

But because although you hid

I still saw you, in me...

I care and you act like you don't

Tell me your heart is broke

As in doesn't work

And i am there, bent down

Looking for bowed spokes

How wrong could i be?

I can as much fix your heart as

I can hide a mountain

Drink the sea

We, my love were not supposed to be

Here.

I didn't care and neither did you

Until one day we did

And hearts they grew

But so did the shard

Of ice and of stone

So did the cold that ran deep into my bones

Love now exists

But so does fear

I'll lend you my light

If you'd just come hither dear.

I care, because you do

The things you do

No more, no less

This ain't no rehearsal, get dressed

You care, because i do

Things that made your heart bloom

There may be less emotional spaces

In your gardens

But i mowed the lawn.