14 years

Last week, I met Finn, Sophia and the rest of the Veils. 'Never meet your heroes', they all say, but hey, I did, at a signing and mini-gig at Rough Trade East - coincidentally the place I heard them for the first time in 2003. Fantastic people they are too. Signed record clutched to my breast I wandered off to the nearest bar, and having taken a few cold drinks, started scribbling, like some sort of lunatic seer.

This, then, is what I saw. It starts out like fanboy nonsense, goes a bit boycrush for a second there, and then sorts itself out into some sort of Stephen King mystical bollocks/nutter-on-a-park-bench verse, just for the hell of it:

"It's not every day you meet an idol. Not the swaggering, already-there kind. A humble purveyor of his own truths. A man with his own candles burning. Perhaps they burn in the same places as yours. But they aren't yours. Theyare his, and he's able to share their glow with others, of which you are undoubtedly one. Tonight I met just one such guy. Slight but strong, and possessing the kind of voice bestowed on only a few. Teh music beats on eternal in this guy. He can't help but bring it out, heaving, raging and thrashing. Barely controlled, but contained enough. The perfect middle between bombast and heart. Singing and lamenting, because and why.

Normal for the whale, armageddon for plankton. Snacking for the leopard, but brutal murder for the antelope. Dancing throuh grass as antelopes stroll, calm in high grass means death.

At midnight they go dancing, reeling and rotting, searching and feeling, the spirits accompany feeling.

I can't here you right now, but I know you're there , and everything I am worried about is nothing to worry about. It is all one strange, fleeting dream. I can control it but in the end it will control me, whatever it is.

Whatever you write, it's better to bite the hand that creeps through pockets of time and will. Beginnings, looking for magical endings, unbound by the past we roll forward, betting the future, stacking the past. What will be will be until it won't, then it don't.

My baby is missing. Caught up in something else. Parade's over, did you lose yourself? Tantrums and reachings, glasses and waiting - look out for the past through the window-soaked glass. She's coming to get you and you know she'll last.

Beautiful shapes and brilliant sounds.
A jaguar roars despite its confines.
Bass through chests and floors besides.

Outside the rain of hearts still pours
Besides the clatter, under the dust, a will, you must.
Become and grow against the unjust
Ghosts and serpents, soil and rust
Who walk and talk alongside us, just because, just because

But what if you don't crest the wave?
What if you never reach the high?
If, but, maybe - what have you wasted?
Spend too much time to belie
What really gets you through the night

Pretend if you like, but you'll know why
The shake of a pen, the bottom lip tries
To hide a moment in consequence.
You had to shake that hand, and tell him why

Always meet your heroes.
They are heroes, after all.

All the moments are justified
You can do nothing but fly
You'll feel mighty and unified,
Uniquely of purpose and ratified
I feel perfect and impossible and deified.
I have shaken my idol. I have told him where he stands.
I am grateful and unbowed.
I'll learn new songs with the same old hands.
Today, I stand.

I must scribble first, to learn to write
I must write, to become myself tonight
To embrace flight and falter
I must try to alter my other, to bring out what is inside.
To go, tip forward towards the light
I will not grow tired, nor will I fight
My demons and spectres are all here tonight
I divide. I multiply. I am in my right."

Must've been good, then. The new album is fucking cracking, too :)