Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 2:57 am
I remember meeting up with him for a Drive-by Truckers show in Camden a couple of months before:
Hmmm...shall I meet you at that pub (The World's End)? Say, one o'clock?
I'm easy! Any time, any place, I'm there!
Don't know if I'll be drinking or not, though! Might just stick to coffees! I'm serious!
Let me know what you wanna do.
.........................................................
We didn't exactly stick to coffees. But managed to get there within 15 minutes of each other which isn't bad considering the distances involved.
Ben got drunk a lot, and (like in this thread) sometimes senselessly so.
When I was 8 or 9 years old, my neighbour in Gamvik had gone from a party half a mile away, drunk. He was found by the snow plow at our doorstep early in the morning frozen stiff and dead.
In a way, as long as Ben kept to the urban areas, the gentle lanscape and clima of Hampshire and London, he would always come out of it with just a memory loss and shit stained clothes. When he took that train, he was met by a force of nature, and nature knows nor shows any mercy for drunks. The sea takes and the sea gives.
I remember Gamvik. How the flatscape would let the eastern, and the western winds blow without hinderance. How the sea would go endlessly to the north, and to the east, and to the west. How you could wake up in the morning and all you could see was white and black. As a kid I was terrified of being blown out there and never come back.
I think Ben was lucky to have managed 33 years the way he kept on it. He had a rough time with his dad going away when he was young and they never spoke again. His cocaine abuse got him out of college, and after that it was reading Bukowski, working nights at the post office, reading about boxing, smoking, drinking, writing poetry. I guess the only thing he did that Bukowski didn't was listening to our music. Son Volt, Richmond Fontaine, Rolling Stones, Paul Westerberg and more.
You were a mess Ben, a real fucking mess. But oh what a wonderful human being you were. Miss you lots.
Hmmm...shall I meet you at that pub (The World's End)? Say, one o'clock?
I'm easy! Any time, any place, I'm there!
Don't know if I'll be drinking or not, though! Might just stick to coffees! I'm serious!
Let me know what you wanna do.
.........................................................
We didn't exactly stick to coffees. But managed to get there within 15 minutes of each other which isn't bad considering the distances involved.
Ben got drunk a lot, and (like in this thread) sometimes senselessly so.
When I was 8 or 9 years old, my neighbour in Gamvik had gone from a party half a mile away, drunk. He was found by the snow plow at our doorstep early in the morning frozen stiff and dead.
In a way, as long as Ben kept to the urban areas, the gentle lanscape and clima of Hampshire and London, he would always come out of it with just a memory loss and shit stained clothes. When he took that train, he was met by a force of nature, and nature knows nor shows any mercy for drunks. The sea takes and the sea gives.
I remember Gamvik. How the flatscape would let the eastern, and the western winds blow without hinderance. How the sea would go endlessly to the north, and to the east, and to the west. How you could wake up in the morning and all you could see was white and black. As a kid I was terrified of being blown out there and never come back.
I think Ben was lucky to have managed 33 years the way he kept on it. He had a rough time with his dad going away when he was young and they never spoke again. His cocaine abuse got him out of college, and after that it was reading Bukowski, working nights at the post office, reading about boxing, smoking, drinking, writing poetry. I guess the only thing he did that Bukowski didn't was listening to our music. Son Volt, Richmond Fontaine, Rolling Stones, Paul Westerberg and more.
You were a mess Ben, a real fucking mess. But oh what a wonderful human being you were. Miss you lots.
