When you were young

ROB JOVANOVIC

A VERSION OF REASON

In Search of Richey Edwards

For Carolyn

'What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that he's working when he's staring out of the window?

? Burton Roscoe

One tap of your finger on the drum releases every timbre

and founds the new harmony.

You take a step and new men materialise; they march out.

You turn your head away: the new love!

You turn back: the new love!

'Alter our destiny,'you hear these children sing.

'Stamp out plagues! Stamp out time, for a start!'

Everyone begs you: 'Raise the substance of our fortunes,

our desires, whatever you can.'

You - fresh out of forever. Making for everywhere.

? ?To a Reason?, from Illuminations, 1886, by Arthur Rimbaud

PREFACE

If the whole of his poetry am be read as a denial of die values of the present civilization, as I believe it can, then [his] disappearance... becomes as symbolic an act as Rimbaud's flight or Crane's suicide.'

? Donald Justice

The day that he left was shrouded in mist and gloom. The conditions weren't unusual for this place at the time of year. This weather seemed to fit the ambience of events quite well. He was interested in T. S. Eliot and often spoke of Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, but there was a dark beauty to his own writing, too. Some of the texts he'd written meant that his life would be analysed, but after that day this interest was amplified. If his car hadn't been found abandoned near the bridge, then the theories about what happened to him might all be very different. He was unusual for a man in his position. He was interested in writing, reading, art, and was even a bit of a musician.

When he couldn't be found in the morning his friend spent the day thinking what might have happened the night before, because when he'd last seen him all seemed well. His fri knew that
he had an interest in both suicide and in attempt the perfect disappearance, but had he actually taken these interests a step too far? If it was suicide, then it wouldn't have been his attempt. If it was a disappearance, then he certainly had the knowledge to pull it off. Leaving the country with or without a passpor wasn't out of the question. He knew about suicide, he knew about famous suicide notes. He'd written about them before and would probably have done so again had he stayed around. It was fair to say that he collected suicide notes in his mind. Remembering this near-obsession and knowing that no suicide note had been found gave heart to those hoping that he was alive and that the railings of the bridge weren't an ending.

He hadn't been eating well recently, but better than previous. He was also taking prescribed drugs. James Reidel, in Vanished Act, noted that he looked 'so gaunt that sometimes, from certain angles, be seemed to be almost bodiless inside his clothes'.

Some overseas work was lined up but perhaps he wasn't as keen about it as he'd seemed. The next morning, his door was locked. The police were called and his apartment was searched for cluet but they could find nothing conclusive. The books he left behind were scanned for subtle hints but this only complicated matters. Later, when his car was found by the end of the bridge, there was still no note. His bank account was never used again. Years later, there is still no sign of this man - a man regarded more as a writer than a musician.

This was the mystery surrounding the poet Weldon Kees, not Richey Edwards. The bridge in question was the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, not the Severn Bridge in South Wales. Kees was last seen on Monday, 18 July 1955. The following day, a highway patrolman spotted his car parked at the Golden Gate Bridge. The keys were still in the ignition. Nobody has seen or heard from Weldon Kees since. Before vanishing, he'd told some friends of his desire to commit suicide but he'd spoken to others of his plans to disappear and start a new life in Mexico. Which did he choose? History repeats itself. Forty years later, on the other side of the world, the similarities were chilling.

'He was a loveable person and I think it's sad that some of our fans don't even know he existed. Maybe it's time we re-educated all those Mondeo drivers in Northern Europe?

? Nicky Wire

AUTHOR'S NO??

When you were young

I first really heard about Richey Edwards after my girlfriend and I split up. I'd had glandular fever - no, really - but I won't go into that. There was something about him that I couldn't put my finger on, and yet for a while I kept away from immersing myself in the band. Now it's too late: Richey's long gone and I've spent the best part of two years thinking about almost nothing else. Just like now. There's been this photo staring down at me whenever I sit at my desk. I stare back, but inevitably I'm the one that blinks first. Then the spell is broken and I glance around. I wonder if my environment would tell a voyeur anything about me or my writing. I often spend a few minutes looking at the Writer's Room picture in the Saturday Guardian, wondering why each particular writer sets out their writing space in the way that they do. Maybe I'm looking for inspiration or an insight into the brains of the authors that I admire. I reckon, after months of these pictures have passed by, that my writing room is a mish-mash of all the clutter that I've viewed. Full of books, magazines, music, notes, am my wife insists - a fair amount of junk. I don't have as many Post-it notes stuck up as Will Self does, but I have a lot. There are hots of pictures on the walls, but this particular one is looking down its nose at me, presenting me with an almost palpable challenge. Daring me to go on. Of course, this is a picture of Richey Edwards. Taken by the elusive Japanese lens-man Mitch Ikeda, this picture shows Richey crouching at the side of the waterfront outside his Cardiff apartment in the months before he disappeared. His arms casually arose at the wrists, his sleeveless T-shirt extil four tattoos - two on each upper arm - his head is slightly back, his expression borderline contemptuous as he stares into the camera. The image captivated me from the first moment I saw it in Ikeda's book Forever Delayed. I always planned to find exact spot and take a picture of the exact same view, but of course without Richey in it. In the summer of 2008, I did just that. Now there are two pictures looking down at me: a kind of 'before and after'. One monochrome, one colourfully lit by a sunny day. Not much has changed between the images, apart from the obvious. Do ghosts cast shadows? Didn't someone else say that you don't have to die to become a ghost? Well, the shadow and the man are both gone. And I'm tired of being asked by well-meaning friends who are trying to be funny, 'Have you found him yet?'

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 166