Thanks very much for sharing that kasper. It is heartening to read such a simple honest desire for harmonious life as a young artist setting out on the path to inward enlightenment and a spatially poetic nexus, perhaps just a poetic spatial nexus and maybe even both. Who knows?

Not me.

You remind me of myself at your stage; doss, cli, grades four and five on the bardic scale. Years four/five in the guild of Letters, chalking up the ten thousand hours it will take you to master fully the inner three cauldrons making you the poetical souljah Salonen.

At the stage you were trying to be an artist whilst living next door to alcoholics; I too was in year four living next door to the biggest boozers in Dublin's premier homeless hostel I had removed to immediately after finishing a Writing Studies and Drama B.A. at university in Ormskirk Lancashire. The Iveagh Hostel, a charity housing scheme run by Guiness since the complex was built as part of a philanthropic Victorian project.

I tried plugging earphones into the radio at full volume; which helped to drown out the worst of my neighbor's manic cries to their drunken creator, but failed to shield one from the sonic boom of the thin 50mm plasterboard 'wall' when one's neighbor was punching the partition between us.

At that point it was boots on and back to lying on the bed with the earphones rammed in; alert and apprehensive in the am stillness, to the route upstairs and the locked door behind which staff manned the graveyard shift in thaty particular crazee farm kasper mon ames.

I arrived thinking myself the clever one, because after three years pretend at being a poet in the writing classes; where all was perfectly academic and infused with stability and order, mirrored in one's domestic scene in Ormskirk, at home with one's parents in a comfortably detached and spacious 'home' from home that makes our poetic one real, or not - some might say looking for a bit of light-mockery of the poorer sorts, Salonen - I was finally testing myself in the real world beyond the borders of what grove we first learn in.

I must confess that ever since I 'fell' into writing, secret mechanisms cosmically effected, seem to control one's dán - what Godfrey Finn O'Daly, professing in the 14C, poetically wrote as: 'the planets declared it', and tho for some this is glib, trite publum logic; not to me Kasper, bcuz there's a certain beauty in the poetic art, when executed correctly and everyone agrees, you're reading red hot.

And you seem to possess a natural enthusiasm for the dream of poetry we all profess to share, in any forum of Letters, regardless of where, and tho we 'seniors' cannot see it bcuz of experience kinking us to bitter and/or content old bags - there's a glorious absence of fucked-upness about you bcuz you've simply not had the full ten thousand hours experience at getting happy (or bitter) by the act we all profess to share knowing about.

The homeless hostel was a great place to start in the real world of writing, because there was a factor in play outside of writing that had, for the first three years, been gloriously absent.

I lasted 18 months, getting out just before it got too late and I turned into a lifer there; exiting twenty years early from bad food and a diet of booze drunk just to blot out the rest of the animals howling into the void.

My experience there was that 90 of 'us' where on the way down and 10 percent stable, ordinary or on the way up. The writing helped and complimented it exactly because it was a refuge from the madness of 200 men in one small building, all equally human, all alone in our coffin sized boxes, being very important in the business of Letters. In the imagination first. 

Yes. This gets it.

Mick knocked at two am; a light rap on the grey door accompanied by an incoherent voice strung out on cocaine, mumbling a request to "open the door, let’s talk." 

This was the first time he’d made a personal call and crossed the hitherto strictly amicable and neighborly divide I'd expounded so much mental effort on attempting to create between us; with diffident nods and friendly smiles, calculated to ingratiate myself with him and build a social buffer of mutual respect between us. 
     
Wedging in the earplugs trailing from a small plastic radio, I turned its volume to maximum and began praying for a different reality. One sound-proofed to withstand nutters like Mick. I tried to focus my mind on a drunk radio-caller mapping out his booze fuelled vision of tackling anti-social behaviour to Pat, a snappy sounding jock manning the graveyard shift at the decks of Now FM: talk-sport radio station of late night chat. 

"Well, sure, they should be making laws against it. Ban the lot of them completely. Street rats going about the place terrorizing honest hardworking people just for the fun of it, thinking it’s brilliant craic and a great gas all together. Filming it on their mobile phones and putting up websites about it. Scum. That’s all they are."

Unimpressed with my failure to respond, Mick struck his fist on the door, then with a sinsiter curse re-entered his room, and loudly slammed the door; throwing himself onto the bed and hurling a tirade of abuse - kicking the partition wall as he landed.

Pat was engaged in his usual routine, playing devils advocate to Terry - a dimwitted caller - his voice effortlessly oozing a soft bland burr of sophist reason weaving along its FM 102.4 path to the ears of insomniacs and shift workers throughout the city. A background moan-fest that is the signature of sport-talk early AM shows the world over. 

"So you think that the government should introduce legislation in relation to this problem Terry? Some kind of anti-social behaviour act maybe? That’s certainly one way of addressing the issue, and one which our listeners will no doubt have opinions on. 

If there’s any callers out there who want to have their say on this topic, call the usual number."     

It crossed my mind that - if I possessed a phone - I could call Pat and acquaint him with my own anti-social situation of being the unlucky neighbour of Mick, and closest witness of his slide into chemically induced madness; fuelled by an aggressive paranoia, now directed at me through twenty millimetres of jaded plasterboard the colour of dog dirt fawn. Functional, like a dump. 

I pictured holding up the phone for my fellow listeners, broadcast Mick performing his routine, imagining the manufactured note of disposable concern in Pat’s glib response: his hollow empathy filtering through my radio’s inbuilt plastic speaker to scratch at George’s drunken deaf ears next door.

Attempting to remain silent, I began dressing as Pat and Terry continued to discuss if there were a connection between hooded tops and anti social behaviour; which Terry believed there was, and which he began to expound on with all the eloquence of the inebriate inside a portable toilet at a weekend pop festival arguing the existence of extraterrestrials to a policeman.

"What do they be wanting to have the hood up for when its warm? They can be only up to no good."

"Could they not have the hood up because it’s wintertime Terry, and they, understandably, have a natural human desire to remain as warm as possible, like we all do - and which is what the hood is there for in the first place?" Pat, not unreasonably countered. Terry seemed oblivious to this interjection of sensible comment, blithely waffling on and unburdening the load from his chest, like a conspiracy theorist railing from the stump at Speakers Corner.   
 
"Well, I watched a news report on the RTE about a gang of young wans in Westport who do nothing all day but happy slapping and now, everyone in Mayo’s too scared to go into the town for their shopping. Pensioners and disabled people too terrified to leave the house for the fear of it. Grown men unable to walk the streets because of it. It’s complete and utter madness. They should be shot."

As I slipped into a pair of lightweight Lidl mountain boots whose robustl clunky soles and stout tailoring, offer full comfort and equip the feet with a trusty sense of protection, Pat began working up to a predictable denoument, preparing to cut the unconvincing argument and caller loose: discard Terry into the ether after a final salvo of synthetic outrage had completely rubbished his opinion.          

"But Terry, you can’t tar everyone who wears a hoodie as scum", said the chat king, in a register of professional insincerity honed by years of late night blathering to oddballs and weirdos: "I, and many others, including numerous friends - have hooded tops, and neither I, nor any of my friends, as far as I’m aware, have ever mugged or felt the urge to physically threaten anyone when wearing one. 

Do you not think, Terry, that you are going over the top here; that the opinion of making hoodies illegal and shooting people for attiring themselves, in what many people consider practical and comfortable clothing, is an extremely illogical one which can serve society in no beneficial way whatsoever?"

But Terry was unswayed by the artificial voice shifting through the gears of midnight reason and told Pat he was firm in his conviction that hooded tops should be outlawed and withdrawn from the shops with immediate effect.

"It’s the only way to stop it." Terry said, impervious to the critical flaws Pat had isolated in his theory. Drunk, lonely and increasingly deranged. Another sacrificial lamb from the dial chained masses, performing as Pat’s verbal punch bags; fish in the barrel offering to be slaughtered at an altar of late night radio.  

"If it was up to me I'd be making them illegal tomorrow. It’s too dangerous not too Pat. The whole country’s going to the dogs through the young wans with no control who can only think of mobile phones, Big Macs and runners; hiding themselves and smashing the place up. Vandalising, sniffing glue and taking all sorts of mind bending drugs." 

Terry was beyond saving himself from the wrath of Pat’s boredom, who began working up to the blow off, crunching the logistics of Terry’s vision by concentrating on the fact that criminalizing hooded tops was an entirely impractical enterprise to embark upon.

"I’m sorry Terry, but I don’t think that’s a sensible idea, or one which has a chance of working in any way whatsoever. I would strongly argue that it is in fact a ridiculous idea and one which no rational human being would espouse, as it would be impossible  to undertake."

The first sounds of Terry’s rebuttal were instantly cut off as Pat - with all the aplomb of a pub landlord removing an inebriated patron – switched him off and cast him abruptly into the night. I imagined Terry holding the phone, his booze befuddled brain taking a few seconds to realise what had happened. I saw him aggrieved, like an ejected drunk who'd spent his money boring a pub manager before the sudden pushed exit. 

Pat’s voice effortlessly segued into a flirty timbre for a female caller; its register leaking an homogenised brand of male airwave magnetism track spinners imitate in their quest to become a heart-throb with the voice alone.      

"OK, we’re going to have to leave you there for now Terry and take a call from June somewhere in the South of the city who wants to tell us what she thinks of hooodies. Hello June your though to Talksport. 

So, June, what have you got to say?"   

I slowly laced up the boots and reclined back on the bed fully kitted out for an early hours roaming. Excellent footwear to keep out the cold November chill of a windswept seaport.