Jealously unjealously thanking unthanking lucky unlucky stars Never got to make it to that revolving earthquake stage of rubble amplifiers and smashed up guitars. Carrying no cash, cooped up in city hotel rooms, the drugs, the sex, marriage breakdowns and rock ‘n’ roll. That’s the life to look up to, down on, know and not know.
Then there’s the art, the self-expression, the do whatever you will. Far away from those jailer fans and the media front page kill-thrill. No punching the clock, no money to save, no answering to the department head and being free to die a quiet death to obituary broadsheets in your own bed.
All those part of the 27 club can’t get into old people’s homes with their membership card. All those who lived long enough to sell out had to draw up a marketing plan on how to sell into being some sort of aging bard. It’s still the dream of dreamers dreaming out their dreams That, just like in other people’s pop lives, their biography will need reams and reams.
John Di Girolamo was born during the swinging middle ages as the Battle of Hastings raged outside on a cold, miserable Saturday evening just outside 'The Juggler's Arms' in Oxford, Torquay and Exeter at the same time. Born to a family, he spent most of his early years learning how to open umbrellas for a rainy day, and the runnings of horses and sword swallowers and the costs they incurred. Having graduated in 'Circus Management', he took to spinning plates for a living and persuaded his father to buy a restaurant to fund what he believed would be a lucrative career move. However, in the the days leading to The Age of Post Punk', he quit and would embark upon what was to go down in history doodles as a notebook.
Few knew it then but he had already started copying poetry, and often written by other people. As the minutes passed by, and Sardinia loomed, the idea of collages and drawings suddenly hit him as a way of filling up what had become a kind of book with pages and all. One day while storming off in a huff because his mum told him to, he struck upon the idea of putting it all together over a long-playing record (later a CD) and during a commercial break in the digital age, decided a blog would end Cromwell's ill-fated republic.
Sent off by recorded post, it would be by chance that his poems would get to their ultimate destination as, meanwhile, his pigeon who had queued so loyally for so long, sadly died the day before it was sacked.
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