Thursday, October 11, 2001

K

My speech at the memorial service of my best friend who died in 2001.

I first met K back in 1990. I was in my sixth form at high school, and used to play the clarinet with the county youth wind band. K played the oboe, and we became friends when the band toured Germany.

The first thing I noticed about K was the world that circled him. There was a large group of friends around K; something that I later found out was always the case. He was always at the epicenter of anything that was happening at the time.

When we arrived in Blaubeuren, K discovered that his suitcase had been left behind. I was soon to discover that K was plagued with bags that would forget themselves, things that would run off on their own, money that would unaccountably slip through his fingers, and appointments that just wouldn’t remind him to turn up. K had to walk back to the town to pick up his suitcase which had been sent to the local post office. I volunteered to join him, and we wandered through the German countryside for the day. I have no idea how we got there – we probably walked around in circles most of the time, talking about Physics and Metaphysics, Maths and Music, Xeno and Plato.

K was bright – extraordinarily bright. But his was not a cold and intellectual mind, but a passionate and eloquent heart. He loved the talking, the debating, the thinking, and, of course, the showing off and the wining. He was radical – I think we all were then – we wore black from head to toe and talked about saving the rainforests, the horrors of Thatcherism and the dominance of the commercial world. (I never had the chance to talk to K about the horrors of Blairism.)

We were young men and we weaved our dreams together in the hazy smoke of cigarettes, and viewed them through the heavy lenses of the bottom of German beer glasses.

When we got back to Brecon, we kept up the friendship. K introduced me to many friends in Brecon: J, G, M, C, K, P, S, M, the list goes on, and I am so glad to see so many of you here today. K also introduced me to his family, to his brother S, his father B, and his mother L. Together K’s friends were all L’s kitchen kids, spending many hours in her kitchen talking, smoking and drinking coffee.

K had the ability to form his friendships with very different people from all walks of life. But even more amazing was his knack at connecting those friends together. I met some of my closest friends through K, not least L.

K was very musical – he played the oboe, and sang with the Cathedral choir for many years as a young treble, and then later as a tenor. K always knew what was cool, and his tastes varied from Lotti and Allegri, to the latest club music. K was a groovy dancer – stylish and energetic.

Brecon was a wonderful place to be then. We whiled away our time walking through the groves, having bonfires down by the river, dancing all night in the vaults, drinking and chatting down the pubs, singing in the Cathedral choir, and all the time bitterly complaining that there was nothing to do in this place. I now look back at that time as the happiest of my life.

Perhaps I am attributing too much to K. Perhaps the joy we all felt then was just the happy carefree time of youth? I don’t think so. K was no happenstance traveler, but a guide to the pleasures and pitfalls of life, making sure we jumped into each and every one. He was at the center of every party, every walk through the grove, and every quiet evening down at the Boars’. He was our leader – and nothing was ever boring around K.

I left Brecon to return briefly to my parents in Australia, and then on to Cambridge.
K also submitted his application, but it was not to be. K wrote to me then about his bitter disappointment at the rejection, and how it shattered his confidence.
I spent part of the summer of 1992 in Brecon with K. By then our friendship had begun to unravel. The more time we were apart, the further we grew apart. Our views no longer coincided, we argued bitterly, and never agreed to disagree.

He went to University College London to study Neuroscience. I went to visit him down at Camden a couple of times, and wasn’t surprised to have found him amongst new friends, and enjoying his course, and being in London.

When I eventually left Cambridge, I came down to London to work as an Actuary. In K’s eyes I had become a traitor, and sold out to the commercial world. In my eyes K was a hopeless hippy student who was wasting his talents. I went up to see him in Holloway road in 1995. A hopeless meeting where I decided we had nothing in common anymore. Actually, it was not a conscious decision – it was just apathy, and the pain of remembering what had been lost.

I don’t really know much about K after that time. I only heard that he was somewhere in London. A few times he came back to Brecon, but for the next few years I never really saw him. Then in 1999, I bumped into M at Brixton bus stop, and she passed me K’s number. I never called. Our friendship just seemed too long past. Apathy was King.

K came to my wedding in September that year. We spoke only briefly – but he did give me a wedding card. Back when I left Brecon, I asked all my friends to sign an autograph book for me. K thought about this, and wrote out the dictionary definition of compliance and told me never to comply with it. In my wedding card he told me to comply – but to do it well. I guess in K’s eyes marriage was a piece of that awful compliance jigsaw - job, wife, mortgage and two kids. K was never conventional.

Last year K went off to Cambodia to teach English, and to try and sort himself out. He sent me an email about a year ago saying things were going well and indeed, Cambodia seems to have been a place where K was finally finding his niche. He told me he was lonely out in Cambodia, and that I should write again soon. But apathy was still King, and I didn’t write till March this year, when everything had changed.

I found out then that K’s dad B had passed away last year. K had come back to visit him and had finally reconciled himself with his father before he returned to Cambodia. K’s relationship with his father was a complex one, and one I never understood. They were as stubborn as each other, and knew how to make each other snap. I am glad that they finally found some common understanding and acceptance.

K was devastated at not being in Brecon when his father passed away, and this seems to have tipped him into a depression. Looking through K’s notebook it seems that Cambodian life, and the English teaching that had hitherto gone so well for him, began to spiral out of control. He took an overdose of heroin.

K’s death was tragic, in all senses of that word. K was talented and gifted. Just when his life was finally coming together – it all fell apart. I am angry and pained that I will never get the chance to build our friendship again.

K once wrote to me and told me to make the most of the resources available to me at Cambridge. I wish that was not the advice I had received. I wish instead, that I had been told to make the most of our friendship, and that I had not gone my separate way from K.

When I was struggling to write this speech, I was advised that the worst I could do is end up talking about myself rather than K. I fear I have fallen into that trap – but I ask you to forgive me for three reasons:

First, I never really knew K in his last few years. So, I only have my memories to turn to, and those memories are from a long time ago and I can only see them through my own eyes.

Second, through our friendship K became a part of me. I still hear the voice that once warned me never to conform. I still have our shared dreams at my center, and I cannot think of K without going to a place deep inside of me.

Third, all of us may have had different experiences and friendships with K, but I believe that each of us shared that common feeling that K knew us for who we were and loved us for it. When you entered K’s world he found something in common with you and kept it safe. So for each of my experiences of him: his boundless energy; his passionate curiosity; his eloquence; his dry humor and sometimes sarcastic wit; and above all his caring heart – for each of these – I am sure you have a similar story to tell.

K was a spiritual man. He often talked about the philosophy of life. He was always attracted to spiritual places like Brecon Cathedral, Glastonbury, and recently he found refuge at a monastery in Cambodia and developed an interest in Buddhism. K loved the natural world. I remember many a wonderful walk down the grove with K, G and K’s dog Freeway. He loved this place, and much as he sometimes denied it, K loved Brecon and Wales. When K and J briefly moved into a caravan in a farm outside Brecon, I remember walking out into the fields at dawn with K and watching the sun come up, and K reaching out to touch the purple clouds racing by.

In one of his letters to me K provided a detailed and meticulous proof of his belief that it was the human soul that was responsible for human thought, and not “banal chemicals”. I disagreed with him then, and perhaps he changed his mind at university. But now I don’t disagree with his proposition anymore – there is a soul. I hope, and pray that he has found his peace at last. Whilst the ashes of his body have been scattered in Cambodia, I know that his soul has a place in the stars, forever shinning bright on an endless infinite universe.