When I was 20 I went insane

Not faecal smearing insane

Or Hit me Mac insane

But that quiet

Creeping

Insane

The kind that eats away at the brains

Of everyday people

I was working in London at the time

Need I say more?

And it just hit me

(Mac)

I couldn’t move

I couldn’t breathe

I was gone

The city and the job had chewed me up

And vomited me out

Like a fever

Or a daydream

I had to get out

So I did

And I travelled to Devon

Where the fields are crisp

And the people are fewer

Now, not having a great deal of money

(Thanks London and your promises of gold)

I stumbled across a bunch of bearded people

A commune

If you will

Who welcomed me in

Nursed my wounds

(both mental and physical)

And invited me to take part in their lives

Good people

I thought

Kind people

I thought

But then

You see

The pressure began

‘Have you heard of the scripture Mr Buck’

I had

‘Would you be interested in giving yourself over to Yahweh Mr Buck’

I would not

And then

Like the Village of the Damned

‘Join us’

No thank you

‘Join us’

No thank you

‘Join us’

I joined them

If you knock at a door long enough

Someone opens up

So my beard grew longer

And my integrity got smaller

And one day

Down I went

Under the water

Arisen a new man

With a new name

Nadav

Generous and Noble

In that water

My resistance was broken

My grasp on reality

Stolen from me

By kind men

With long beards

And short fuses

I spent a year

A year of my life

Without reading a book

Listening to a song

Seeing other people

Now I can look back at it and see

I was punishing myself

I didn’t deserve all the things I had enjoyed before

(Oh for some Miles Davis and Virginia Woolfe)

I deserved nothing

It was cleansing

It was heaven and hell at the same time

If you’ll pardon the pun

These people that took me

Remoulded me

Spat me out better and worse than before

I won’t bore you with my escape

Hardly Steve McQueen

But I will say this

When you are at your nadir in life

That is when you truly learn