i travel along the straight track to central, where all nexus seems to converge and four watchtowers meet. there is them, there is i the wandering captain, there is you and there is it. we drink a beer and eat some food in a noodle market where people seem to enjoy the ambient twilight, the mid-afternoon sun as clouds roll by looming threatening saturation intermittent summer heat. we laugh, tell stories and then head down towards the foundry while jake and company head in an opposing direction to dance drink and play.

my mission is to listen to laugh, to say thank you to agent wild for being a friend, a friend on the end of a phone at the midnight hour. a friend who gets me home alive year after year when my body aches, my eyes rebel and my thoughts seem to turn towards the liminal when i should be focused on staying within my lane, avoiding the speeding trucks and hundreds of imminent dangers, agent wild gets me to the front door like a guardian angel.

so we sit in the shadows, drinking our cocktails.

steve is there on stage, he hits some chords and noodles around, already i am relaxed and calm, sinking into the corners and merging with shadows. it's true i have heard these songs before, the many anecdotes between all are familiar but still i laugh, still i smile. there's something really great and unique about steve, a rock star who rose then fell and then really rose beyond the rise. all that reminiscence at fame, at the absurdity of it, the close encounters, the excess, the unique irony that plagued the church as he weaves his way through the songs that took him to his heights and lows and i'm there on that ride with him. it takes an astute individual to look back with that kind of detachment, to gaze at his own spiteful envy at bands more successful, chart positions and personalities, the reviews that haunted him. often characters he impersonates so well it becomes incomprehensible they are not there themselves, micheal chugg handing steve a bag of cash after a gig, the cocaine fuelled tour manager of slade chasing richard ploog around, the weird record executives and producers who steve clashed with. these stories all reflect figures that burned brighter than than steve, zapping him of his own directed trajectory but they have long faded and the church still shine. and steve has made his own journey higher than fame or stardom. its a trip right? 

there's something really special about steve, the honesty, the humour, his rocky road i guess. it's the road that makes life interesting, i rather see steve play than anyone else. it's not the familiarity but the constant wonder that the man who can write and play 'just for you' also does priest = aura.' how is that possible, two incredible songs, i wonder, as the soft night begins to crack, the echoes faintly fade and i can feel the straight line calling me back. 

i must say the added bonus of 'taken by surprise' was a joy! 
a perfect song and karin was in the audience, what a treat that must have been.

merry xmas steve. long may you make music.