Lucian Huxley Smith Extract from Micro
I
’m headed to a studio in Chiswick. Which is like saying “I’m headed on holiday to Great Yarmouth,” words that should never be uttered together. I can’t even think of the last time I came to West London, other than to sleep with someone. It’s a dormitory for the unimaginative, the settled, the privately-schooled. That and Tories. To paraphrase Kele Okereke: West London is a vampire, it sucks the life right out of me. What’s more, this ‘studio’ isn’t in an industrial estate or on the river as I’d reserved hope for, but three minutes from Turnham Green in a wisteria-draped house. Industrial-house-supremo is hardly what it screams. I walk right by it and FaceTime Hettie, my manager. “You’ve found the studio alright then?” “What the fuck is this Hettie? I’m in West London on a road called…Queen Anne’s fucking Grove?” “And?” “Well, it’s not exactly the Yellow House in Arles, is it? It’s…it’s…” “It’s what Ben?” “It’s whatever the fucking opposite of that is!” “And what choice do you have?” “Surely there’s somewhere else I can go?” “You think good songwriters are just dropping off trees Ben? Oozing out of the woodwork for you? Free at two days’ notice?” “I feel like a matador without a cape. Picasso without a brush. A…a…” “Are you going to spit it out or shall I just hang up now?” she sounds matronly, Head Girl at her private school no doubt.
lucian huxley smith
45
