DEAR SINÉAD, Don’t be alarmed, this is not a letter of lust or love. The first of those passions no longer has enough power to blind my judgment. And anyway, I’ve been so extraordinary lucky with the second, I couldn’t imagine loving another woman, in that way. I suppose, while I’m at it, I should mention the mirrors too, and the sorry tale they tell.
They’re too brutally honest, I’m afraid, to allow for the levels of self-deception that either type of letter would require. No, this is just to say that I always laugh out loud when I read or hear about you. It’s really more of an involuntary chortle than a laugh: a noisy little exhalation of delight that this magnificent woman is still rattling cages; still refusing to play to anyone’s script but her own; still refusing to be content with just surviving.
I remember well the first time I saw and heard you, so many years ago now, on Top of the Pops. A striking shaven-headed beauty you were too, but that wasn't entirely it. Beauties come and go, and I knew even then that so does beauty itself, of the skin-deep type. The song was outstanding. Though it was written by Prince, you completely conquered it, squeezed from it every drop of emotion possible. You probably grew tired of that song years ago, but it remains one of the most heartbreakingly exquisite laments for lost love ever delivered to a tune. So, if for nothing else, we owe you for that. Yet it wasn't entirely the song, either. It was the eyes that really got me. This girl is either one hell of an actor, I remember thinking, or she has been badly hurt, and by more than just a lover.
You reminded me of someone, although facially you looked nothing like him. My friend’s eyes had been just like yours, full of pain and pleading, but mostly helpless anger. Sometimes, for a fleeting moment, the shutters would lift, and you would catch sight of a vulnerable child in his eyes. It was a part of him he tried hard to keep hidden, one that had been imprisoned for life; as if frozen at the time of the first betrayal, when his childhood had been halted, the remainder denied him before he could live it. My friend never told me much about what happened to him. But a few times, when we were drunk, he hinted at enough to chill my blood. Sometimes he was the nastiest person I ever met, but never to me. He would often start fights for the hell of it, but never with me. He scared me a little, if I’m honest, but he was probably the best and most loyal friend I ever had. I loved him, though not like that. Unlike you, he wasn’t able to survive the burden forced upon him. He must have known that none of it was his fault, but it didn’t stop the self-hatred, the inexorable hurtle toward self-destruction. The denouement, when he was 21, could hardly have been seedier. A heroin habit, a dirty squat in London, and a final betrayal: somebody sold to him and his squatmates smack that had been cut with rat poison. I’m not suggesting your childhood was exactly or even much like his, but you too were badly hurt, and you survived, which cheers me.
You march to a different drumbeat from most of the rest of us, and that cheers me too, for I despise blanket conformity. Still, my delight is tempered by knowing that markedly different drumbeats usually come at a terrible price. We owe you for an awful lot more than the song, of course. You screamed out loud on behalf of all the betrayed children, and pointed an unwavering finger at the guilty, when a minority of people were afraid to, and the rest preferred to keep things hidden. You were on your own then, all right. But despite the vilification, you stuck with it.
Anyone who doubts the raw courage needed to plough that kind of lonely furrow should try it some time. I know that other people laugh out loud when they read or hear about you, but for different reasons from mine. Try not to let this annoy you. Remember, you are, as Dylan put it, “Tolling for the aching/Whose wounds cannot be nursed”. Some people don’t like the sound of freedom’s chimes, and the lightning flashes frighten and confuse them. But for the ones that matter, your thunder and lightning may be all that illuminates the darkness and perpetual storm. Self-evidently, your sense of humour is not appreciated either, or perhaps you are not permitted to have one.
Finally, Sinéad, I hope your mirrors aren’t as cruel as mine, but even if they are, it doesn’t matter. Your beauty has proved to be so deep, nothing really compares . . . well, you know the rest. Thanks for everything, and never stop tolling.
Sincerely yours
D Adams
PS. I think I may love you after all, though not like that.