Iggy and the White Line
Alexandria Palace, London, May 2025
Dear friend,
The high street where we live is a river of humanity.
Some on foot, others in cars and vans and on bikes and scooters.
Gulls glide overhead, unnoticed by most—
the blue heavens playing peekaboo behind clouds of many shapes and colours.
There’s a guy whose dress sense is a bricolage of Elvis and Michael Jackson.
He’s up and out early on the streets,
giving forth with great energy to the vast ignored expanse of gulls and clouds.
I went there today to post a card to my brother.
He’s a June baby.
The post from the UK to Belgium is something of a lottery.
Things go missing or take so long to arrive you imagine they’re lost.
We found a nice card for him though,
and a lovely edition of a book he’ll enjoy.
I didn’t send the book because—you never know—
it’s a safer bet to bring it with me next time we visit.
I had one of my visions there yesterday afternoon.
I was a butterfly in the dark silk of my cocoon.
My wings patterned with moon signs and spiralling galaxies.
“Not yet,”
a voice that sounded like my own whispered in the velvet hush.
Maybe that’s where we are as a species?
Each of us emerging—
transformed from what we were
into what we are becoming.
Not yet.
But soon.
Can you feel the change coming?
Last night Chiara and I witnessed Iggy Pop play Alexandra Palace in North London.
Iggy is the real thing.
“What did you do to your foot, mate?”
asks a guy in his fifties on the way to the men’s loos.
I launch into the full story and how we bought the tickets before the surgery,
but there’s no way I’m missing Iggy.
He agrees and wishes me luck.
Only the form is melting not the fire inside.
To be in Iggy’s presence—
with the drummer tunnelling through the stage,
the bass beating your heart,
and the guitars screaming a causeway to heaven.
Trombone and trumpet pulling apart the curtain between performer and audience.
“I gotta get closer. No man, I gotta get closer!”
Iggy gives the command
and the wary stage crew lower him into the gap between the stage and the audience.
Iggy is 78 years old and living with serious physical challenges.
He climbs the metal barrier—
and he looks so small and vulnerable and powerful,
and he seems to be melting into the crowd.
I’m making a big deal of my injured foot
and it feels great to hobble around like Iggy, knowing it doesn’t matter.
His spirit is stronger than ever,
his voice searches like a homing device straight for your heart and belly—
and the butterfly wings stir
as the longing for flight awakens.
I imagine Lou Reed and David Bowie
watching their friend from heaven and shaking their heads in admiration.
“Look at him.”
There’s no one like Iggy.
To me, he is a rock and roll saint.
I feel a slight sharpness to the pain in my foot
and look for a place to rest.
There’s a ledge but it’s behind a white line painted on the floor—
and I know what will happen next,
but part of me wants to provoke a situation.
I’m moving empty beer cups to sit
when my victim falls into the trap.
“I’m going to need you to cross back over onto the other side of the white line, please,”
says a sing-song voice.
I look up to see a young guy with a lanyard and short blond hair
flash me a pearly white fuck-you smile.
In a scripted scene cooked up by my false self,
I meet his gaze and explain about the injured foot—
a balloon of contempt swelling in my chest.
“Oh dear, you have got yourself into a pretty pickle, haven’t you?”
he continues, reels off the rules and regulations,
points out a lengthy walk he thinks I should take
to the welfare desk to get a wristband for the assisted viewing platform,
delivers the smile again,
and starts talking to the thick-set security guy by his side.
I have been dismissed and something in me wants to strike back.
Hate rises in my heart—
Chiara can see what’s happening.
Thankfully, so can I.
Iggy transmutes it into light and sound and connection.
It passes through me,
and I understand the boy is where he is—
and that is all that can be said or felt.
The lesson is mine.
We are one consciousness
meeting itself through each other.
There’s so much more.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey
