Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer Page A

Grey Machine.’
    ‘My,’ said Jeff, ‘you really know your Van der Graaf.’ He had had versions of this conversation – different groups, same format – dozens of times, but always with men. Having it with a woman was a different, altogether more thrilling experience.
    As if reading his mind, she said, ‘This is a rather strange interview. Is
Kulchur
with a “k” and a “ch” a progressive rock magazine?’
    ‘Unfortunately not. Be great if it was, though,’ he said, conscious, suddenly, that he was having a good time. And the interview would turn out fine. Or would have done had she not reached forward and turned off the Dictaphone.
    ‘Do you like to smoke grass, Jeff?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘Good. To be honest with you, I'm somewhat of a pothead, though I'd appreciate it if you didn't put that in your piece.’
    ‘Absolutely.’
    She went back in to the apartment, giving Jeff the opportunity to begin slightly regretting that confident ‘Sure.’ Back in the twentieth century he had enjoyed smoking grass, but with the new millennium dominated absolutely by super-strong skunk, he had pretty well given up on it. In the 1980s getting stoned on sensei had been fun, but getting bombed on skunk – and with skunk, there was no possibility of getting anything other than bombed – was a different experience. It was like a conduit to dread, to heebie-jeebies paranoia.
    She returned with a bag of grass. Jeff tried not to appear nervous.
    ‘Uh, one thing,’ he said. ‘I don't smoke tobacco.’
    ‘Me neither. This is nice Jamaican grass. Not that horrible skunk.’
    ‘Oh, good,’ he almost shouted with relief. ‘I hate that.’ What an amazing time he was having in Venice. Everything was working out so well.
    ‘It's terrible, isn't it? God knows what it's doing to the minds of these kids who smoke it all the time.’
    ‘Quite,’ he said, for the second time in as many days.
    She rolled a small thin joint, took a hit and passed it to Jeff. He did the same, passed it back. He became pleasantly stoned. They were pleasantly stoned together. The light was brighter, sharper. The canal threw shadow patterns on the yellow wall opposite. In fact, he was very stoned, but pleasantly so. This was what being stoned used to be like.
    ‘So, about Hawkwind,’ he said.
    ‘Now, remember, nothing about getting stoned in your article. No little nudges or winks.’
    ‘I promise.’ His throat was burning. He took a big gulp of water whose sparklingness made his throat sting, briefly, evenmore. ‘Moving on, reluctantly, from seventies prog rock, maybe you could tell me a little about Steve Morison.’
    ‘Charming man. Quite good artist. Total cunt.’ This is dynamite, Jeff thought to himself, unsure, moments later, whether he had in mind the interview or the grass. ‘But, needless to say, I wouldn't want you to quote my saying that either.’
    ‘Oh, OK. You mean the whole of the answer or just the last part?’
    ‘No, just the first two parts.’ They both laughed. This was turning out to be
fun.
    ‘What do you think of his work now? Back in the sixties, he was so revered. I wondered how you felt it had stood up to the passage of time.’
    ‘I think it was extremely variable. His best is on a par with some Hodgkin.’ Jeff looked at her closely, hoping to penetrate her sunglasses, to see her eyes, to see how this remark had been intended. Hodgkin, in recent years, had become a complete joke. Jeff waited for her to expand on Hodgkin, but she went back to Morison. ‘And the earlier, figurative stuff is good. He had a knack of capturing the way people stood, their relationship to their surroundings. And if there
were
no surroundings, then just the way they stood in relation to themselves. Out of that there was a kind of psychological intensity that was very difficult to articulate but that was definitely there. Everyone could see it or sense it even though there was nothing – absolutely nothing – interior about the scene.