when he was unoccupied, holding, throwing, squeezing this little red rubber ball, turning it over between his fingers, pressing on it, an aid to thinking, a nervous tic, a barrier between him and pure vacancy. Four siblings. Military family. Careful stubble, big appetite, reads biographies, no apparent interest in music. Music is a ‘cheat’, he says. ‘You don’t need to dress it up. It’s enough as it is, or should be.’ I never asked him what ‘it’ was.
