James grew up in the Suffolk countryside, performing underwhelming stunts on bikes, performing underwhelming acrobatic displays onto the sofa whilst listening to Eye of the Tiger, making elaborate dens in Eldrith woods, setting fire to things, going on adventures up the river to an unremarkable area that we’d christened ‘the best place in the world’.

He had a broad friendly face with a warm smile, and he’d always greet me and my friends. He was extraordinarily quiet yet incredibly expressive. You’d tell him how your day was going, and with big eyes he’d reply with empathy and advise without saying more than ‘right, yeah’, and other short phrases.

Perhaps this is how someone so profoundly quiet, accumulated so many friends.
Art college. The late nineties. The parties. The politics. They were one thing.
Dancing and hugging. Life-giving loving.
We were never quite sure how, but we’d always made it back to the cottage. Soothing Sundays. Slowly coming around with smokes and jokes and scrambled eggs for scrambled blokes.

Chuckling at and entranced by the words coming from the old tapes we played that shaped our lives for years to come.
Bill Hicks’ news bulletin on psychedelics: “Today a young man on acid realised that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the Weather.”
And of course, that intro sample on Lee Perry’s Blackboard Jungle Dub, the album that was the backdrop of it all. The one that got us through those scrambled Sundays. “Calling the meek and the humble, welcome to blackboard jungle…”
Unity built. Parties loved. Politics lived. Brothers bewitched by the beauty and banality of their joined-up journey on this disjointed earth.

You saw so much in the wastelands of the city life you lived.
The stormy skies, the windswept marsh grasses and the glittering light on the canal water.
The swans gliding like Viking ships with their precious cargo of babies.
All these things set in time by you in paint and canvas so we can see your visions through your beautiful chestnut eyes. A place that fascinated him and charmed him and was him.

A faithful friend, sending text message notifications like one act plays performed on the canal, or as the monologue of a troubled stranger befriended outside a shop who he would unfailingly help, just as he helped us all at some point or another.

How we will miss your warmth, your natural wit and the raised eyebrow which spoke volumes.
You lived, loved, and were loved.

Words by Ashe, William, Martin, Mike, Jo and Heather.