of guilt I felt about being in the band was huge and as it became apparent we were failing it started to affect me. My advice to anyone being bullied is to knock their bully's head off now. Otherwise you will be bullied all your life. I realised after a while I wrote in what I now recognise as quatrains and couplets - the most basic, doggerel verse - and held on to it like a guide rope in a storm, especially as the sound around the words took off into crazier places. Thematically I tried to place myself in my world and make sense of it. With no framework behind it. Just intuition. All the joy in my life had rotted away, I saw a vision in blue and my blues flew away. And just for a second I truly believed, Though I don't know what in. We tried to talk to each other, But the words that came out of our mouths Were carried away on the wind, Which turned them inside out. In desperation I tried To communicate with my eyes When all you've seen is people's pain, It's hard to feign surprise. And we just smile. The beauty Disco Inferno bought into the world carries a bitter, brackish aftertaste for me. It was the first moment as a pop writer where I fully apprehended my own powerlessness, and how the delusion that you can affect pop music in some way can never battle the wider cultural