Excl novel extract: Surfin All Summer; House/Disco Mix - glasto 24 incoming; Poem - sunsmooched days; It's All Art; Create Immortality: Tales From The UniversE 68 - newsletter from Mars
An arcadia of imagination
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1. Kid Paradise’s Summer Beach Bar is here and is Zany and Zany. And Zany. And, VAIT a minute: Zany-IER than 30 seconds ago!!! And is hitting hot late June like The Paradise Kid is born a trillion times each decade while exulting in a perma-mid-life non-and actual crisis
VUNDERBAR late-June is here and
what else
to do
than listen
LOUD
to Kid P’s tuuuuunnnnnnnneS???
‘glasto 24 incoming’
Kid Paradise In The Mix Is Handing It Out!!!
2. It is all art, baby
Early morning
3. Poem: sunsmooched days
oh
sun
smooched
days
4. Surfin All Summer - novel extract
endless days
they shimmer
are mesmeric…
C1
Ses Salines
He looked like he surfed all summer, the hours in the sun felt forever.
Louis Gold: a deep brown hue, wavy hair tanned blonde; soaking up rays on the south Ibiza beachfront.
Island light glowed low; Med waters shimmered turquoise and crystal. Louis grooved on memories of memories and visions of other people’s records and his own; of the record he wanted to make, the sound he yearned to find, and create.
DJ Louis ‘Million Dollar’ Gold. He had a bent for splashing moulah; spending was a buzz - misers were squarer than oblong.
Louis was dying. Slow. No one knew. Not his daughter, Sabina. Ex-wife, Janefer. The millions who downloaded his tracks. The writer woman due at the villa any moment.
Dying - of sadness. Of life being over someday and him failing to nail the sound in his head, the agonising sound of heat pulsing, partiers partying, revellers in hot Balearic air dancing on and on in the sun through the heatdazed months of June, July, August.
The sound, this: a onetime 12inch cut of vinyl they’d still spin in a decade, a hundred years from now. He knew he could do it; he didn’t know if he would. Alchemise the melodies running around his head into a killer track - disco and house mixed up baleariastyle; sweet notes to send partiers batshit and Louis Gold into lala-land joyous.
He missed the life he once had; he missed the lives he never lived; he was mid-forties and looked back and forth at existence on a loop.
The villa’s rooftop pool gave views of Ses Salines holidayers; throngs at the bars, on the sand. Downstairs opened onto a patio and beach. Louis adjusted his sun-lounger and eyeballed his watch - 12.01pm - Sabina would be opening up Sweet n Sultry. The writer - Marilyn something - was due; she wanted to interview him about the villa.
A €2m-plus Catalan/Malibu-style adobe that was a riot of glass and white minimalist lines Louis got designed and built and retired to enjoy at the age of 42.
Hearing sounds coming over the hot air from Sweet n Sultry; Louis built the bar the same time as the villa - along from Sa Trinxa - and was paid for by payola riches, too. He was a remix/edit whizz - work for Beyonce, Adele studded the CV. A superstar DJ earning tankerloads from playing ersatz dance shit around the globe before getting out and coming to where he dreamed of: the white isle.
Catching hot-woozy notes now - Sabina played a chugger at Sweet n Sultry, a slow track for midday sun time. His daughter was 19; his daughter knew Louis Gold.
The dial showed 27 degrees - another barnburner day. Louis popped a third can of local beer and thought of palm trees and the life to come and his phone buzzed.
Shit, the writer woman.
‘Sure, come up.’ Louis watched the pool glisten and tried to remember her name-
Marilyn someone, right?
C2
Louis watched the woman come up the steps and onto the roof, the sun in his eyes so she was shadowed. She paused, did a 360.
Look at the pool, light, the space, and look, there’s the subject: Louis Gold.
She stepped out of sundazzle and he got an instant take: she had the kind of expression you wondered were it got passed down from. She waved - odd, considering they a few feet only apart.
‘Hello, I’m Marilyn Katheleen. And you must be-’
‘Louis Gold.’
‘Louis “Million Dollar” Gold.’
He gave her a thumbs-up. ‘And you are Marilyn-’
‘Katheleen. I just told you.’
‘You did.’
He motioned the tables and chairs by the pool - the set-up shielded from the sun by a Louis ‘Million Dollar’ Gold-embossed parasol. Marilyn sat down and Louis got up off the lounger and joined her.
She pulled a notepad and pen from her bag, started scribbling.
Louis raised an eyebrow and said, ‘Drink?’
She didn’t look up. ‘What you have?’
‘Name your poison.’
‘Bacardi and coke.’
He threw a thumbs-up and hit the back of the roof into shade, went behind the bar, hit the cooler for another local beer plus a fresh coke to mix her drink. Ice cubes, a generous doubleshot of Bacardi.
‘Slice of lemon?’
‘Sure.’
He bussed the drinks over and sat down under the parasol.
‘What you writing?’
He slid her glass over.
‘First impressions. What you’re wearing, this rather stunning place. That kind of thing.’
Louis sipped beer. ‘I’m wearing a pair of board shorts and nothing else.’
‘Exactly.’ She waved her pen. ‘And a silver chain.’
‘Platinum.’
‘Platinum. What’s it say on your bracelet.’ Marilyn pointed at his wrist.
‘That’s silver. It says, “Music Will Come”.’
She nodded. She was youngish. And the expression that struck him he saw was all about her eyes that glided over him, all they took in.
He said, ‘Its a reminder. You know, its why I’m here - why I left the life I had, to come and try and write the track I have to. “Music Will Come”.’
‘You’re supremely successful. And rich. Much of your money has come from writing music. So I don’t see-’
‘Can we change the subject, please? You’re here to ask about this place. So, ask away.’
Louis waved a hand at the villa, at the view over the sand and the Mediterranean.
Marilyn sipped her bacardi-and-coke. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Okay. So, why here?’
‘Ibiza is Ibiza,’ he said. ‘Ibiza is Ibiza.’
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