pixellated

"I wrote a eulogy for my best friend last week. Then I read it to him. At the pub. On a Tuesday."

He was alive, holding a pint, looking at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I have.

I'm Mick. I'm 70. The man across the table was Barry. Seventy-two. Best mate for 46 years. Met on a building site in 1979. He dropped a plank on my foot. I called him something unrepeatable. He bought me a pint after the shift. Haven't gone a week without talking since.

Three months ago we went to a funeral. Bloke we'd worked with. Cancer. The eulogies were beautiful - people saying what he meant to them, things they'd clearly never said to his face. And all I could think was, he can't hear any of this.

Every beautiful sentence. Every "he changed my life." Said to a room of crying people and a box of wood.

I turned to Barry. Whispered, "What a waste."

Drove home. Couldn't sleep. Because I realised, if Barry died tomorrow, I'd stand up and say extraordinary things about this man. Things I've never said in 46 years. And he'd be in the box, missing all of it.

So I wrote them down. Took a week. Harder than expected - not finding the words, but admitting I had them.

Rang him. "Tuesday. The Crown. Need to read you something."

"Have you joined a book club?"

"Just come."

Same corner table. Pint of bitter. Crisps. I pulled out the paper. He saw my hands shake.

"Mick. What's this?"

"Your eulogy. I'm reading it now because I'm not wasting it on a day you can't hear it."

"Have you gone mad?"

"Probably. Shut up and listen."

I read it. In a pub. To a man very much alive and very much uncomfortable.

I told him about the plank and how it was the best injury of my life. About the night he drove forty minutes in rain to help change a tyre. About how he rang every day for three months after my divorce and never once asked "Are you alright?" - just talked about football and weather, because he knew I didn't need a question. I needed a voice.

I told him he was the funniest man I'd ever known and his jokes were terrible and both things were true. That he'd been a better father than he thinks. That his wife's a saint and he knows it. That I'd have been a worse man without him.

He didn't look at me. Stared at his pint. Jaw tight. Doing that thing men do when the feelings arrive and they'd rather swallow glass than show it.

When I finished, long silence. Then he picked up his pint, took a sip, and said,

"You're paying for the next round. And the one after."

That was his answer. Perfect. Because Barry doesn't say "I love you too." He says "you're buying."

But in the car park, he hugged me. Not the quick back-pat. A real one. Thirty seconds. Neither let go first.

And he said quietly into my shoulder, "Don't read that again at the real one. I want new material."

Who would you write a eulogy for - while they're still here?

Don't wait. The flowers can't hear. The box doesn't laugh. Say it now. At the pub. Over a bad cup of tea. You'll feel ridiculous.

They'll look uncomfortable. It'll be the most important thing you've ever done.

Read them the speech while they can still hug you in the car park.”

Don't tell me you still fancy yourself a princess! Good God, child, look around you! Or better yet, look in the mirror!

He does this mostly by framing the protests as a conflict between freedom-loving protestors and jackbooted thugs over the soul of America and by painting ICE's victims as martyrs who were killed for no reason and whose names must not be forgotten. Then he pairs the idea of fighting for the soul of America and these newfound martyrs with protecting immigrants and continuing resistance (the refrain of the song is "We'll make our stand for this land/And the strangers in our midst").

This song is also the most overtly political and contemporary of his works. While his most famous song, "Born in the USA," is a critique of how the US military exploited the working class by shipping them off to Vietnam and left them broken and abandoned after their return told through the eyes of a victim of this exploitation, its catchy refrain was enough to give Conservatives a chance to claim the song as patriotic, but his new anthem, "Streets of Minneapolis," does not and is, instead, nakedly and starky about what its about.

You run away from what you're afraid of, then it owns you.

I'm reminded of President Obama's inauguration.

Despite people's fears (Fox, looking at you hate machine), people like Mamdani represent the want for change, the want to try something. Anything.

This is the point! That we are supposed to try to make progress and make things better for our lives, together.

I'm reminded of all the made up hate for Obama. I had a family member seriously tell me that I should get ready to wear the burka under Obama. And the comments online are already sounding the same for Mamdani.