Probably the only reason Sam S (boyfriend of the girl who relieved herself in public, and my flatmate in the second year of uni) had got onto his philosophy course in the first place was that he had attended the interview off his cake on speed.
When asked to ponder that old philosophical chestnut “is that chair you’re sitting on really real?” Sam was in the perfect mindset to rattle on pointlessly about reality, consciousness, illusion, and all number of pontifications guaranteed to win him a place on a philosophy course, where such ramblings are tolerated - no, expected. Of course they flung the departmental doors wide open for him, and the poor lad spent the next three years (well, four if you count the year in the middle he took off to play in a band - and resit his entire second year) worrying about not being able to perform philosophically without being out of his tree on stimulants.
I lived with Sam in the first year, too, in self-catering university accomodation, where we were flung together with various other independent types - and a couple of weirdos - when he was smoking a lot of weed, presumably to aid in the writing of philosophical ramblings.
One night halfway through the first year, he woke me up at half two in the morning, stoned and visibly shaken. I asked him what was wrong, and he perched on the end of my bed and told me god had just spoken to him.
“I was just playing my guitar,” he explained.
Sam’s first love was his red electric guitar, and his favourite pastime when stoned was to put on some Hawkwind or Zappa albums, and wail and twiddle along to them, with full-on pedals and distortion blasting through through a cheap amp. I slept with earplugs for much of that year.
“I was really getting into this awesome riff - really wah-wah heavy and rocking,” he continued, “and I stopped for a second to get another plectrum, and then god spoke to me.”
“Bloody hell,” I exclaimed, “what did he say?”
“He said ‘nice riff, Sam’”
I burst out laughing, while Sam insisted in a stoned and confused manner that the lord had indeed congratulated him on a mighty riff via the medium of a cheap amp. And not a bleeding statue in sight. Hallelujah, it’s a miracle.
Further prodding revealed that god’s voice had been a little muffled and strange, distorted massively by the wah wah and the fuzzbox, and that he may well have had a broad Liverpudlian accent, which would undoubtedly have made the marxist theologians of the world happy, but which just served to confuse me no end.
And then suddenly, revelation.
We lived on a busy main road in the middle of Liverpool, a road frequented by mini cabs and police vehicles. A couple of weeks before, there’d been a fire alarm at another house in the block, and three fire engines had pulled up outside. No-one knew what was going on, but I discovered that if I left my cheap stereo on, but not playing music, I could pick up bursts from the emergency service’s radio frequency - “Ey, Keith, you there?” a broad scouse voice tinnily chimed out from my speakers as I watched the hubbub on the street below, “looks like some twat left the grill on. Bloody students, eh?”
Much to his disappointment, it transpired that Sam’s conversation with a deity could be explained by his amp picking up the random radio hissings of a passing cabbie - but passed through wah-wah and reverb, it sounded almost godly. Not so much “Nice riff, Sam” as “Where’s my next pickup, Reg?” probably.
Sam trundled off to bed, looking less pale than before, shaking his head and mumbling about how it was a great riff, though…
