I found it in a book that gave no original publication details about when, where, and in what, and I was curious. I'd say it's from around late 1970/1971. It's rather depressing, but still an interesting read that you might like.
Sorry for the long post, but since I had it as text there wasn't much point putting it as an attachment.
Does anyone recognise it?? .........................................................................................................
An Afternoon with Syd Barrett
by Jenny Fabian
I often thought about Syd, he was the first, the most magical, the most spaced-out, of them all. I'd originally seen Pink Floyd at All Saints Hall, Notting Hill, I was living round the corner and the vibe was out about their freaky music. I went to see them again, at UFO, and I was on my first acid trip. I couldn't take my eyes off the slender dark-haired one hunched over his guitar, making extraordinary cosmic sounds and singing wonderland songs. Great blobs of colour swirled across the stage, illuminating him like a mystical being. By the time I got close to Syd he was permanently tripped-out, and if he seemed more preoccupied with other-worldly things, it didn't matter, it was the same for me. Acid took us somewhere else, except that Syd never came back. I thought he was being poetic when he spoke about mental exile.
Now I'd moved on, written 'Groupie' with Johnny Byrne, and had become "Underground Editor" of Harpers & Queen. The Floyd had replaced Syd, who wandered off to be a fractured solo artist. Someone had played me an acetate of 'The Madcap Laughs', and I wanted to interview him for my column. It wasn't hard to find him, the underground scene was a small world. I wasn't sure how he'd react, for it was three years since I'd last seen him and the word was that he'd flipped beyond repair. He answered the phone himself, and I was surprised at how friendly he seemed. He told me to come to his flat in Earls Court the following afternoon.
I was on my own doomed roller coaster ride at the time, rich from advances, infamous from sleazy publicity, and heavily into drugs. My previous interview with Arthur Lee had been in the spirit of the times, because as soon as I'd walked through the door of Love's hotel suite they laid a tab of Sunshine on me and I forgot what I'd come for. Part of me knew I was only pretending to be a writer, I was really just a groupie. That's all I felt like as I stood nervously outside Syd's front door. What if he'd forgotten where he lived and had given me the wrong address?
But he hadn't, and he opened the door. He was barefoot and his dark hair hung wild and matted round his waxy white face. He still wore one of those skinny art-deco scarves round his neck like a counter-culture cravat. "Oh, it's you," he said, with a little smile. I shut the front door and followed him into the kitchen, which was bare and bleak. He was boiling an egg in the kettle. He offered me a grimy glass of water, it's all there was, he told me. After hunting for a spoon and breaking his egg open onto a stale slice of bread, he led the way to his room.
The first thing I noticed were the floorboards, which were painted alternate orange and purple. He'd painted the floorboards himself, though he found them rather disturbing to look at, he said. It was a large room, no furniture, just a sound-system and some battered LPs strewn all over the floor. A guitar and some paintings were over in the corner. We flopped down on a mattress covered in lumpy bedding. Syd ate his egg and I rolled a joint. We must have sat there for several hours, most of the time in silence, and he didn't seem inclined to put any sounds on. I felt no need to get through to him because I knew he was out the other side and miles away. His thoughts were like currents in the air, as though they had exploded uncontrollably from a brain that had been boiled in acid and split like a tomato skin.
Now he mostly lived in the fuzzy-land of mandrax, a soft and floaty place that I knew well. He gradually sank back into a pile of crumpled clothes and lay gazing up at me. I wondered if he remembered who I was. I could feel myself changing into a million different chicks as though he was watching me through a kaleidoscope. When he spoke it was vague and disconnected, sad stuff about broken guitars and too many people. I couldn't be sure if he was talking to me, or just thinking out loud, each sentence died away unfinished, and he found it hard to remember what he had said. His voice was soft and gentle, and he smiled a lot to himself.
The room had an eerie glow due to the light filtering in through thin green curtains. He told me his mother had made them and he kept them closed all day because it made the room feel like a tank. It made Syd look very spectral. He said his brain was like a cream slice, and he could stand outside himself and contemplate it. This contemplation would give rise to another creation and so on. He was completely self-indulgent with his imagination, never trying to control or direct it within any bounds of reason. Reasoning was inconclusive and unnecessary to him, because one reason led endlessly to another. I asked him if any reason ever led to an answer. He looked startled at the sound of my voice. Then he told me that as there is no reason, there is no answer. It seemed there was nowhere left to go, and he knew it.
"It gets boring," he said, "lying here all day and thinking of nothing."
I didn't believe him because to me he would always inhabit the world of his songs, full of gnomes and cats and stars and weird fairy tale things. The skin around his violet eyes was bruised with LSD overload, he was irresistibly tragic, and I leaned over and kissed him. He started to laugh, and tumbled me back into the heap of clothing. I couldn't believe my luck and once again forgot the notebook. Our clothes got all muddled up in the heap already there.
We lay there into the darkness, Syd staring at the ceiling, still feeding off his brain's output, until he finally got up and turned on the bare orange light bulb that hung from the ceiling. Suddenly the room took on a new perspective. He put on a Beach Boys LP and it played over and over again until I couldn't stand it any longer and had to leave.
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