"Don't fuck me around" - first time I've heard that refrain at a funeral. In Afrikaans as "Moenie met my rondfok nie" half the congregation didn't understand it, just enjoyed its rhythm along with the rest of the chant, both funny and obscene - spitting acid humour in the face of outrageous authority; Steve's speciality. Diffident and charming in person, an eloquent fury on stage.
I met him a good 11 years ago in a basement bar doing his mesmerising muso-voodoo-rasp in his Durban South African accent. An exile since he went AWOL from enforced conscription in the late Apartheid eighties, somehow he wound up in Newcastle. We exchanged memories, his more scorched than mine.
Not long after, I watched his act again, this time a swan song before he flew home with a newly beloved. It didn't work out but he wrote me a letter saying not much had changed; that the poor were still poor as can be. He sent me a squatter camp photo.
I saw him again on a summer walk in fields, he seemed fragile and wary but I arranged for him to hear my newest radio play Poor Clare which he loved, basing some lessons around it. He sent me a poem he'd written in Ireland, near a convent with swans. I later discovered his aunt lived there, a Poor Clare herself, Sister Gabrielle.
Next time I saw him properly, he looked much older. He was drinking more. I was worried but he told me he was grooving on myspace. There was music and crazy videos, in one of them he danced in his underpants, a ringer for Rhys Ifans. We swapped mobile numbers and he invited me and my boyf to a gig. In the Chilly, his band was The Groove and he played, sang and chanted - angrily funny and as lyrical as ever. A nomad Shaman crazy-boy. He hosted other writers, learners and students from his community classes. Sharing the platform. Generous and inspirational. A sane man in a world swirling with madness.
Lately we communicated on facebook. Both Byker flatdwellers we riffed on pigeons and water supplies, but Steve's page was his gallery and he'd put up film after film both gross and poetic, shots of his paintings and writing of every kind.
In that way one does, I thought he'd be there forever and that I could choose when next I'd see him or meet up. But Steve left very abruptly - the actual cause of death as yet uncertain, but in bed, perhaps even in his sleep. There the evening before, gone in the morning.
In a cautious, conforming world he was inspiringly gauche, eloquently damning of hypocrisy - another poor, wise, not just artist, but prophet - and oh how we need them and oh how are they ignored. This was his second last entry on facebook:
"The Ominpotence of things yet to be. The irrelevence of deeds already done. The cosmic shrug is the only certainty that will steer you through these stormy times."
His very last entry talked how he'd clearly inspired some kids he was teaching - but said that soon he'd be a "free agent".That's the only thing that compensates for missing him - to feel he at last might be free. I'm glad to have known you Steve, and at the young young age of 38, I wish you could have stayed longer.
Some of Steve's work can be seen on this website, created by his brother Martin
http://steve.yelvy.com/
