Issue #366 / May 2026
I am a big fan of Warren’s and you don’t worry and I often wish I was a fly on the wall and could listn to your conversations. I saw you both talking on the side of the stage at Hanging Rock, and it looked so intense.
VERITY, GEELONG, AUSTRALIA
SPONGEBOB AND PATRICK HUGGING
do you like spongebob
MARK, LONDON, UK
Dear Verity and Mark,
When Warren and I arrive at the studio in the morning for an improv session, we usually don’t say much to each other at all. Warren goes straight to his booth with his violin, guitars, synths, pedals and stuff, and I sit down at the grand piano in the centre of the room. Then we play straight through for three hours – we’re on a thrill ride – two people in a conversation of the deepest intimacy and trust, a toing and froing of remarkable articulateness, where we are free to express ourselves however we need, sharing small triumphs and, often, our more mammoth failings. As I ad-lib lyrics off the top of my head, I know most of them will be unusable, but sometimes a line lands and it just works beautifully. What goes on in these sessions is as intimate and eloquent as it is possible for two people of our nature to be. After three hours of uninterrupted improvisation, we stop for lunch.
Instantly, the tone drops, and it becomes a race to the bottom of our brains as we revert to our generational repose, our Australianness, our maleness. In the studio last week, over falafel sandwiches, we debated whether SpongeBob, whom we both love, was gay and secretly involved with Patrick. We felt the evidence favoured it – Patrick is a pink starfish, after all. The studio staff, who were basically teenagers, gathered around and pushed back, insisting SpongeBob was gender-neutral, but even though we were outnumbered, Warren and I held firm, for we had the advantage. We were older, wiser, and had clearly watched far more SpongeBob than they had. An hour later, we all agreed that, of course, SpongeBob’s sexuality was irrelevant – we all loved him, and we loved Patrick too. We all hugged and returned to work.
Back at our instruments, Warren and I slip once again into that perilous, lawless realm, where conquest confronts failure, seriousness meets play, and understanding courts accident, all bound in a raw, near-brutal transcendence. The conversation Warren and I have been having for thirty years – the eloquent one, the beautiful one – continues as the music pours out of us. This, Verity, is when you want to be the fly on the wall.
Love, Nick