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"I can't cope, all the defences are gone. All the nerves are exposed."

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"I can't think of words. I feel no emotion about anything. I don't want to laugh or cry. I'm numb-dead inside."
Nick Drake, in conversation with John Wood

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Sheila Wood (John Wood's wife): "If you're so unhappy Nick, why haven't you killed yourself?"
Nick: "It's too cowardly, and besides, I don't have the courage"

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Sophia Ryde, a friend of Nick's
"He would be staying at my flat and we would be talking, and he'd say:
'Do you mind if I go into the kitchen and take my pills [anti-depressants]. I'm frightfully sorry, frightfully sorry.'"

Spoken by Nick while recording

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"I'm afraid to say at this stage my voice
has began to fail me rather badly...
So I'll just do one more song..."

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Spoken by Nick Drake into a tape recorder.
Far Leys, Tanworth-In-Arden, Warwickshire, about 1968.

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Good evening, or shall I say good morning? The time is twenty-five to five, and I've been sitting here for some time now, actually. (?)... a party which I quite enjoyed... it's a bit... one has one's reservations. One has quite enjoyed oneself, but one has great reservations, because the people weren't particularly interesting. In fact there weren't as many people there as I'd expected there to be, because I thought, you know, the Maynard-Mitchells have a big big do... in fact there weren't nearly as many as I might have thought, which was a pity.

I think I must have drunk rather a lot, although it didn't seem so at the time; I thought myself quite sober. When I leapt into the car to drive home, after my merry abandon, I found the task extremely difficult, and it was extremely fortunate that there was nothing else on the road because looking back on it I seem to remember I had a mental brainstorm, and I didn't realise at the time but I think I drove the whole way home on the right hand side of the road. This is something of course which comes from driving in France too much which is what I've been doing recently, as you (probably?)... driving in France you know. I mean in moments of stress such as was this journey home, one forgets so easily the lies, the truth and the pain. So I'm wavering from the point.

What I was trying to say is, um, that while I sat here I had a -- extremely pleasant time, on the piano, actually, I was playing the piano and sort of singing. I rather fear I might have kept people awake upstairs. One hopes not, but it was pleasant, and it's extremely pleasant sitting here now because I think there's something extraordinarily nice about seeing the dawn up before one goes to bed, because there's something uncanny about it, though it's only because light... because one connects darkness with going to bed, surely, and when one is still up when it becomes light, when it's a new day, you still haven't gone to sleep, because the night equals sleep, so easily... and when one is still up when the new day begins it is something of a cheering experience I always find. I can look out the window now and that tree over there is green whereas before one goes to bed, just as one goes to bed, that tree should be black, surely; everything should be black before one goes to bed, that is surely the essence of the romantic.

Anyway I think I'm straying from the point. I shall probably stop talking here, because if I don't I shall start soon relating the life histories of things, which will be frightfully tedious. So it's here that I'll sort of say good night to you now. Good night.

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