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Tourettes!’
    The Tourettes are Eddie’s sound carpet. A performance from Eddie X and The Tourettes comprises Eddie reading his romantic poetry with incredible ardour and The Tourettes playing improvised and spasmodic music in the background. Lenny, one of Eddie’s closest friends, plays the guitar and is the frontman in the band. Lenny suffers from severe tics. His head gives a sudden jerk now and then and the spasms are transmitted through him in the form of a weird enormous blinking. They run down through his shoulders and on towards his knees. But Lenny has chosen to never see himself as a victim; rather he has transformed his awkward syndrome into an advantage, something of which he is actually proud. Tourette’s syndrome is a part of him whether he likes it or not, just like his nose or the colour of his eyes. His exceptional musicality, together with his condition, has created a music that has no comparison whatsoever with any other art form. Now and then, The Tourettes perform with Lenny as their singer, which is a strange experience since Lenny has a compulsive urge to utter swearwords as soon as he gets stressed. And since a performance is always associated with a certain tension, the only song that Lenny can articulate is a single long stuttering flow of expletives and four-letter words. It is all quite remarkable.
    But today it is Eddie X and his texts that are the centrepiece. Eddie is a warm person and he had a great ability to spread this warmth to all those who read or see him. When he takes part in Poetry-Slam gatherings, his performance is always an entertaining combination of stand-up comedy and poetry. He thumbs through the papers in his little plastic folder containing the evening’s poems, which he always takes with him onto the stage. Not that he ever reads from them. He knows his texts off by heart. But the folder gives him security and balance.
    ‘Dear Friends!’ he starts off with his warm voice groaningly close to the microphone. ‘Have I told you about when I decided to move south to Stockholm?’
    The audience starts to hoot and whistle as if Eddie were going to play an old hit. And in some ways that is exactly what he is going to do. Eddie’s poems are incredibly popular. A lot of people haveheard or read them earlier, with or without the spasmodic sound carpet.
    Eddie puts his right hand over his heart and starts to read the poem, or the story, about a tender young boy who comes to the big city:
    ‘
Insecurity
is a vehicle.
    ‘I am eighteen years old.
    ‘I’m a learner driver of all sorts of vehicles.
    ‘I sit behind the wheel on a chair in a bar and watch people circling around.
    ‘Around me.
    ‘I see the
insecurity
in the corners of their eyes and wonder how it works.
    ‘How do they do it?
    ‘How can they cope?
    ‘They are rusty, buckled, scratched and painted over.
    ‘But they hum and purr.
    ‘Dance, laugh, drink, kiss, live.
    ‘They are alive!
    ‘
Insecurity
is a vehicle that can only be driven by flesh and blood.
    ‘Flesh and blood that hates and loves.
    ‘And is alive!
    ‘I finish a glass and wobble out of the depot with a laugh.
    ‘I’m going on to the playing field.
    ‘I’m going to take my driving test.
    ‘Yes,
insecurity
is a vehicle that I can understand.
    ‘I’m going to be a fantastic driver.
    ‘I am alive!’
    The audience hums with love for Eddie X – the girls especially. Of course, his texts often verge dizzying on the edge of the precipice of the pathetic. But his youth and his ardour excuse everything. A genuine poet has the right to express what he wants, how he wants, whenever he wants. Every society needs poets and just now the audience at the festival in Sweden need the colourful Eddie X more than ever.
    Eddie goes on to read ten or so very candid poem-stories abouthis life and The Tourettes jerk and shake in the background. There is a great atmosphere in the audience. Everyone is enjoying themselves, hugging each other, laughing and