Guy Lochhead, 30/08/10
Roy L. Dennis was born with craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, an extremely rare disease occurring in about 1 in every 22 million births in which calcium builds up in the skull, disfiguring and crippling the child. Doctors expected the pressure on his brain to kill him before he was seven, but Dennis entered school aged 6, despite disapproval by many teachers, and learned to read and write. He died aged 16. His life was the subject of a film called ‘Mask’. Dennis wrote a poem about his life. I want to include this. I also want to include a Jens Lekman EP called ‘Rocky Dennis In Heaven’, about the boy. The film was terrible. The poem will be folded into the CD sleeve.