Dear Art,

I've never written a fan letter before, but your performance at Bristol Colston Hall was so breathtaking I came straight home to write to you. I wish I could tell you this in person, but the guys in black T-shirts standing outside your coach were resolute.

What I want to say is this: thank you.

Your voice is one of the most stirring I've ever heard, and the world is a better place for having such beauty in it. Thank you for sharing your gift with us tonight, and for the last 30 years. As long as you draw breath in, I hope you let it out again in song.

You made several self-depricating references tonight to your part in the great Simon & Garfunkel duo, but I want you to know that the people in that hall did not pay 35 pounds each to hear the budget half of Simon & Garfunkel; they came to hear you. You, the artist. You, with your voice like warm snowflakes. You, with your passion and spirit that, after countless hundreds, if not thousands, of performances of Bridge Over Troubled Water and Sounds of Silence, has not diminished. If anything, the passion in your voice has grown over the years, because it now carries not only the electricity of idealism, but the force of experience as well.

So thank you. Thank you for sharing your gift, your warmth, your beauty, your energy, your song.

Sincerely,

Your fan