Is it happening to me or you?
I've been crying a bit more than usual lately. I suppose that might seem a strange way to start off an entry; I should state right away that there's nothing wrong with me. I'm not depressed, nothing horrible has happened; I can't imagine being more contented, really. But for some reason, my emotions seem closer to the surface than even usual. The other night I was flipping through the channels and I came across an old highlights broadcast where they were showing clips from the '66 World Cup. I'd seen it before many times; Christ, when my father's mates would come over, I used to count how many Guinesses they'd go through before one of them ended up doing a howler-monkey impression of Kenneth Wolstenholme. But for some reason, when I watched Bobby Moore being carried off by the England side, I felt myself welling up. Then last night, I was knocking about on the computer, and just for something to listen to, put on this old Peter Gabriel record from 1980. Now when Peter Gabriel started with Genesis in the Seventies, he recorded all these twelve-minute long songs about Greek gods, reincarnation and giant flowers, which often resulted in him dressing up as any or all of the above on stage. But after '75, Gabriel quit Genesis and started making solo albums that were increasingly personal in nature. By 1980, he recorded the best album of his career; a dark, heavily electronic-sounding record filled with paranoia and desperation with regards to the times. I got to the last song, "Biko," and it just hit me. Now certainly Steve Biko is an inspirational figure, an almost impossibly brave man who died a horrible death simply for standing up for what he believed in. But what got to me almost even more than that was the journey Peter must have made; from perhaps slightly over-educated art student obsessed with myth and theatrics, slowly becoming aware to the realities of life in the modern world and finding within himself the means to not only articulate his feelings, but with the opportunity to actually effect the things he wanted to sing about. It must have been a heady journey. So there I am, sobbing in front of my computer as ProTools flashes error messages at me. Rachel came in to bring me a croissant and stared at me for a full minute before suggesting that perhaps I should come away from the computer for a while.
I think part of it is just being starved for something real. We're all bombarded by the innocuous, the blandly reassuring concoctions that stream out of every TV and radio and bombard us at every Tube stop, all of them designed to stop feeling, to pummel it into submission, so you're only left with a bit of glazed awareness as you coast through the day. It's why horrible things like Jerry Springer and Cops are so popular in America, where it's even more encouraged to put on a big bright smile every time you go out of doors. At least when you see people throwing chairs at each other and being forced to snog the pavement, you know they're experiencing some brand of emotion you can relate to, instead of this effervescent stupor being perpetually sold to us. It's too bad it has to be tinged with such contempt.
There's this one story in particular I haven't been able to turn away from. There's this woman in Florida; her name is Terri Schiavo. And apparently fourteen years ago, she collapsed of a heart attack at age 26. Since that time, she's been in what's called a "vegetative state." Her husband has been fighting for years now to be allowed to take her off life support, but her parents have been doing every effort to keep her alive in hopes that she'll recover. Medical opinion seem to be split down the middle; she'll never recover, she might recover with time, she might have recovered if she'd been allowed to participate in therapies that the husband didn't allow. Some experts are stating that her heart was in top condition and what actually caused the damage was physical abuse, possibly perpetrated by the husband. At any rate, it's a right mess, and all I can think of is how bloody awful it must be for everyone involved. The American writer Robert Penn Warren once wrote that when you have children, it's like giving part of yourself away, and the entire relationship you have with your child from that point on is predicated on getting that bit returned to you. It seems like a fairly cynical outlook at first blush, but I can see his point. I would never want to possess Noah or keep him from doing whatever he wants to as he gets older, but just the idea of him out of the house and off somewhere is enough to make me shiver. I honestly can't imagine existence being a viable proposition if anything as horrid as that ever happened to him. It'd be like having a limb suddenly go limp and start decaying but refuse to fall off.
And with that, I'd like to change gears for a bit. It's come to my attention lately that some people consider my current choice of lifestyle to be a bit wanting. At the risk of boring the rest of you, I would like to publicly state here, for the record, that I really don't give a toss. I'm 37 years old, for heavens' sake; I had plenty of time to get all my piss and wind out of my system when I was younger. And in addition to that, I've been flung around the world more times than I care to count, and I've had enough emotional highs and lows in the past ten years to last several evolutionary epochs. Right now I'm rather enjoying a bit of the quiet, and I don't think I need to apologise to anyone for it. So the lot of you can get stuffed, can't you?
Well, I think that qualifies as a proper update. And even if it doesn't, Noah's trying to eat the mouse, so I must be off.
I think part of it is just being starved for something real. We're all bombarded by the innocuous, the blandly reassuring concoctions that stream out of every TV and radio and bombard us at every Tube stop, all of them designed to stop feeling, to pummel it into submission, so you're only left with a bit of glazed awareness as you coast through the day. It's why horrible things like Jerry Springer and Cops are so popular in America, where it's even more encouraged to put on a big bright smile every time you go out of doors. At least when you see people throwing chairs at each other and being forced to snog the pavement, you know they're experiencing some brand of emotion you can relate to, instead of this effervescent stupor being perpetually sold to us. It's too bad it has to be tinged with such contempt.
There's this one story in particular I haven't been able to turn away from. There's this woman in Florida; her name is Terri Schiavo. And apparently fourteen years ago, she collapsed of a heart attack at age 26. Since that time, she's been in what's called a "vegetative state." Her husband has been fighting for years now to be allowed to take her off life support, but her parents have been doing every effort to keep her alive in hopes that she'll recover. Medical opinion seem to be split down the middle; she'll never recover, she might recover with time, she might have recovered if she'd been allowed to participate in therapies that the husband didn't allow. Some experts are stating that her heart was in top condition and what actually caused the damage was physical abuse, possibly perpetrated by the husband. At any rate, it's a right mess, and all I can think of is how bloody awful it must be for everyone involved. The American writer Robert Penn Warren once wrote that when you have children, it's like giving part of yourself away, and the entire relationship you have with your child from that point on is predicated on getting that bit returned to you. It seems like a fairly cynical outlook at first blush, but I can see his point. I would never want to possess Noah or keep him from doing whatever he wants to as he gets older, but just the idea of him out of the house and off somewhere is enough to make me shiver. I honestly can't imagine existence being a viable proposition if anything as horrid as that ever happened to him. It'd be like having a limb suddenly go limp and start decaying but refuse to fall off.
And with that, I'd like to change gears for a bit. It's come to my attention lately that some people consider my current choice of lifestyle to be a bit wanting. At the risk of boring the rest of you, I would like to publicly state here, for the record, that I really don't give a toss. I'm 37 years old, for heavens' sake; I had plenty of time to get all my piss and wind out of my system when I was younger. And in addition to that, I've been flung around the world more times than I care to count, and I've had enough emotional highs and lows in the past ten years to last several evolutionary epochs. Right now I'm rather enjoying a bit of the quiet, and I don't think I need to apologise to anyone for it. So the lot of you can get stuffed, can't you?
Well, I think that qualifies as a proper update. And even if it doesn't, Noah's trying to eat the mouse, so I must be off.