ON Sunday nights I am reluctant to go to bed, though I know I would benefit from being properly rested for the first day of the work week. A good Monday often preludes a good 5 day routine. But it takes effort.
Tonight as I write this I am killing the small minutes by going through my 300+ CD collection. It is a trip down memory lane and untenably powerful in it's effect on me. My heart pumps slowly and deeply as a thirsty man might gulp down deep draughts of cold water down a throat which cannot stretch enough.
Gulp. Ba-Dump. Gulp. Ba-Dump.
There it is before me, small parts of my life. There are feelings and emotions and memories all attached to certain songs. There is a song from a Mauro Picotto mix that was the song that came on when I peaked on xtc for the first time.
There is a song by Seal called 'Violet' which brings me all the way back to 14 years of age. Unable to feel confident in the real world, I retreated into a dream world filled with characters and locations provided by comics, RPG's and video games and a mixture of Seal, Nirvana and The KLF were my soundtracks.
The first 5 tracks on the Fight Club soundtrack unfailingly bring me back to the smell of the place I shared with tryptamine in what feels like a very long time ago now.
'Been Caught Stealing' by Jane's Addiction brings me as far back as the school bus. They were a big influence on the bands formed in my school.
It's suddenly caught me. Time. I was thinking about how old some of the girls who pose here are. Normally it's just numbers to me, it doesn't count. But today it just popped in my head. When you are 19 years old, you are posing nude, life consists of money problems, love affairs and parties, social hiccups and family disasters....what the fuck do you know? I mean...what the FUCK do you REALLY know at 19?
When I was 19, I had graduated from the fucking Singapore Police Academy. I was serving my country, tangled in the net of National Service. There was no suicide girls. I was very uninformed musically and still unsure of my tastes in music. The idea that I would find goth or punk rock chicks attractive...well...they just don't fucking exist in Singapore. I was learning to shoot grenade launchers to gas people and it was fun. Now....now I know that politically I'm on the other end of that launcher.
I'm sometimes overcome by a wave of sadness. I see my goals and my future before me and it looms like the cliffs of Dover above me, 600ft high and blocking out the light casting me in a chilly shadow. The waves of the past crash gently past my feet and dry out quickly into the sandy present. There to be observed anytime one wishes, but to try and grab it is to have it fall out between your fingers.
Tomorrow will just be the third boxing lesson in my life. I am thinking "My God...and I'm supposed to be buff and tough by Summer?". How can a goal be so far and too near at the same time?
2003 has only just begun and already it's running away from me. What my journey through my CD collection has shown me is that I forgot how little I felt I'd achieved in my life so far.
Not only that, but...I need to seriously upgrade myself. I need to pick a degree to start by the end of this year. I have to....or I could be like this forever. Always potential, never achievement. How did I end up unable to cure the loneliness? Why am I not satisfied with the friends in Sweden I have now? Why do their ideas of fun and freetime hobbies seem so pointless to me? Are the shortfalls I see in them more truly reflections of shortfalls in myself? Why does everything I attempt to 'fix' my life seem like a pathetic stopgap measure?
I try to read very intellectual, very life affirming books and it's like empty calories for the soul. All carbos, no value. The good things and the valuable lessons happen to other people, not me.
I catch myself buying things and having to stop myself because the only reason I am buying them is to try a fill a gap in my life. To feel some sense of 'progression'. The positive is that I save money. The negative is I still don't know why there's a hole in my soul and what to fill it with.
I catch myself at work fighting off the melancholy while desperately wanting to bathe in the self-pity. I have fought this all my life, it is my nature, my challenge and my burden. Exercises in positivity like being thankful for a roof over my head, and flowers in Spring and having food on the table....they seem so stupid to me. Though I am the stupid one for not realising things could be a whole lot worse.
I am missing a sense of progression. A sense that things are changing for the better. A sense that what I want is available. A sense that I really can have it.
Tonight as I write this I am killing the small minutes by going through my 300+ CD collection. It is a trip down memory lane and untenably powerful in it's effect on me. My heart pumps slowly and deeply as a thirsty man might gulp down deep draughts of cold water down a throat which cannot stretch enough.
Gulp. Ba-Dump. Gulp. Ba-Dump.
There it is before me, small parts of my life. There are feelings and emotions and memories all attached to certain songs. There is a song from a Mauro Picotto mix that was the song that came on when I peaked on xtc for the first time.
There is a song by Seal called 'Violet' which brings me all the way back to 14 years of age. Unable to feel confident in the real world, I retreated into a dream world filled with characters and locations provided by comics, RPG's and video games and a mixture of Seal, Nirvana and The KLF were my soundtracks.
The first 5 tracks on the Fight Club soundtrack unfailingly bring me back to the smell of the place I shared with tryptamine in what feels like a very long time ago now.
'Been Caught Stealing' by Jane's Addiction brings me as far back as the school bus. They were a big influence on the bands formed in my school.
It's suddenly caught me. Time. I was thinking about how old some of the girls who pose here are. Normally it's just numbers to me, it doesn't count. But today it just popped in my head. When you are 19 years old, you are posing nude, life consists of money problems, love affairs and parties, social hiccups and family disasters....what the fuck do you know? I mean...what the FUCK do you REALLY know at 19?
When I was 19, I had graduated from the fucking Singapore Police Academy. I was serving my country, tangled in the net of National Service. There was no suicide girls. I was very uninformed musically and still unsure of my tastes in music. The idea that I would find goth or punk rock chicks attractive...well...they just don't fucking exist in Singapore. I was learning to shoot grenade launchers to gas people and it was fun. Now....now I know that politically I'm on the other end of that launcher.
I'm sometimes overcome by a wave of sadness. I see my goals and my future before me and it looms like the cliffs of Dover above me, 600ft high and blocking out the light casting me in a chilly shadow. The waves of the past crash gently past my feet and dry out quickly into the sandy present. There to be observed anytime one wishes, but to try and grab it is to have it fall out between your fingers.
Tomorrow will just be the third boxing lesson in my life. I am thinking "My God...and I'm supposed to be buff and tough by Summer?". How can a goal be so far and too near at the same time?
2003 has only just begun and already it's running away from me. What my journey through my CD collection has shown me is that I forgot how little I felt I'd achieved in my life so far.
Not only that, but...I need to seriously upgrade myself. I need to pick a degree to start by the end of this year. I have to....or I could be like this forever. Always potential, never achievement. How did I end up unable to cure the loneliness? Why am I not satisfied with the friends in Sweden I have now? Why do their ideas of fun and freetime hobbies seem so pointless to me? Are the shortfalls I see in them more truly reflections of shortfalls in myself? Why does everything I attempt to 'fix' my life seem like a pathetic stopgap measure?
I try to read very intellectual, very life affirming books and it's like empty calories for the soul. All carbos, no value. The good things and the valuable lessons happen to other people, not me.
I catch myself buying things and having to stop myself because the only reason I am buying them is to try a fill a gap in my life. To feel some sense of 'progression'. The positive is that I save money. The negative is I still don't know why there's a hole in my soul and what to fill it with.
I catch myself at work fighting off the melancholy while desperately wanting to bathe in the self-pity. I have fought this all my life, it is my nature, my challenge and my burden. Exercises in positivity like being thankful for a roof over my head, and flowers in Spring and having food on the table....they seem so stupid to me. Though I am the stupid one for not realising things could be a whole lot worse.
I am missing a sense of progression. A sense that things are changing for the better. A sense that what I want is available. A sense that I really can have it.
VIEW 11 of 11 COMMENTS
I still like some of the 80's bands, aside from Duran Duran and Madness I listened to Kim Wylde, Adam and the Ants, Aha, Spandau Ballett and so on. I rake out the records and give em a spin every so often. Makes a change from my usual listening.
Willow was indeed good. When you mentioned red head I thought for a split second Red Sonja/Bridgette Nielson, but Joanne Whaley is much better as Sorsha (however its spelt) Dungeons and Dragons was dire, I only watched it once and wanted to shot myself afterwards, what a waste of a film liscence. Jeremey Irons must have removed that off of his C.V. Dragonslayer I liked because the princess got munched