A couple of days or so ago I decided that I was going to kill myself. I'd hike and hitch, and steal my way to some god forsaken cliff in Northern Scotland, and throw myself into the tall glittering seas there. Let the tides and seals and fishes have their way with me, wash up on some remote beach, all stiff limbed and pink-soft, a bloated version of me to be discovered (or maybe not) by some passing tourist of fisherman. I went to bed that night considerably worse the wear for very expensive vodka, clutching a picture of her to my chest and cried and cried, finally overcome by exhaustion to fall into a disturbed sleep.
Last night, I changed my mind, and determined instead to stay alive. Everything that follows is...just to try to explain why.
First things first, memories, it all starts with memories, and clouds. Making clouds...
Once upon a time in a field in the English countryside Me, Emily and Cook made a cloud. Seriously; an honest to goodness proper white fluffy big 'ole cloud up there in the big blue sky. Back then (when Ems and I were still blissfully, stupidly happy) those sorts of things filled me with delight and awe. We danced and hugged and gawped, and kicked up the still smoking remnants of the flames, as embers scorched our ankles, eyes watering, choking, laughing and pointing as the vast thing swirled away from us in the warm summer breeze. Sooty lengths of straw smudged our clothes, and we smeared each other's faces with thick black streaks like commandos. The smell clung to our hair and fingers, as we didn't wash properly, giggling like three naughty school kids whilst we had dinner with Em's parents in my ridiculous country house home. We glanced furtively at each other grinning and remembering. I remember later that night as we made love, the smell still in her hair, and the taste of it on her skin.
Now, making a cloud would doubtless depress me, something black, ominous, something to block out the sun, cast a shadow.
It feels long ago, the cloud day. In reality only 5 short years ago, everything happened so fast, in so much of a blur. I could ask Cook, he always seems to somehow remember more accurately than me when things actually happened. The cloud, however I remember like it was yesterday, we were at the fag end of making our first Album From There to Here. It was the end of summer, September? After the harvest, I'm a city girl; I left all the running of that stupid place to the Farm Manager. We had left the others to do something clever with mixers, stuff I tended not to get involved with, and the three of us wandered the field edges, watching the crows tumbling in the sky, whirling and dipping. They used to burn of the stubble with petrol soaked rags towed behind tractors, and they'd left a couple of acres to do in the morning, still slightly stoned, we done the job over ourselves, well Cook drove, and Em and me threw petrol randomly out the back of the cab over the crew-cut stubble.
And we set fire to the lot with my Zippo. Stood there watching as the field corner went up with a audible "whoomp" watched, wiping the sweat from our brows, smoke and flames filling the sky, and I ran along the edge to try to be close to it, all the while Em followed me striding, arms crossed face gleaming, watching me. Rabbits darted out of holes, Cook got momentarily worried as the flames arched up fiercely, and threatened to engulf us, I was too taken with whole thing to notice. The flames made me squint; I felt the heat on my face. Alive. I felt Alive.
When the flames began to die back, reaching the edge where we stood, Em's looked up and saw it first, a thunderhead of white crowned the vast fist of brown smoke underneath it. It towered over us, slowly drifting away with all the other fluffy white clouds. I was amazed, I stood, mouth open, just...amazed by what we'd made. Even when it started to take the shape of a mushroom and we all I think, even Cook, made the obvious comparison as it drifted over the neighbouring village, but it was beautiful. I grinned, laughed, I looked at her, she was beautiful, gorgeous, sweet Emily. Mine.
Normally I'd have used it, made it into a song or something, but at the end of that album, I was sick of songs, especially my own, and besides the whole thing was supposed to be a bit of a holiday after the main part of the recording had been done, Can't fool the old subconscious though, but it was only later that I realised that I did use it after all.
Later on tour the idea of the cloud was exploited, and stage set expense be damned, took ages to get right, and I remember the look on her face as I robbed just one more piece from us to be used for something it was never intended for, watched her eyes moisten once again because of something stupid that I'd done to us (or later the memory of us). It wasn't the first time I mined that rich seam of emotion to my own ends, and I knew deep down it wouldn't be the last either.
But not then, then I was happy, things were different than.
And God Almighty, it seemed so easy, living, music, the playing, and the songs.
Why do you bite me on the shoulder?
Why do you scratch me on my back?
Why do you always have to make love,
Like you're making an attack
Emily do you love me?
I asked her one morning,
Yes, indeed I do, said she,
And loved me without warning.
I was almost proud of them, the lyrics that seemed to come so easily. I could have chosen...No, I'd be too embarrassed.
Wow, what a couple of days, from certainty of death, to the uncertainty of continued life, not to mention a new and doubtless, perhaps crazy scheme to grasp whatever the hell it is I need. Happiness? Maybe. Absolution? Certainly.
OooooO
Three twenty in the morning according to the watch I bought today. My eyes are sore and gritty. The City Sleeps. Maybe I should go and find coffee. Funny how quiet even cities are this time in the morning, I can hear quite distinctly the revving of a truck engine on the overhead motorway, it's sound bouncing off the walls and underpasses as it goes.
Three twenty one, if the watch is right, two and half hours to wait. Can I bear that? I supposed I'll have to, it's the least I can do really, wait a little longer. Five minutes to get ready, then fifteen to the station, call it half an hour. That leaves only two hours to wait. Or I could leave earlier. Might be a cafe open, or a hamburger van selling coffee to the last of the club goers. I could go for a walk, but no, I want to sit here in my preposterous tower looking out over the city, thinking over the last 5 years. Get up, and go and maybe, hopefully never come back. 5 years...Doesn't time fly when you're having fun?
Three twenty three, fucking hell is that all? Doesn't time...oh no hang on, I've done that. I used to have a very expensive exclusive watch that Emily...no Jas, bought me. She got fed up with me asking other people what the time was; embarrassed on my behalf. I grew up – I ended up grown up. Lacking all the standard props that normal people end up with, purse, watch, driving licence, and not just the props but the mental hardware to deal with it all, and make use of them, and even when I had to, it still all felt alien, and never really part of me. I used to ask roadies all the time, how long to we go on. Even with a Gucci handbag, I'd still stuff fivers and tenners into pockets.
Hopeless, just a hopeless case: always have been.
I stick to plastic money these days, which if you're sufficiently well off, is a God-send for idiots like me. Always hated phones, always "losing" them, drove Em nuts. Don't have one now, not even a land line in the house (not that you could call this ridiculous pile a home). No TV, no computers, I'm screenless.
Oh God, what am I doing? Why am I asking myself now, for fuck sakes, I don't know. Limited attention span, that's the problem, industry standard three minutes (as in Single, as in Track, and in Mind, or concept album...whatever)
Three twenty-five, Jesus time is actually slowing down. The city sleeps on, and no one to talk to. Wish I could drive, always meant to learn, just never got round to it, and went too quickly, to heedlessly from not being to afford to run a car, to chauffeuse for the succession of large expensive follies I collected. I seriously thought about learning to fly...that sort of crazy stuff though I left to Keef.
He did all that, all the fast cars planes Crazy Keef the mad drummer. Roped me in to all sorts of mad shit, which made what eventually happened all the more ironic. And hard to bear. Although I have a lot that's hard to bear. With sufficient practice you can almost...get used to it.
Sara? Shall I probe that particular wound? Angel I thought when I first heard you sing. That mouth, those lips. I lost you too, turned my back, condemned you. Judas to the last.
I always knew I'd amount to nothing in the end. Always the misfit, and never really comfortable with it. I just figured it was my one chance to be as successful a misfit as I could. Give the bastards a run for their money, y'know? I was just lucky I fell into a world where they heaped money onto misfits who could more or less behave themselves...providing they had something to give in return, of course.
Keef, Mike, Sara, did I look as stupid and awkward to you as I felt to myself? Worse probably. Deep down I never did give a damn what others thought of me, but somehow I still worried like hell about it. I never expected to be loved, but I never wanted to hurt anyone either and that meant trying to be nice and kind and generous and generally behaving like I was desperate to be loved. It could never work.
Here I sit in my blasphemous tower, perhaps one of the few awake, looking out over a sleeping city, waiting for a certain train, and contemplating doing –very possibly- something very very stupid. Nothing to do with Anna Karenina...Life remember?
My hands are actually shaking. I'd kill for a cigarette. Not in reality, obviously I wouldn't kill a human for a fag that would be grotesque. I'd kill...a plant? A small worm, something without a nervous system. Come to think of it, maybe a woodlouse...Em used to hate the little crawling things, up to the point when she decided they were baby armadillos, and she found she could put up with them after all. Good grief.
Gave up smoking though, maybe I should go out and find a petrol station. Just nerves. Drink...drink drink drink...keeping my mind off that is harder. Crates and crates of the stuff in the cellar. Sufficient quantities to fell the population of a small village. A small swimming pool of Vodka. Above that in the Garage lives a collection of various Georgian (the country) agricultural vehicles.
There's a perfect logical reason why I have them.
More words for the song I'm composing in my head...Thank you, Scribble scribble, something to do. Just let them be the right ones, let them be received and understood, not wrong, or incomplete, or false. Otherwise it might be back to plan A. Check the watch. Three thirty, thank fuck for that.
Let's put all of this into some sort of perspective shall we? Order things?
Naomi Campbell, I'm 24 years old, a failure, old before my time, a brilliant failure, and a dull success, I could buy a nearly new 747 with cash if I wanted, but I don't own a pair of knickers without holes in. I made a lot of mistakes that paid handsomely, and a lot of smart moves that I'll regret for the rest of my life. My friends are either dead or fed up with me, or just disgusted, and one of them pushes drugs. On the whole I don't really blame them.
So come on in, join me now down the teeming thoroughfare that is... (you guessed)