Chapter 28
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Empty Spaces
1980 and 2018-2019
2019 – Empty Spaces
This page was blank a moment before I wrote on it, and before it was a blank page there was an empty space that it came to fill. In time, it will disappear, and there will be a space where it had been, but here, right now, it has a life. When it comes to empty spaces, we tend to either avoid or fill them, because just living with them can often be almost intolerable.
For much of my life, I felt compelled to fill the empty spaces around me. There were times when the consequences of doing so were positive but there were also plenty of others when they were not. Part of my life’s lesson has been learning to differentiate which was which and whether it was better to face the emptiness or not.
* * *
1980 – The Bridge
The year 1980 was a bridge between worlds for me, maybe at the time it didn’t feel that way, but now I can see a transition took place, one in which I started to fill my time with more meaningful exploits.
* * *
1979 – Standing At The Bus Stop
I was feeling heartbroken, I’d fallen in love with a girl called Anne, but she told me she wasn’t interested. As I made my way home, I felt an emptiness where my dreams of being with her had been. No one else was at the bus stop so I sang Sandy from Grease, replacing the word Sandy with Annie, (which was fortunately rather fitting). The car lights shone on me as if I was on stage, and the rain poured down. I wanted to suffer as spurned lovers do, and in its way, it was a little magically filmic, which I thought was a nice touch. Then the bus came, so, I went home and wrote a poem.
* * *
1980 – Spring
Rob, the boy from school with the green-tinted uniform, loved listening to Elvis, just as I did. Most of our peers weren’t into Elvis, so, to them we were outcasts, but we liked it that way. I didn’t need to do anything to become an outcast, I was automatically one due to how I looked. Rob though had his slightly off-black blazer and this, along with his short red hair, assured him his place as an outsider too.
I would don a uniform of sorts, jeans and a T-shirt. It was an anti-fashion statement that stated clearly, I didn’t want to use my clothes to make a statement about myself. We were Rockabilly rebels from head to toe, except Rob also loved listening to Blondie, so we did make exceptions. But, as with most teenagers, we weren’t just listening to music, we were hearing the call of allegiance. It’s as if our adolescent brains were primed for us to take our place in the tribe.
* * *
1980 – Summer
During a trip on a double-decker bus to the seaside with Rob, his family, and about 50 other locals, I decided that trying to drop an empty fizzy drink can from the top deck on a child as she ran past was very funny. I soon found out that everyone else thought I was stupid and ignored me for the rest of the trip. Nowadays people might try to blame the additives in the drink for my idiocy, but back then it was a simple case of me having no bounds until everyone applied some, and I can assure you that had an impact on me.
* * *
Through the summer months, there was a feeling of Rob being in a no man’s land. Busy times were interspersed with sunny day breaks, but as the holidays drew to their end, these gentle times merged into one long quiet before the stormy seas.
* * *
Rob’s house was part of a ring of properties that looked over a circular area of grass with a road around it. We’d spend hours with other children there, but we also felt we were getting a bit old to be with them anymore. One moment we’d be talking about our friend’s mothers, one of whom would wash her car in a bikini whilst we looked on, and the next we’d be part of a gang of kids whose ages ranged from 11 to 15. But for Rob, who was a year older than me, his world was just about to change from our dry grass, days of play, to the dark cramped world of a submarine. For me too, I might not have been sure where I was headed but I knew my life wasn’t going to be the same for much longer.
* * *
1980 – October – Wilson’s
Wilson’s School changed its identity when it moved from Camberwell to Wallington, and similarly moving away from Roundshaw allowed me to partially reinvent myself too. Whilst you can indeed take the kid out of the council estate but can’t take the council estate out of the kid, karate was a good channel for the part of me that wanted to be a warrior.
One day as I walked across the playing fields in front of St Helier Hospital to Tweeddale Karate Club a guy ran up to me. He was one of the kids I’d had a fight with on Roundshaw some years before. The conversation started cordially enough, but within seconds we were both lining up for another fight. Nothing came of it, but I certainly hadn’t lost my eagerness to get into a fracas.
The school encouraged the teachers to set a lot of homework, often three or four hours’ worth per night, and that was enough to keep even the likes of me out of trouble most of the time. I was going to be facing exams in less than a year and a half, and these would change the direction of my life. But it wasn’t just about working for the sake of my future, I also came to enjoy the process of studying. There was the comforting reason and problem-solving of maths, the wonder of physics, the artistry of English Language, and the entertainment and analysis of English Literature. Each of them had something to offer in their own right and the more I came to appreciate studying, the more I let go of seeing fighting as a means of gaining respect from my peers.
* * *
1980 and October 2019 – Radio Homework
Each evening after dinner I’d sit in the back room and slowly trudge through my homework. The radio would play in the background, and John would tell me to turn it off, saying it would distract me. Mum would then intervene and it’d get left on. Of course, it was a distraction, that was the point, but it also offered a sense of communion with the other kids at school as they’d be listening to the same programs too. This meant the next day we’d laugh together about the phone calls, especially to the sexual problems programme on Capital Radio, or talk about some of the new music John Peel played.
Now, as I write this in 2019, I’ve got Spotify playing a random playlist, Perfect Day by Lou Reed is on right now, and Facebook sitting in the background in case I start feeling a bit lonely.
* * *
1980 – Winter
I had spent a lot of time with Rob, but he’d already left school, and I knew our time was limited which added a preciousness about it. He was going to wait till after Christmas before basic training commenced. His parents told me I could pop around whenever I wanted once he was gone, but I knew it wouldn’t feel right if he wasn’t there. Rob’s crowded house and intense family probably prepared him well for life on a submarine; maybe for him, it would be a kind of home from home, but for me, the prospect of Rob leaving left a space in me that both he and his family had filled.
The space someone leaves when they’re no longer around can’t just be re-filled and healed, and to think it can be is not just a mistake, but it dishonours the relationship that filled it. Instead, while there will be sadness for the loss, and an appreciation of how the relationship enriched us, recognising the new opportunities to connect with others in different ways, to go on further adventures in the empty space of time that’s now available, could be of some comfort too.
I once read a religious text that spoke of a similar situation with a person losing the love of their life. It proposed that when God takes away our greatest love, the space that’s left is there to remind us that God’s love remains. As you know, I’m not religious, but in the later chapters about love, the significance of that idea, even outside of a religious context will become far clearer.
* * *
Darkness
When Simon and Garfunkel sang of darkness being an old friend, they may have partially seen darkness, sadness and loss as things that bring gifts to us, just as friends do, even if they’re wrapped in so much pain it’s hard to see their value at the time.
I later learned that there was an Internet myth about that lyric which suggested it came about because of a friendship Garfunkel had with a blind man called Sandy Greenberg with whom he referred to himself as Darkness. While that did happen, given Paul Simon wrote the lyrics, there’s no credible evidence that the lyrics ever related to that friendship. However, as stated in an interview with Paul Simon, it’s more likely they were inspired by a memory he had of practising guitar in darkness in his bathroom. Ultimately the song’s theme was about our inability to truly communicate with each other, as in hearing without listening. So, are you listening or just hearing? I’m sure when I listen to audiobooks, I’m only hearing most of the time.
* * *
August 2019
A couple I know, Ali and Brian, have met up with me in the Italian café in Eastbourne. It’s very sunny on the street, it’s 4 pm, but dark inside. There’s the smell of coffee, chocolate croissants, and a bit of political discussion. Everything is Brexit right now; it has been for almost four years. But there’s a bit of a respite when Ali looks at me and tells me she’s been reading most of the chapters from this that I’ve already put online.
“It’s very interesting, but lately it feels like you’ve left something out, like a bit of story has ended without you talking about it.”
“Is it because I am not writing about my love life?” I ask.
“It might be, I’m not quite sure, it just feels like something is missing.”
* * *
2019 October
The slowness of 1980 for me isn’t going to make for a tense psychological drama, there wasn’t much action either. I could try to do a big build-up about my exams, I mean for most 15-year-olds that’s the big story, along with their love life, or lack of it. I could try to paint you a picture of what it felt like to be alive then, after all this was still an exciting time, especially in the music world. But it’s probably the same with any era. When we look back, we get to see the great things that occurred during it in a very concentrated way. For instance, we might say the 1800s had so many great painters, but in reality, if you average out the number of artists we still recognise as “great” over a hundred years, it’d probably result in about one or two per decade. Mind you, the legendary music that came out between the 1950s to the1990s far outstripped what was to come in the following three decades. So, it’s not so much that there are not richer eras, it’s just at the time when these things occur, they don’t tend to feel particularly out of the ordinary. If we wanted to portray a life, what would we do with all the empty spaces? We’d most likely omit them as they’d bore the audience, but the moments of interest are often a consequence of endured empty spaces.
* * *
1980 – December
I’m sitting at the table doing my homework. You’re viewing this image as a camera would. The camera pans around me, and as it does the room fades to black so all you can see is me sitting at the table. Slowly I’m getting smaller. Roxy Music’s 2HB plays…
Here’s looking at you kid.
The screen fades to black.
Hard white light fills your eyes, everything is out of focus, then the image becomes clearer, and there’s ice on the windows. The camera pans around to me sleeping.
The clock radio shows 6:30 am. The radio switches on.
“This is the News. John Lennon is dead, shot several times by a young American as he was going into his home in New York”
I pull the duvet over my face and cry.
* * *
When someone dies, they don’t just leave an empty space where they existed, but, if they meant something to us, we become filled with emptiness. Paradoxically though, we are also filled by their presence reverberating through us, and even beyond our internal world, beyond our memory of them, beyond our own lives, something of them will continue to influence this world far further into the future than we could possibly appreciate. The emptiness that people leave is completely different to the emptiness they once filled.
You may think some people might be excluded from such a notion because no one ever knew them, but their possible existence was in the minds of their forefathers just as those people who will exist in the future are in our minds too. The interconnection between us isn’t just amongst those around us as we live but goes forward and backwards in time too. We are innately significant even though we can’t help but think we are not.
* * *
Saturday 24th November 2018 – Light Eras
I’m visiting a friend called Gregory, he needs some help with his iPad. I’ve gone through the main entrance doors to the block he lives in and I’m approaching the lift which is one of those old-fashioned ones where there’s an inner concertina cage-type door. As I approach it I feel like I’m being taken back decades in time. It’s nothing mystical it’s just the subdued yellow lighting.
Many things define the look of an era, but lighting tends to get ignored. Clothing, textile designs, paint colours, wallpapers, furniture, cars, and architecture are most likely to take precedence over lighting, but all those things get bathed in artificial light once the sun goes down and just like a varnish over a painting, they give it the colour of an era.
We are now in the era of LED lighting, which can be almost any colour, but the way it radiates is different to other types of lighting. It has a very bright core that will hurt your eyes even if you glimpse at it and a lovely soft light radiating from it. If we go back 10 years there were low-energy bulbs, and for quite a few decades before, we were still acting out our lives under the warm yellow light of incandescent bulbs. Neon lights also had their cold light era, especially in the 1970s, and before them, there were the yellow tungsten bulbs and going back further, there were gas lights and various types of lanterns and candlelight. Of course, way back when there were fire and fire torches, and failing a dry supply of kindling, the moon and starlight.
* * *
1980 – Descriptive Passages
At school, in 1980, we started to study books for English Literature which contained long descriptive passages aimed at setting the scene. I’d often have to read the same paragraph over and over before I could take in the words properly. In a lot of contemporary writing, there’s a more minimalist approach, which is something I tend to do too. Instead of painting a detailed image with words, a key line is given instead, such as “I entered the dentist’s waiting room” and immediately, with barely any effort, by either the writer or reader, the image is complete. This technique does, of course, rely on the reader having some experience of a dentist’s waiting room, and even then, the reader’s version of one probably doesn’t bear any similarity to the one the writer was referring to.
Post-Modernism has infiltrated many disciplines of Art and tends to be more concerned with letting the onlooker control their perception of an object rather than the other way around. It’s also possible that people nowadays have a far more extensive internal library of other scenes from life, partly because of film and TV, whereas writers before the mass media era had to present a scene far more vividly.
There’s still a temptation to evoke a scene when writing, especially about the past, it’s both a sign of literary prowess and can, at times, create a reassuring backdrop. But the reality is one can only do that by looking back at an era from our present-day perspective. The problem with that is if we view our past settings from such a vantage point, we can’t see it as we did. For us, back then, our environment felt pretty much as it does now. Every day normality felt, well, normal.
There are moments, of course, when one can perceive our surroundings so intensely that not only do we feel as if we’ve viewed that moment from outside normality, but it was such a powerful experience it stays with us for the rest of our lives. But generally, our everyday world feels as normal as any other normal moment in our life, so if you want to know how things felt in the 1980s, well, they felt the same as now. It’s only when we look at a photo from those times that we’re confronted with just how different the world was back then.
I have recently been watching a series on TV called Peaky Blinders which is set in my grandparents’ era, and it struck me that it wasn’t so much the look of the clothes that were worn, but their meaning. They were uniforms that spoke of class and wealth, power or even a disregard for power. Nowadays those uniforms are not conformed to, so they’re no longer reliable signs of status.
* * *
1980 – Real Rockers
One weekend I asked my mum if I could stay at a friend’s house just down the road. Once there we stayed up all night lounging on their orange and brown woolly sofa, with the gas fire lighting up the room as their female cousins, (who were over from Ireland for a week), told us what they could do, (sexually), with a bottle. This understandably resulted in us spending hours trying to persuade them to demonstrate this to us, which no matter how drunk they got, they weren’t up for.
In the early hours, as the sun came up and bits of dull blue sky appeared in the cracks between the curtains, the girls decided we’d all look great with Bryl-Cream in our hair. That way we could look like real Rockers. Deprived of sleep I walked back up to my house, knocked on the door and waited for Mum to be impressed by my new hair-don’t. She took one look at me and said, “Are you stupid? Get upstairs and wash that out now.” I didn’t know what all the fuss was about, but I went upstairs and washed it out anyway.
* * *
1985 – Therapy
Therapist: You have holes in your clothes, do you think that means something?
Simon: I hate buying clothes, it’s a lot of hassle trying them on, and then I have to get them altered, and I prefer spending my money on records.
Therapist: Aha, [she nods and waits for more]
Simon: I think because I look different, dressing up in good clothes would come over as pretentious as if I believed they could make up for my disability. It might even accentuate my disability and I think people would think I was deluding myself. [I think of a line in a book we studied for English Literature, “Clothes maketh the man”.]
Therapist: How do you feel people perceive you when you dress so scruffily?
Simon: I don’t care what they think. Why should I worry, they are going to make lots of incorrect assumptions about me anyway, so I feel I can’t rely on them judging me on how I look.
Therapist: But your look isn’t neutral, it’s a clear statement.
Simon: Really? I don’t think I’m saying anything beyond I don’t care much about what I look like.
Therapist: I think it’s almost as if you choose to look like a street urchin. As if you had no parents to look after you. It’s not so much that you don’t care about what others think but quite the opposite, you want them to think you are uncared for.
Simon: I think that’s more your thoughts than mine.
Therapist: Maybe, but have a think about it.
* * *
2019 – Scruffy Like A Millionaire
My artificial leg has a buckle on the outside of my knee it’s made a hole in every pair of trousers I own. I haven’t covered the buckle, which would be an easy fix for future pairs of trousers. I still dislike buying clothes and a big part of me, even now, doesn’t want to get involved in dressing up nicely. If I see pictures of myself in a suit, I think I look ridiculous. In my mind, I don’t look anything like I do. Once someone told me I looked so scruffy they thought I must be a millionaire, I kind of liked that.
* * *
1980 – Light Eras and The Streets of London
When I was 15 the world I frequented was often tinted in either a harsh greenish-white fluorescent light, yellow tungsten or the flickering light from the TV, all of which were also often accompanied by a veil of smoke. Once outside though, the sun, clouds, rain, night sky, moonlight, and starry skies cast light upon me just as they do so now.
Sometimes, back then, I’d be very aware of just how empty the streets were. Even up in London, one could be close to the centre and the streets would be empty. I often imagined myself inside a surrealist painting of empty streets, hard sunlight and long shadows. Those same streets now, for instance, Millbank, near the Tate Britain Gallery, seem to always have a constant stream of people passing. It’s as if even London couldn’t bear the empty spaces, so, filled them with lonely people.
* * *
2019 – Stage Sets
Not only are the eras in our life defined by the design of the world we live in but there are whole stage sets in which much of our life takes place. There are the buildings we live in, the schools and colleges in which a lot of our early life plays out, then there are our surroundings and the modes of transport we use to travel. These backdrops often envelop us, often for many years, and then one day we no longer enter them. Of course, these stages and set designs are also filled with people, many of whom we’ll interact with for years, yet eventually, we’ll scarcely remember most of them.
A friend of mine sent me one of those Internet posts that do the rounds, it was about a person asking someone what they owned. Everything they listed was shown to be transitory, except in the end only the present moment was accepted as something we can own, albeit only for a moment. To me, it missed the point partly. Everything indeed comes to pass and contending with that is a difficult thing to cope with. Yet, if we are fortunate enough, we will get some time to play our parts in the world, and for a brief period, we can savour life and our connection with others. Likewise, we think we own land and properties, but we are merely spending some time experiencing them or at least using them as a means to experience other things in life, even if it’s just to experience feeling significant.
* * *
2019 – Interesting Times
If we had been born a few hundred years ago, or earlier, for most of us, our lives would have been far less interesting than now. Even going back to 1980 I felt bored and lonely a lot of the time. Part of that has to do with me, but nowadays we have 24-hour TV, Instant News, social media, and the ability to talk and see those we’re connected with instantly anywhere in the world. On top of that, no matter which direction we come from politically, none of us can complain that what’s going on is dull. Whether it’s Brexit or Trump, we know we’re living through a momentous era.
* * *
1980 – The Intimate Touch of Stigma
I was telling a friend about a mutual friend’s mum washing her car in a bikini. My friend looked at me and informed me that she’d told him my arms made her feel very uncomfortable. To me, she had never shown anything to give me that impression, if anything it had been the opposite because her son had a very small disability on his hand, and as far as she was concerned, I’d helped him feel a lot better about himself. But the friend who’d told me about her had no reason to lie.
I also had another similar experience around the same time. I’d often chat with a girl on the bus and one day she invited me to her home, warning me before we went in that her mother had mental health issues. Everything seemed fine, so much so, that a few weeks later I was nearby and knocked on their door. My friend wasn’t in, but her mother seemed more than happy to invite me in for a cuppa.
A few days later the girl told me not to go there again because her mother found it upsetting seeing me. I’m not sure now if it was because of what I’d said, my arms, or was my friend just making it up. But either way, I was beginning to see that some people will find my arms difficult but won’t show it outwardly.
There were many other similar incidents, so it was no surprise that over time I grew expectant of people rejecting me whilst at the same time trying to hide it. It was the intimate touch of stigma, and I learned to recognise it a mile off.
* * *
2019 – Political Policy Think Tank Panel
Someone mentions Diversity.
“Would it surprise you if I said I have a big issue with diversity?” I asked.
The person looked a bit shocked.
“I fully support inclusivity,” I said, “But when it comes to Diversity, I think we spend all our time looking at the benefits but are too scared to look at the costs.”
They still look shocked.
“Have you ever looked at the costs?” I ask.
“Surely, whatever the costs, they’re worth it?” They say.
I look them in the eye, “Well until you’ve looked at the costs, how would you know? Maybe if you did you might have a different opinion.”
The person who invited me to the panel told me they wanted diversity of thought just as much as any other type of diversity. If you have people who look different but share the same mindset, then what good is that? So, I guess I proved my point, there’s always a cost to diversity, in this instance, it was them not feeling comfortable, but then isn’t that how most people feel when faced with someone different?
* * *
1980 Summer – A Lesson In Feminism
It’s hard to know when boredom ends and loneliness kicks in. I would wander for miles calling on friends to see if they wanted to come out to play. My desperation may well have put some of them off, but many probably felt the same way too. So much so, that even if you didn’t like someone, you’d go out somewhere with them just because it was better than nothing. It’s the equivalent of not receiving any emails for a few days, in time you’ll start appreciating spam emails.
I can’t even remember how I met Roberta, but not only did she seem to take a shine to me, but she also did Judo, which okay, wasn’t karate, but it was close enough. I don’t think much happened, maybe a gentle kiss goodbye, I’m probably even imagining that, anyway, I think there was an indication that we were seeing each other. Well, we were until we went to the Carshalton Hall disco where we had a slow dance together. This should have been an epiphany given she was about a foot taller than me, but maybe I thought this was an advantage from my vantage.
When I came up for air, I noticed my friend Jack was looking longingly at Roberta and when I looked up at her, she seemed to be doing the same to him. A bit later she told me she had to go home early; I offered to accompany her but she preferred me not to. I then looked for Jack, but he was nowhere to be found either. It was then that everything clicked. I was so angry that a bit later, during a group dance (when did I learn those moves?), I deliberately stepped on another kid’s foot. He looked at me and said sorry. ‘For fuck’s sake, I thought, ‘I can’t even redistribute my pain without feeling guilty’. I came out of the dancehall onto Carshalton High Street, it was still sunny, and the world was merrily going on as it does when we’re pissed off or dying, even if it’s just from heartbreak. I felt the wide empty space of rejection and single-dom ahead of me so went home and, you guessed it, wrote a poem. The next day Jack called me to tell me he was sorry, but this was true love and he hoped I’d understand. “It’s okay, the right people should get together,” I said, hoping it wouldn’t last long and sure enough it didn’t.
At karate, the following week I was telling Jan, one of the women who trained there too, what had happened. She was very sympathetic until I referred to the girl I’d previously been a bit in love with as a slag. That’s when I got my first lesson in feminism.
“Hold on Simon!” she said, “How comes she’s a slag when if a bloke did the same thing, he’d be cool?”
I wanted to say, excuse me, but I think you’ll find we were talking about me and how hard done by I was… but instead what came out was, “Erm, I’m sorry, I didn’t think.”
She knew she had me on the ropes so added, “I’m very disappointed in you Simon, I thought you were better than that.”
I tried my best to look sorry, but that didn’t cut it. So, she continued, “I’m sorry, it’s not okay. Just think about how unfair you’re being.” And then she walked off in disgust.
I was probably a little tempted to make a high-pitched, “oooooh” sound, but even I wasn’t that stupid. So instead I did a bit of stretching in the corner.
* * *
1980 – A Cure for Drudgery
Life started to take on a slightly repetitious nature by the time I hit 15, which in some ways was good, but there was still a lot of empty “between times”. My days would mainly consist of getting up too late, rushing to get to school, and having fun with some of the regular passengers on the bus. Then there was the mixture of boredom and lawlessness at school, life drawing classes twice a week, karate 3 times a week, homework, chores, eating, arguing with my parents, watching TV and seeing friends.
Throughout 1980 and for quite a few years onwards I would write a page-a-day diary and as I write these chapters, I’m reading through them.
Sometimes the repetitiveness of my daily routine almost felt like the film, Groundhog Day. But when faced with such drudgery, many people, including me, try to inject a bit of ‘magic’ into their mundane existence whenever possible. Even on the bus to school, I would read my latest poems to a group of women that Sunil and I would chat with. One of them was called Penny, she had long copper-coloured hair and liked to wear green. According to my diary, she was quite up for telling me which poems she did or didn’t like. On one occasion she told me she thought “To What” was better than “Weekends”, which was very diplomatic given they were both rubbish. She was also very happy to discuss equal rights and other political matters. Nowadays any discussion of politics, on public transport would probably cause a riot within seconds. But back then we were desperate to break the routine, no matter the risks involved.
Even the bus driver had a similar mindset. One day he pulled up and got off the bus. A woman approached him, and they kissed passionately for a minute while we all looked on. (Was this a precursor to dogging?) He then got back on the bus and drove off to a round of applause. He took his cap off and gave us a little bow. Nowadays every driver is probably tracked and filmed; it’s as if humans are being forced to act like robots until the automation era kicks in, at which point robots will try to be as human as possible, only without the dodgy humanity that we all love deep down.
* * *
As the world has become more technologically adept and correct procedures have become the main requisite of managerial agendas, people gaze into their phones where indeed, in the private circles of “friends” they can laugh at inappropriate things, discuss what they truly think about politics and look for the magic of the world that ironically, is all around them anyway.
* * *
2019 – Egg Shells or Assertiveness
I was in the Italian café the other day and one of the very young waitresses came in on her day off to chat with one of the good-looking waiters. She sat on a stool at the bar leaning towards him and laughing. Then an old man who I’m pretty sure has some mental health issues came and sat right next to her. It was all a bit awkward, and in time she moved away. After a while, he walked off.
“I felt so uncomfortable,” she said.
I looked at her and said, “If that happens again, get the person’s attention and say, “Excuse me, but you are in my personal space, what you’re doing is inappropriate.” Then, if they don’t move, shout, “FUCK OFF!”.
She laughed but looked horrified, this was not just a clash of how different personalities deal with things but also of different eras.
During the 1970s and ‘80s assertiveness classes were very popular. Women especially, recognised they were rarely taught as a matter of course to stand up to inappropriate behaviour, (especially within certain class strata), so these courses helped to redress the issue. So, three decades later, it’s hard to fathom why that hasn’t become part of the school curriculum. Instead, the onus is put on everyone not to do anything that might offend others, but let’s face it, that’s a quagmire that’ll lead to everyone walking on eggshells because how can you second guess everyone’s sensitivities? I’m all for thinking about others but training people to be assertive too would also be helpful.
* * *
1980 – IBM building East Croydon
As part of our studies, we were encouraged to join a scheme called, “Young Enterprise”. The idea of it was to show us how a business worked. Working in a group of kids from a few other schools we would have to come up with a product, work out how to produce it, sell shares in our “company”, sell the product and distribute the profits, as well as do the accounts. IBM was happy to host it in their building near East Croydon station. So, for three months we’d go there once a week.
Our group came up with a stunning product, a spoon rest, which one could, surprisingly, rest a teaspoon on. What was underwhelmingly different about our spoon rest was that they were made from Perspex. This meant we could personalise them by putting a photograph in the spoon rest. “This time next year, we’ll be millionaires” we all didn’t think.
It was like being on The Apprentice programme, so, after two or three meetings of listening to the group arguing over how they were not going to go about things, I decided to explore the IBM building. During my reconnaissance mission, I discovered two major attributes. The first was the staff canteen which was open throughout the night. The serving counter was brightly lit and gleaming, while the rest of the canteen was in darkness, but best of all, and to my amazement, the food was free. The second discovery was the photocopy room where not only was I able to copy 300-page karate books I’d borrowed from the library, but I could bind and laminate the covers too. By the time I’d finished, I’d saved myself, (okay, mum and John), about ten evening meals and I’d copied seven books which would have cost me hundreds of pounds in today’s money. So, all in all, it certainly taught me how to be enterprising as well as how to photocopy my face, which was possibly my artistic side breaking through.
* * *
1980 – All in All
Although much of this period of my life was set within the walls of Wilson’s School, you may have noticed I’ve barely focused on the staff or other students there. There were plenty of interesting people and no doubt many a tale to tell, but I did not come up against any awful persecutors and was not aware of any salacious goings on, (although there may well have been plenty behind the scenes). For me, school was just as much a part of the mundane world as was most of the other sections of my life.
In 1979 Pink Floyd’s album The Wall was released and whilst most of us focused on the hit record, We Don’t Need No Education, there was another track that held an equally pertinent message. The song was Empty Spaces and consisted of a list of things people do to fill the empty spaces they can’t bear and included things such as seeking adulation, substance abuse, possessing things or people, going to war, and fighting. A few years later I would become one of the many millions of people captivated by The Wall, but I still didn’t find a solution to the issue of empty spaces.
* * *
2019 September – Contentious Friendships
I’ve just cancelled my Netflix subscription for a few months as a protest because they cancelled finishing a series called The OA which I had invested 20 hours of my life watching. So now I only have Amazon Prime to watch, and just like that Bruce Springsteen song about there being 57 channels and nothing’s on, I spent quite a while searching for something to watch and ended up watching a program about Pink Floyd’s album The Wall. As I watched it, I saw a friend of mine who I sometimes write songs with. He’d been part of the live version of Pink Floyd for The Wall tour. When Brexit came about, we stopped working together, possibly because we took different sides in the debate, and whilst that is only one of several reasons, one can’t help but recognise just how divided society has become.
That same thing that brought us closer together, the Internet, also allowed us to recognise we are quite different too. I know this is a bit political, but to me, it seemed the same people who were telling me we should see what it is that unites us are often the main protagonists when it comes to avoiding those they don’t agree with.
At my birthday meal earlier in the year, my guests were pretty much split equally between those for or against Brexit. Fortunately, it didn’t turn into a brawl, but when you start scratching the surface you get to see that people are generally not as tolerant as they’d have you believe. Right now, in 2019 all you have to do is mention any of the following to see people get quite agitated: Brexit, Trump, Corbyn, Jacob Rees Mogg, Boris Johnson, (politicians in general), transgender issues, Islam, mass immigration, racism, and of course, environmental issues. Now if you’re reading this years later, you’ll probably have completely different contentious issues, but these are the ones that divide and rule us now.
* * *
1980 – Racism
On Saturday mornings, I’d go to a life drawing class at Sutton College of Liberal Arts (SCOLA). Afterwards one of my fellow students, Margaret, would give me a lift home. One day we got on to the subject of black people coming into Britain, her position was that there were too many. I got very angry and said something like, “Well, if you don’t like it maybe you should go live in another country”. There was complete silence for the rest of the journey and I’m not sure if I ever got offered another lift. Even now, almost 40 years later, the emotional intensity around the issues of immigration and race is very high, although thankfully things are a little better than they were then.
* * *
1980 – Daily Routine
As I read through my diary for this period there would rarely be an entry in which I hadn’t recorded the adventure I had getting to school. It was only by seeing it in relation to trying to make my day more interesting that I understood I was purposefully creating a drama. The consequence of getting up late wasn’t just being late, it was about creating a struggle, so if all else failed, at least there would have been one highlight to the day. Living uneventfully was proving to be somewhat of an anathema to me.
* * *
2019 – Daily Routine
In my mid-50s I get up late because I like working into the early hours, there are no distractions then and I don’t feel the urge to socialise late at night. Consequently, I normally get up quite late but still don’t get enough sleep. Once up and breakfasted I’ll often go to the Italian café and chat with some of the regulars, after which I’ll do some paid work, and then get on with my creative projects. It’s humdrum too, but I like it this way.
* * *
2019 – Marketing Music and Van Gogh
A couple of months ago I finished a music album I’d been working on for several years called Dangerous Things, I then spent two months promoting and marketing it. During that process, I discovered the current way of marketing music is to release every single that’ll eventually end up on an album individually as and when they are ready, in other words before the album is completed. This is done to maximise the way streaming services like Spotify automatically share new releases. If I release an album Spotify will only put one song from it on their “New Music” playlist, whereas if I release ten singles I will get on that playlist ten times, thus getting me far more exposure. This will affect how other artists make music too but in a year or two, the system will change yet again and we’ll all be forced to dance to a different tune, but at least we’ll be dancing.
I tend to find promotion and marketing a bit soul-destroying. There are a lot of people competing for attention, (about 24,000 song releases per day), so most of my efforts just hit a brick wall, but I feel that if I’m going to create things then I have a duty to get my work out there so people who might appreciate it can find it. Although it’s a bit arrogant to think people might ever be interested in it, to just hide away for fear of appearing arrogant seems a bit self-centred too.
People think they define who they are to others, but it’s the other way around, our peers decide if we should be seen in a certain way. So, it’s no wonder reputation is so important now. For instance, I could think I’m going to be a doctor, but there’s a long process that determines if I would be allowed to be. Likewise, with art and music, I can put my stuff out there, but if people don’t react to it positively in enough numbers, then I would be seen as being delusional. The problem is, there’s only so much room for people to be successful on a commercial basis, and most artists will not earn enough from their art to live from it. So, if one doesn’t earn a living from one’s art but can still sell some, are we technically professionals, or must we sell at least 10,000 albums before we can earn that title?
Then you get someone like van Gough who was not recognised properly until after his death. So, even if someone’s not successful whilst they’re alive, they can still hang on to the notion that one day they’ll possibly be posthumously recognised. It’s no wonder so many people in the art world feel doubts about themselves, and alternatively why there are so many deluded people in the art world too.
A few weeks ago, I went to the Tate Britain in London to see the van Gogh exhibition and one of his Starry Starry Night paintings was on display; it was the one across the bay. The difference between seeing it in real life and seeing a print was astounding, I was blown away by the colour and feelings I felt while viewing it. I loved it so much that I came up the following week to see it again just before the exhibition ended.
Just as we can’t ever know the consequences or significance of our lives, the same goes for the things we create, especially when it comes to artistic creations. To a point, we have to be defined by our peers, but it’s never an absolute definition. The thing is, so much of what we do is us connecting with everyone else across the empty spaces between the intimate and infinite.
* * *
1980 – Stylistic Development In the Music World
From the age of about ten, I’d been listening to music on my headphones before I went to sleep. Probably for a lot of people, there was a ritual when it came to listening to music in their room in the dark, for it was there where a transcendental journey would take place, moving them between their outer and inner worlds.
The Sony Walkman had been released the year before but was quite expensive, so I put together my version by using Michael’s (Mum’s psychopath boyfriend from a few years back) cassette recorder that he’d left behind. I bought a 5-pin din to female 3.5 jack adaptor from Tandy’s (the high street shop for all things technical and rubbish quality electricals), to which I connected my headphones, which were also rubbish ones I’d bought from Tandy. The cassette recorder was quite big but came with a shoulder bag, so along with my bag full of poetry books and karate photo albums I rarely travelled light, but at least I had a soundtrack to the world.
Technology changed the music world dramatically at different times throughout the 1900s, whether it was via new ways to record music (e.g. multitrack recording), or new types of instruments (electric guitars, synthesisers and samplers), to new ways to distribute it, (radio, vinyl records, 8-Track, cassettes, CDs, Mp3s, and streaming services), but from the 1950s to the mid-90s, the most dramatic stylistic developments occurred. By the late-1990s there were very few new great advances, and even now, 25 years later, it’s hard to hear anything that hadn’t already been done during the earlier four decades. What this all meant for me at 15, was my world became even more enmeshed with music, I was filling the silence with something that was nourishing (overall) and doing it so much that I started to appreciate silence.
Even though the 70s had been more intense when it came to stylistic innovation, especially with punk rock and rock, and all their spin-offs, the music world in the 1980s was still heaving with great music and interesting artists. If you were a teenager, then you’d probably remember just how significant it was. Nowadays music is still very important to young people but there’s a lot more formulation going on. If anything, as a metaphor for the world we seem to be living in now, there’s a sense of sanitisation, both in terms of style and content. Ironically though, the people in charge of society now mainly consist of those who were teenagers in the 80s. It’s as if they’ve distilled their past and are feeding the kids of today a more purified, more profitable version.
* * *
1980 – Wilson’s Karate Club
As I began to go up the belts in karate, I came to realise teaching might be an area in which I could perform on an equal footing with other people. I was far from qualified to be doing this and in time I would get into trouble for doing so, but for a few years, I ran a karate club at school.
It started with me showing a couple of kids how to do basic techniques in the corridors. Whilst doing this we’d get loads of other kids watching, both curious and taunting us. One day, Mr Parr, who was one of our very old teachers, (he was about 80), told us it was unacceptable for us to do this in the passageway, so, not to be discouraged, I asked the sports master, Mr Sollis, if we could use the gym to practice in and if that was being used, then could we use the storage room. He gave us permission, so from then on, we trained every lunch hour for 30 minutes, and after school some days. The club grew but had a core membership of about eight dedicated practitioners. We eventually ended up doing a demonstration for The Duke of Edinburgh at Hever Castle as part of The Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme, after which he spoke to us, and we received a big round of applause as well as ending up in the newspapers.
* * *
1989 – Wilson’s – Empty Stigma Spaces
I was recently chatting online about this time with one of my fellow pupils at Wilson’s, Lee P. He said: “I saw you 100 times eating alone in the dining room, I never joined you once, I’m still ashamed of myself for my shallowness.” I reminded him I was quite difficult at the time, so I didn’t blame him for not approaching me. But maybe I was a bit more aware of the empty spaces because there was an element of me being avoided by others, partly because of my personality, but also because of some social stigma relating to my disability.
* * *
Empty Spaces
People react to empty spaces differently. They not only perceive emptiness differently but their reaction to their perception will vary considerably too. Some might experience it as boredom, some as loneliness, some as an existential threat, while for some it may even be an opportunity for peace, introspection and spiritual development.
I have a theory about adolescent loneliness, which was something I experienced a lot. When we’re children we can be left to our own devices and will probably enjoy playing and not feel bored. But as soon as we hit puberty our reaction to being alone is far more acute. This might partly be because our nature is driving us to find a mate, therefore we feel bad either because we aren’t getting on with the job in hand, (although I’m sure many were), or we feel we are failing to do so because we believe we are inadequate. It’s a base way of looking at it but it probably has some substance to it.
On a deeper level, we associate empty spaces with death, and worse still empty spaces mean we have to face ‘being by ourselves’. If we are literally with no one else but ourselves then there’s nothing to distract us, but what is it about being with ourselves that we find so difficult? Maybe it’s our unresolvable thought patterns or the many dark feelings, that without the help of others, are so hard to face alone. Then there’s all that internal clutter we’ve been avoiding that’s so overwhelming we just don’t know where to start. Okay, it might not be that bad for most of us, but being happy by ourselves is a skill that can help us but does take time to master. Don’t worry, or worry, I’ll be coming back to this in the later love chapters.
* * *
The Poetry of Words
Sometimes, well actually lots of times, when I was alone and feeling lonely, I would write a poem, maybe it was a way of feeling less alone because I was communicating with others. Later, I would become more interested in the artistry of poetry, and how words can be used to communicate ideas or feelings, but it started as a means of escape.
Now, as I write this in the early hours, I’m thinking about you, wondering what you’re thinking and what your life is like. When I’m writing this it’s as if we’re together in some way.
* * *
2018 – Addicted to Games
For decades now there have been growing concerns about addictions to computer games. I have been through it myself, (that will have to wait for another chapter), but it’s easy to see how they’ve become so seductive. They can take a player out of their humdrum world straight into an exciting, magical one that triggers all kinds of powerful primaeval feelings while also satisfying our need for significance, for there in front of the player stands their archetypes in virtual flesh and blood.
When Keats wrote “Ever let the fancy roam, pleasure never is at home”, he wasn’t wrong. Fantasy becomes even more attractive when we’re faced with stark reality. At the same time, online players are connected not just via the Internet but in many other ways too. It’s no wonder they’re so popular.
* * *
2018 – 2nd December – Suburban Adventures
My friend Gregory has popped around to see me. He’s quite tall, with white hair, thick-rimmed round spectacles, a long coat and a hat. He’s sprawled across my little sofa.
“I had to go to audiology the other day,” he says in his strong sing-song Northern Irish accent. “I asked the bus driver to tell me when to get off. But when I thought it seemed to be taking us a long time to get there, I asked him how far we had to go. He told me he’d shouted out to me 20 minutes ago. I don’t think he knew what I meant when I said I was going to audiology. Anyway, I got off the bus and found I was in the middle of suburbia. I mean it was completely void of human life. Not a soul could be seen.
Eventually, a car pulled up with an old couple in, I mean they must’ve been old if I thought they were. I asked them if they knew a number for a taxi firm so they gave me one which I tried dialling but couldn’t get through, and they tried too, but to no avail.
“Did you dial the local number?” I asked.
“No, were we supposed to?” they replied, slightly perplexed.
“Yes,” I said.
Well, they did the same thing. Three old people and a mobile phone are not a good combination. Anyway, they asked where I was going and when I told them they offered me a lift. I would love to send them a thank you card, but I could never find their house again, they all look the same in suburbia.”
And to the untrained eye, they do, that’s true.
But even in that story, I could feel their offer of a lift was just as much benefit to them as it was to Gregory. When you live in suburbia and an opportunity for adventure arises one learns to grab it with both hands (or paws in my case) — anything to break up the routine.
* * *
1980 – Front Room at Home – Wallington
An episode of Hill Street Blues started on the TV. As I listened to the music and watched the opening credits, I could feel an overwhelming sense of sadness and joy. The images showed a police car pulling out onto the cold grey rainy streets of a Chicago-like city. The music was full of sadness and heroism whilst the characters, who I’d come to know and love, were introduced one by one. In that opening scene, I recognised part of my internal landscape, one of grey skies and connections.
* * *
2019 – Love Life
When someone asks me how my love life’s going, I say “Fantastic”. They then ask, “Why, what’s happening” and I say, “Nothing, that’s why it’s fantastic”.
* * *
I’m 54 now, and my feelings of lust have been waning for some years. They haven’t completely gone, and sometimes when faced with a bit of time to kill I can feel not so much a desire for sex, but more a feeling of wanting to do something that’s self-destructive. When I was younger, I wouldn’t have hesitated at the opportunity to get myself into a difficult situation, but now, it’s a different story.
* * *
2014 – Needs and Desires
I was still with Sue in the spring of 2014, but I knew what she needed wasn’t me. I wasn’t with anyone else, so said she could stay with me until she found someone else if she wanted, the choice was hers. I didn’t want to abandon her, I felt a lot of responsibility regarding her feelings, and something in her resonated in me too, but in the same way, I felt what she desired was desire, what she needed was a need, but I didn’t feel those things anymore.
One day she said she’d met someone and was going to go on a date with them and was I sure I wanted her to go. I said yes. But after she went, I cried hard tears, not because I didn’t want her to go, but because I didn’t want her to feel rejected.
This happened just before my mother died, so by the time the funeral came, things had become more defined between us. We were no longer together.
The space in my story that Ali noticed in the café was the sudden lack of focus on the subject of my love life because, where there had once been desire, there was now an empty space, well to be more accurate an emptier space.
There was some flickering at first, an Internet relationship that became too complicated and developed into a relationship about connection but wasn’t going to come to live in everyday life, and after a while, I realised I was happy with the companionship of a friend, someone to cuddle up to and share life’s experiences with.
I once wrote in a song, ‘If falling in love is a trick of the mind then why am I not laughing this time,” because to me there’s an element of nature coming into play within the infatuation process, but from that experience, we can connect with someone on other levels too, and the main ones to me are compassion and friendship, as well as finding them attractive. There were many times when I thought I loved someone, but I wanted to keep hold of them so I could keep myself “happy”. But loving someone may well mean having to balance out both of your needs even if it means losing them.
This story is not about a finale or a destination, it’s about a journey and what was learned or reflected on during it.
When I write, I can feel you too, your needs and desires, and even the disappointment of there not being a happy ending or conclusion, but there’s a lot more to come so don’t feel too despondent. Have nostalgia for the future. I can feel my time fold upon itself. This moment in my life touches a moment in yours. I feel the connection even if you didn’t exist when I wrote these words and I no longer exist as you read them now.
Sometimes the feeling of loneliness resonates with the idea that we are not significant in the minds of others. Especially those who matter to us. That we aren’t loved, or our feeling of purpose has diminished. It is as if the part of us that helps us feel buoyant is punctured so we end up feeling empty.
The empty spaces that we face in life often come from inside of us. Sometimes, they are caused by our behaviour, and it’s that which needs to be dealt with. Philosophical or religious ideologies may help you feel less isolated and inflated for a while, but it’ll just be a temporary solution if you don’t deal with the main cause. This was the journey of understanding that I started when I sat opposite the therapist and stated something was wrong, even though I didn’t know what it was. Of course, it’s more complicated than this, but this is a good starting point.
* * *
1986 – Therapy
Simon: I was reading a book on meditation, and it said that if someone feels lust then they can move that energy upwards to their mind and higher spirit.
Therapist: Is that a bit like avoiding living?
Simon: It might be useful if you can’t cope with lustful feelings.
Therapist: If they are that strong, maybe there’s a reason that, if identified, could help lessen them.
Simon: But in the meantime, it might be useful.
* * *
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to meditate my lustful feelings away and consequently, I got myself and others into a lot of trouble. Maybe living a full and interesting life involves some amount of trouble though, well that’s my excuse.
* * *
2019 – Leonard
My Alexa smart speaker is reading a biography of Leonard Cohen to me. It’s telling me how he’d spent ten years in a monastery, but even then, he would sometimes go home so he could be truly alone.
There have been long periods in my life when I have suffered almost debilitating loneliness, but often, even though those periods would come late at night, I would then become creative and after a while feel content. The next morning, I would wake up, feel okay for a few seconds then feel a sense of dread and for the rest of the day, I’d feel down or eager to escape feeling that way, until once again, late at night, I’d start wanting to be by myself so I could be creative. In time those dark times went away, but even now I tend to work from 10 pm to 3:30 am.
After ten years in the monastery, Cohen decided to live in the outside world and share his gift of a golden voice. If part of our inner significance comes from helping others, then sometimes these might be good reasons to vacate the empty spaces we hide in. It’s probably good for others if we develop ourselves, spend some time outside of our normal life and understand ourselves more. Emotionally rather than intellectually, but ultimately one must enter life and feel it deeply to know it.
After my foot had been amputated, I used crutches to allow me to move around until I had healed enough to wear a prosthesis. Likewise, as we heal and grow emotionally there are good crutches that allow us to do exactly that and then, of course, there are crutches that trip us over, injure us and stop us from ever healing. These often manifest themselves as addictions or self-destructive behaviour. It would take me years to stop damaging myself and even now there is often a temptation to do so, but maybe because my feelings of lust have waned so much as I’ve aged, the temptation is far more subdued.
* * *
1980 – Retail Therapy with a Spiritual Dimension
If in 1980 I’d known how much of an adventure my life was going to be I probably would not have written so much poetry, which to many might have been a blessing, but for me, it was good training. If I had been more content, then would I have listened to the words of songs with the same eagerness to find solace?
On Boxing Day (the day after Christmas day) I took a bus to Croydon, went to WH Smith’s and sold my Book Token presents to people at the cashier till at a reduced rate. Then with the money, I bought a Roxy Music record. It was already getting dark, it was cold and wet, but the whole mission was imbued with meaningfulness. I knew that when I got in I would put the record on, plug my headphones in and in the darkness meditate on what I would discover in the music, and in turn myself. It was both a shallow retail therapy type experience as well as having a spiritual dimension.
* * *
1980 – The Dance
Just before we broke up for the Christmas break there was a school disco where some of the parents turned up too. At one point one of the mums who had been drinking a bit too much grabbed me, pulled me onto the dance floor, and held me to her bosom, which was actually quite flat, but I was still very grateful. (I’m only mentioning that to keep it real for you). Even though I was sure she was only doing it because she felt sorry for me, I was prepared to forgive her because as a male I would do anything for some female attention. I could feel people looking on, was it with amazement, incredulity, pity, glee, or laughter? But within her “cleavage” I felt a moment of connection because even if she was feeling sorry for me there was some kind of dialogue going on between us. Whilst I would have preferred it not to have been pity, I felt her compassion and felt sorry for her too.
Even now, when people feel sorry for me, I feel sorry for them because I know they’re suffering a little and it’s unnecessary. Later, when I would become more immersed in the disability-issue-based political world this double-view approach would help me avoid the “us and them” dynamic that typifies so much of these arenas. However, although there were a few exceptions, what was significant about this approach was it came from a feeling rather than a thought.
* * *
2019 – Choice Cuts
Some friends and I went to the Hydro Hotel in Eastbourne the other day for afternoon tea. In 1980 much of my time would have been spent with friends too, especially on very sunny days like this. But back then time alone felt far more lonely, desperate at times even. Whereas now, there are things to get done and the world is far more entertaining, all one has to do is reach for one’s phone to feel some connection.
This meeting wasn’t one in which we sat staring at our phones, as is very common nowadays, but instead, Fred, who is a friend’s 20-year-old son did not agree that we have any choice in our lives. He believes what defines us, our species, genetics, experiences and all that makes us who we are, causes us to make the choices we do. His point being, we cannot control those factors so whatever we choose to do is simply a result of them.
I argue, “Well, doesn’t this come down to how we define the ‘you’ or the ‘I’? If I accept we have no choice, do we not, well, at least most of us, still end up in a position where we can make some choices at least, even if those choices are highly influenced by things beyond our control?”
“Yes, but you don’t get it”, he says exasperatedly, “You believe that the choice is yours, but it is determined by so many influences beyond your control it can’t be seen as your choice. If a computer is programmed to make a choice based on certain parameters, can you say it has a choice?”
“But part of our programming is built on moral codes, and our reaction to how we make others feel, so to a point we have some choice,” I say.
“No, not really, you just don’t get it.” He says.
* * *
1980 – Tough Choices
At 15, I was beginning to have to make some tough choices in my life. There were exams coming up that would act as a gateway to the next level of education, and/or the world of work. There was Karate, Vernon, my school, the other students there, friends and family, all of which played a part in giving weight to the importance of studying, but perhaps the most important factor was I enjoyed studying too. We were often set a lot of homework, so once back home there was a bit of time to eat and relax, but then I would sit in the back room with the radio on and work through my homework. Again, a routine set in, and it was one I liked. I’d listen to the programmes about relationship issues on Capital Radio, then music programmes, whilst problem-solving, trying to learn things and writing. Instead of wandering the streets looking for company, I’d found a good way to fill some of the empty spaces I so disliked.
If ever there was a single factor that I could identify as being the main reason I didn’t go completely downhill in my life it was this. I enjoyed living and learning and I recognised the significance of connecting, not just with others around me but with humanity, the world, nature and with some kind of notion of “God”, even if I didn’t believe in “God”.
* * *
1986 – Tavistock – Choice
Therapist: Do you not think that doing this, causes you to worry?
Simon: Not really, I don’t think about it.
Therapist: But you tell me you feel alone a lot of the time, don’t you think that the way you act contributes to how you feel? It’s easy to rush towards something to escape inner pain only to find that what you rushed towards just makes things worse. I mean, if you were undernourished and went into a food store you might grab a doughnut or a burger but if you took more time and effort would it not be better to buy some healthy food, take it home and prepare a good healthy meal? Sure, it would take longer and require more work, but all that effort and time could be seen as caring for yourself.
Simon: I can see what you’re saying is right, but I often feel compelled to do what’s not good for me.
Therapist: Well, that’s partly why you are here, to try to find what it is in you that doesn’t want to do what’s best for yourself. It’s not just laziness, it’s a deliberate choice.
* * *
2019 – We’re Complicated
When I was ill, I was touched by the kindness of those around me, and it reminded me of how important it is to decide which side to try to be on. Such things are never simple because, for instance, we may help one person but it may be at the expense of another.
I started writing this for reasons I’ve explained in the past but now I probably write it for other ones. In the same way, we fall in love with someone for reasons that are often different to the ones that cause us to stay together. I liked John Lennon because I liked The Beatles, then I listened to his solo albums and I liked him for those, then he got killed and I felt sorry for him. Then I found out he’d been terrible to one of his wives and I have to admit I still liked his music, but now I realised he was a weak person, as most of us are at times. He wasn’t very nice in some ways but was incredible in others. The same could be said about many of those we see as heroes including the likes of JFK, Martin Luther King Jnr, and Churchill, who were all imperfect heroes too.
There’s something in society at the moment that isn’t willing to accept that nearly all great people have very bad sides to themselves as well. It’s as if we can’t accept ourselves, both ourselves and others. It reminds me of Soviet Art, it could only show one version of the world, and anything else was intolerable.
At 15, the way I viewed others was probably limited in many ways because I hadn’t even confronted my dark sides. It never crossed my mind that for some people seeing my arms might cause psychological distress, and given that information, I could choose to react differently to it than just feeling rejected. I hadn’t quite taken on board that people, well, all of us, are complicated.
* * *
