Lamenting over Council Skies

Sunday, Just the sound it makes when you say it, screams 'relax'. Ok, it doesn't "scream" 'relax' obviously, it is Sunday after all. But while some in the UK are recovering from last night's excess, mowing the lawn, washing the car, or out for Sunday lunch, I am sleeping, trying to catch up from the lack of sleep offered to me by the previous night shift. 

Then while those same people are possibly settling down to a nap in front of the TV, I'm driving to work. And then, while people are... Ok, ok, you get the idea, I'm working!

Yes, I'm one of the lucky few that gets to work on a Sunday night. But wait for it...the best bit is, I also get to work right through until Monday morning at 6. Can you imagine that? A whole 12-hour night shift. On a Sunday, what a treat!

I know what you're thinking. What a fortuitous life he leads. I wish I was him! However, I will be at least, driving home to my bed while most people are doing the Monday morning commute. 

I usually, not always, but usually listen to a book or a podcast on the way to work. Music, as endless and varied as it is, gets a bit boring. I know that sounds weird and I might be a little odd, (if you're reading the blog then it should be pretty clear to you by now that I am "a little odd"). Don't ask me how. It just does.

If I get bored of listening to music that someone has already conveniently made for me and even made it capable of playing out of my phone and into the car speakers, then I'll just make my own music on guitar. I don't record much of it and If do it's usually on the voice recorder on my phone.

I do love being able to play an instrument, it's one of the few times that my mind slows down. an hour sitting with a guitar is not an hour wasted, although that hour will go by in the blink of an eye. I've often sat and played for a whole afternoon feeling that time had stood still only to realise it had done quite the opposite. I feel similar about writing. time flies by and I just lose myself. it's not easy being an anxious ball of hypervigilance most of the time, so a bit of respite in something creative is often a great relief.

Yesterday, however, I was in the mood for a bit of Noel Gallagher's high-flying birds. Their new album is fantastic. It's called 'Council Skies' and it's right up my street. I've been playing guitar now for around 20 years and I'm ok at it. I wouldn't say I was great, just ok, and that's fine with me. I have no desire to be better. I get what I want out of it and playing to an audience of dust mites and house spiders is my kind of crowd. 

Unfortunately, some of them leave early, due to hearing the same song over and over for 20 minutes straight while I sit working out all the chords and strumming patterns. Hey, it's their loss.

Most of my guitar-playing repertoire lives in the Indie/Britpop camp, I like it, and I'm a lazy player. The chords are usually pretty standard and are easy to pick up. unlike Jazz, where you need 2 more fingers with extra-long-reach to play. Oasis tunes, and Noel's music, in particular, is a go-to for me and I can normally get my fingers around one of their tracks within a few minutes of playing. I was in my 20s when Oasis arrived on the scene and so either of the Gallagher brothers' material has a place in my heart. 

So there was I, driving the 30 miles to work. Minding my own business. As you do, in the car, when the 3rd track of Noel's Album, 'Dead to the World' started playing. 

I've dropped the song from Youtube at the bottom of this post if you're curious, but the lyrics towards the start of this track include;

"I'm dead to the world

I don't know where I've been

And if you say so,

I'd bend over backwards for love." 

My mind, on permanent hypervigilance by default, put its foot to the floor and lit up my synapses like a Christmas tree. Flashing years of my life across my eyes, the most recent stuff first. I saw Emma and me. Where we were, and where we are now. The moments of 'Brian the brain' madness in between. 

The post Em wrote for the blog. The letter to me at the end of that post 'Dear Wally' 

Other relationships now, everything speeding up, How they ended, and how it all looked like it was all down to me. Faces, Moments, sadness, happiness. It was all coming at me like like race cars on a track.

The words, phrases, and paragraphs from the book and the blog came charging forward, good things, and a sense of pride for the writing. Then bitterness that I've got this inside me at all. 

Then all the weird and not-so-good things that have made up a 'ragtag' collection of disasters and successes followed. I don't like this, I don't like it at all! 

The music took me to the guitars I have hanging on my living room wall and how I've neglected them of late due to being so engrossed in writing. I felt good and ashamed of myself all at the same time. The song continued to play out… 

"If love ain't enough, 

To make it alright, 

Then leave me dead to the world" 

I thought "That's me.. It's all me." Isn't it odd how songs have a habit of triggering you into a response of some kind?

"To make it alright", and "if love isn't enough then leave me dead to the world." Why is love not enough? Do I subconsciously request being left "dead to the world" because of my stupid self-esteem issues? Am i asking myself whether love is enough? I know it should be.

Images, memories, questions, over and over again, as if I was seeing a movie play in fast-forward, but still able to get an idea of the plot. And just when I thought it was never going to end, My face felt hot and I felt tears well up in my eyes. While I was being bombarded by my thoughts, the song continued on. 

Now I was struggling to see the road. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and drove on. 

Wow. That was weird, I felt odd, shaky, anxious, hot and bewildered.

5 minutes later and I was doing it again. I felt my shoulders start moving up and down and I knew I was in danger of sobbing to the point at which road safety would become an issue. I regained my composure, and as before it was just for a few minutes. This time it was almost a full-on lament. I'm in danger of properly losing it and I needed to get myself together, I have a 12-hour shift to complete! 

Thankfully it did subside and I was able to turn in for work without mascara running down my cheeks, fanning my face with my hand, whilst simultaneously blowing invisible tubes of air through pursed lips. Im joking, I obviously don't wear mascara, not on a workday.

Since I started writing, just a couple of months ago I've been looking inside myself a lot, I've pulled some very emotional stuff out of my head, and I've done so almost as if I was writing about somebody else. I'm pouring out some highly charged emotional stuff, and up to this point, I hadn't cried a single tear. 

As amazing as it is to me, to be finally getting the words out and onto the screen of the laptop, it did seem a little strange that I had sort of failed to connect properly to the emotions. I just figured it was because I was making sense of it and was starting to find some peace, and that may be so to a point. 

Yes, I'm finally standing on the imaginary, emotional see-saw, but being able to stand at the centre of it and achieve equilibrium is the goal, and I'm obviously not there yet. Plus I am completely in the dark as to how many steps it will take to get there.

So why am I having this mini-breakdown? My estimation is thus, I finally have the first draft of the book completed (the first of many no doubt) and im working on the editing every day.  I'm reading the book, seeing the facts, thoughts, feelings, and emotions I've written about me and what goes on in Brian the brain up close for the first time ever, and it's pressing my buttons. Music could be channeling this and subconsciously helping me to access the emotional responses I've kept locked away for too long.

It's all out there in front of me now, everything I've avoided facing, and it's only through reading my own words back, often out loud (to aid writing flow and clarity),  that it is having its impact on me. I'm starting to see things for what they truly are. I've opened that 'primal wound' everybody talks about, it's bleeding and it's likely to get messy. 

Dear Brian,

Thanks for the info and all that, but might I be so bold as to request that you could perhaps choose a time that's more suitable to start these processes next time? Rather than when I'm hurtling into a tight bend on a country road in my car at 60 miles per hour.

Thanks awfully!

Guitar Image: © Andy Wallis