Sinister: It's all a question of me me me and you you you.

[Ruvi Simmons]

I have never been carol singing.

At 5am, that seems peculiarly significant. Occassionally, I sing Away in a
Manger in the style of a Home Counties seven year old, but I don't think the
two amount to the same. Of course, it is too late both in the day and my
life to begin visiting houses, song book in cold-numbed hand, so I will have
to accept that the experience has passed me by but, yes, its absence is a
felt non-presence, as it were, in the pre-dawn of this Christmas Eve.

One day, we'll all die. That's a sad notion, isn't it? It troubled me more
when I was younger than it does now, probably because my brain has
sand-bagged the sense of tragedy into a corner for my own safety. I should
be more absurd, but I'm not.

Recently, I have been listening to lots of music. I go in waves of interest
and disinterest, but at the moment I have been spending as much non-existent
money as I can muster on CDs and records. I bought a Serge Gainsbourgh CD.
He's crap, isn't he? I fail to see how singing in a raspy French voice can
in any way elevate his brand of music above the status of flaccid easy
listening. Rod Stewart, on the other hand, isn't crap. Or Cat Stephens. Or
Hope Sandoval. Or Johnny Cash. A little bit of somebody else's humanity
enshrined on record. Music to invoke existence's magic strikes me as being
the only stuff worth listening to, and the only art worth seeking. But then
I'm always trying to recapture a state of childhood bliss, of a sort.

In Tower Records yesterday, there was a young girl in front of me, about
nine, and her face was covered in red blotches, while her voice had the
rough tone of an adult. She could barely reach the counter, but her eyes
glittered wisely, and sadly. Her shoes were dirty, and the laces had lost
their little plastic caps, exposing the ends which had already begun to fray
at the tips. I thought that if we could build ourselves on an untarnished
child, gaining understanding and experience without destroying the wonder
and spirit of joy that comes from times we don't remember, we would be doing
alright.

I have been spending lots of time in churches, because they are epic, and
they're ours. I'd like to remember that sometimes, pitching human majesty
against that of the stars. Think of all the heroes and the dignity and rage
of the sea and our own lives. Nothing is eternal, but does that make our
lives less grand? I'd like to see platforms dotted around the globe like a
web of beacons, with people standing on them, shaking their fists and
laughing and crying at the world stretching beneath their feet. Star-gazing
not shoe-gazing. That would be nice.

Which makes this splurge quite circular. From nothingness to being, and from
transience to raging, raging.

I'll be quiet now.

Happy Christmas to one and all.

Ruvi.




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