Sinister: soft, like me

[ian]

det var en gang

that is

once upon a time, there was a world.  and the world was pretty large.  of
course, people looked out into space, and dreamt of bigger planets, and
pondered what life could be like if they could only escape their earth-bound
existence, little suspecting that the secret to escaping your fetters does
not lie in physical movement.

but i digress.

there was a world.  and the world was pretty large.  and those that didn't
dream of leaving dreamed of making it better.  and those that didn't dream
of either had forgotten how to dream, and that made them bitter, and cruel.

bear with me, there is a point to all this.

hello my fluffy friends, it has been a while.  i have missed you.  but
you've been busy, and you've moved on, as people do, and you've moved away,
and now you're saying strange things, things that i understand, but that
make me shudder.

let me explain, in a round-about way,... it comes down to one thing....

det var en gang

once upon a time, there was a boy who lived all alone, in a tall building in
a big city.  he didn't mind it, safe, in the tall building.  he enjoyed life
there, all alone, staring out of the window at the clouds, watching the
seagulls swooping and diving past the glass, dreaming of joining them,
floating high above the streets.
he enjoyed that, those quiet days, in a safe place, when he didn't have to
leave home.

some days, he had to leave the building.  those were the days that scared
him.

a nice story... but it isn't the right way to convince you.

try a different approach.  change tack.

bear with me, there is a point to all this.

new tack....:

da kidz have ditched nu metal.  this is official, although you already knew
it.  gone are the pointless bits of chain and the trousers showing just too
much arse (although that isn't always a bad thing).  da kidz have moved on,
so i hear.  these days, they're sporting hair spiked perfectly
asymmetrically, they spend many hours in front of their mirrors pulling
their locks into that just-got-out-of-bed style.
they wear ripped clothing, though they aren't poor.  they wear sweatbands,
though they don't like to exercise and they smoke, if they feel that it
looks good.  sometimes they wear sunglasses when its dark, although they've
never heard of the blues brothers.

da kidz look good these days.  skinny musculature, tanned from a summer of
exposure, snake hips, poured into tight trousers, swagger and sway - in that
sid vicious way, and lips that curl up in the middle.  da kidz have irony
for breakfast, in fact they have it before breakfast, moving onto satire for
a mid-morning (2 p.m.) snack and parody, cigarettes and imported russian
vodka for evening meal.

oh, they look good.   and they sound good.  their bodies are hard, their
minds are hard.  perhaps they make me a little hard.... but, mostly, they
leave me cold.

deep inside, perhaps, they're happy.  i'll never know.  i was never anything
like that.  i could never be anything like that.  and now, i'm happy to say
that i will never be anything like that.

bear with me, there is a point to all this.

so, i'm sitting here, in my bell-bottoms and smiths top (if it was a hefner
top it would work better in this context, but it isn't, so i won't lie to
you) and behind me on the chair is the cardigan i like to fall into from
time to time.  purple, orange and blue, and bought on a york day when the
sun refused to shine.  purple, orange and blue, too large around the
sleeve-ends, where i've pulled them over my hands too often, because i like
to hide my hands.
near me, on the shelf, sits a picture of my little pussy cat and behind me,
on the bed, sits one of several teddy bears.  i like teddy bears.  i talk to
them, i wonder if they actually do have feelings, sometimes i sleep with
one, although i'm now twenty-nine and a proper grown-up.

don't press delete yet.  there's an important point here.

sometimes, the world scares me.  i like smiley-face stickers, that make me
feel happier, i like brightly coloured things, i like people who hug me and
tell me everything is going to be allright.  i like people who really,
really hug me, and make me feel safe.  i like the feeling that, sometimes,
there's somewhere to hide.  because we all need that.  no matter how big we
are.

and,
guess what?
none of this is an affectation.

bear with me, there is a point to this.

det var en gang

once upon a time there was a boy.  i won't keep you in suspense.  this is an
autobiographical number, and the boy will bear more than a passing
resemblance to me.  he might wank less and be more tanned, in this story,
but then again he might not.

that boy hadn't enjoyed growing up.  and he had a secret.  he wasn't really
enjoying being a grown-up either.  but nobody was supposed to know this, not
even himself.
so that nobody ever found out his secret, he smiled in the wrong places, at
the wrong things.  he cultivated an air of sarcasm and irony, he learnt the
right put downs, at just the right times, to bring the braggard to the
ground.  he made sure he had the clothes that made him look the thinnest,
and he swaggered around with an eye for a verbal fight, knowing he looked
better than some, knowing that put him in a stronger position, knowing that
maybe, just maybe, people hadn't got him rumbled.

it didn't work.  chiefly because he wanted people to like him.  those that
did like him...well...you'll have to ask them their reasons.  perhaps they
saw something underneath.  perhaps they knew none of it was real, because
they recognised that he was doing what they were doing themselves.

bear with me, there is a point to all this.

at a stage in this boy's life, he discovered affectation.  he followed the
Mighty Cocker into the charity-shops of the cities, and decked himself out
in ironic print shirts.  he purchased flared trousers, and wore them with a
knowing smile.  he cut his hair short, dyed it pink, and got angry when
people stared at it.  he swaggered a little more, in a cool way.  in a
different way to the others.  he wasn't like them.  he didn't have to be
witty.  he could be an individual, like all the other individuals.
one day, he realised he wasn't being ironic any more.  he loved his print
shirt, and his flares.  he still wears them to this day and probably will
for some time.

and he learned something very important about affectation.  eventually, you
forget where the person you were to begin with ends and where the pretence
begins.  the two merge into one being.   perhaps a more complete person, if
the affectation was a positive one, but more often an imbalance is created.
 and the boy looked at those people who had been his friends before, with
their clever lines, and their cigarettes, and he knew, too, that they had
grown into this identity that once they sought to hide behind - that the
put-downs and the bitching had become the person, that the coping strategy
was now the personality.

and he realised how shallow his new persona was, although he liked it.  and
he realised that they weren't really all that different, those people and
him.  they just coped with words where he coped with clothes, and a burt
bacharach shuffle.



and then, just at the right time, along came belle and sebastian.

and more followed..

a bowlie weekender, some kind people, a mailing list... a magical place.
really.  a place where people talked about meaning in music, where people
spoke unashamedly of the whirly bits in songs that made their hearts
flutter, a place where people crept out of the shadows and said 'i'm shy, be
kind to me'... and, by and large, people were kind.

the layers fell away, bit by bit.  there were events in every day life too,
but the mailing list was an important part.  this was somewhere he didn't
have to pretend, although he lied a lot and joked a bit just because he
liked doing it.
the layers fell away, although the print shirts remained, and in came other
things...

snatches of song:

time has told me, you're a rare rare find
a trouble cure for a troubled mind

this is the time of life that i am living
and i'll face each day with a smile

'cos we've got feelings and we're DAMN PROUD OF IT

i feel the planets surround me, they gather round me


in came the sincere smile.  the lack of shame.  the ability to face life
without the shell.
somewhere, along came the ability to say 'this is me.  i'm soft.  and i'm
proud of it.  don't hurt me, and i'll try not to hurt you'.
and, over the years, it grew.  partly because of a band.  partly because of
their softness.  partly because of their vulnerability.  partly because of -

bear with me, because here comes the point

their tweeness.

oh, you can tell me it isn't there and you can say you don't believe in it
but that won't stop me seeing it, and cherishing it, and holding it close to
my heart as something important, as a lesson that has to be learned.

i think you see it differently to me.  i think you see it as something
empty, shallow, overly sentimental.  i see none of that.  i see the tweeness
as an intrinsic part of who some of us are.  i see it as a refusal to
conform to a world of mcdonalds and george bush and three-minute stardom.
not a precious refusal or a staged act of rebellion.  not some strokes-y
night in a bar or a radiohead frown (although i do like the radiohead
frown), but a gentle, understanding 'no.  thank you.'.  understanding,
perhaps because we've been there, trying to be what so many others are
trying to be.  or, for those luckier ones, because we were never taken in by
it in the first place.

i don't want to throw their world back in their faces.  i want to invite
them into mine.  i want to cuddle them, and make them feel warm, and safe
and loved.  i want to make them realise how important they are.  each and
every one of them.  especially the cruel ones, and the angry ones, because
they're the saddest of all.

and if you'd care to come and stay
in my little corner of the world
we could hide away
in my little corner of the world
we always knew
we'd find someone like you


actually, no, we didn't know we'd find you.  but we're very glad we did find
you, in the end.  and, just this once, we're going to get precious.  we're
going to tell you that you're wrong, we're not going to let you deny this
important, this beautiful tweeness, this softness.  because it isn't an
affectation for so many of us.  in it lies an oddly beautiful strength.  a
strength that comes from knowing that kindness is okay.

in my head, an aisler's set song.  i've been listening to them every morning
for the past couple of weeks.  and they're twee.  and its the biggest
compliment i could give them:

the building yawns as the stop light changes
'just a kid with a filthy mind'
they've never seen your sentimental side
they've never seen you in your best light.

oh they're beautifuly, gorgeously, upliftingly,
simultaneously-happy-and-sadly-heartbreakingly twee and in them now i see
what i first loved in belle and sebastian.  i see the boy who always crys at
endings, the one who thought there was love in everything and everyone.  the
boy who was naive, perhaps, but stronger than you think.

celebrate your tweeness.  be proud.  and... if it really is an
affectation...(although mine never was).... there are far worse ones to
nurture.

oh, and i forgot something important.  i forgot the point to this.

live happily ever after.

snipp snapp snute, så var eventyret ute

xx
ian

paulo, if you're doing that tape, i'd love a copy.

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