Cyrillic

The days pass quickly when I listen to Кино́. I listen to songs repeatedly, carefully attempting to familiarise myself with Viktor Tsoi's growling Russian diphthongs. I get caught up in those prickly guitar lines and those melodic hooks which seem to always centre upon a B minor arpeggio. The production is shabby, the sound inexplicably panning from one speaker to another. There are noticeable mistakes, wrong notes and poor timing, but with each repeated listen I seem to love it more and more. I don't think of the mistakes, I think of other things. I think about Tsoi. I think about Leningrad in 1984. I think about a place where I can be alone.

I present Кино́ to others, but it is purely out of naive habit. I never seriously expect to get a glowing response, a requited sense of awe when I send over Последний Герой or Красно-желтые Дни. It never particularly disappoints me to hear their dismissal, but it only serves to reinforce the isolation in this practice. It's the same as my beloved night time isolation, that time when hours were vague and my existence was entirely unaccountable. Back then, I didn't care about what anyone else thought, but now, it's different. Approval culture is everywhere. From Likes to Followers, boyfriends and jobs, during the day, it's impossible to escape that desire to demonstrate personal value.

I listen to Восьмиклассница and I think of those ridiculous attempts to impress others during adolescence: You say you got a C in Geography and I don't give a damn, You tell me somebody got bruised over you, I say nothing and we walk on... It forces me to recall a time when I naively presumed that my elderly crush would be impressed with my happenings. It's all so laughable in retrospect, because such mindless gloating only really highlighted how young I was (and how inappropriate it was to be even interacting in such a way). I'm sure my news couldn't have impressed him, but then he allowed me to operate under this impression that I was ultimately worth something.

Now, I present to others, I present without thinking. I present without any genuine desire to connect. Yet I cannot help but get consumed by the purported regard of others. I am continuously preparing for that possibility that fondness could morph into annoyance, in much the same way love invariably morphs into indifference. Such thoughts leave me feeling so tired and wretched that nothing, not creative success, not tens of thousands of Likes, not even the assurance of family and friends can ever make me feel truly "liked". I cannot stop, so I try to make the days pass quickly, I listen to lots and lots of Кино́. I try to escape to a place where I cannot be found.

Compliments

Missy Laur said something curious to me the other day. Compliments are like advice, we only tend to accept them from people who don't know us very well. It was a timely bit of insight and so thought-provoking, too. At that point, I had been contemplating the nature and the function of compliments. How desperately they are craved and how difficult they are to accept.

I once thought I was simply echoing the values of my family. On the face of it, I would consider humility to be of paramount importance to us, but then I would think of my brother and his sickening bouts of narcissism. He thought he was absolutely amazing at everything, so smart, so handsome and talented to boot. Yet he would follow me from room to room, begging me for a compliment. Any compliment at all.

My instinctive response to a compliment is to swear. I've never thought to rationalise why I'm compelled to react like that. Do I feel like they're lying to me? Do I feel like they're attempting to combat my self-loathing tendencies? Perhaps I simply never learned how to gracefully accept kind words. I never learned how to use them, to rely upon them in moments of doubt.

I've slowly trained myself to respond in a more congenial way, to smile and say thank you very much. I often tell myself out loud to respond gracefully. It is a purposeful cue, knowing how inclined I am to aggressively argue them down. Most kind words get lost that way, after all, it takes such energy to act appropriately, to act in such a way that would suggest that I agree (even when I don't).

I'm uncertain how it happened, but things have moved on a little. I suspect I must have been subjected to thousands of these things and they snap back at me occasionally: a friend saying I cannot wait until you write a novel, another describing my designer freckles, a lover referring to my touch. Do I believe in those words now? Does it make me a narcissist? An egotist?

You sat across from me, not too long ago, at a table at China Bar. I'm going to give you some advice. You said. I was alarmed. Am I not going to like this? You smirked a little. That depends. Don't doubt yourself so much. You elaborated a little, referring in part to my shyness, referring in part to my detailed disclosure of my desire to exist solely as a brain in a jar.

It's just as Missy Laur said. Compliments are like advice, we only tend to accept them from people who don't know us very well. It takes me a couple of moments to recall your compliment, maybe even longer than that. I deliberately try to get used to the prickly awkwardness of its sentiment. This is what it must feel like to believe you're alright.

Presence and Precedence

I harbour this unfortunate tendency to assume that I'm being victimised pretty much all of the time. I came up with this insight a week or so ago, in a conversation with someone who only knew me from my writing. It was unbearably succinct, in that it summed up my fears and anxieties, my personality and my past.

I only regret the way that I constructed that sentence. At that point in time, I jostled with the prospect that the paranoia was completely unjustified. The prospect of an aggressive confrontation was this allegedly mythical thing. But then, I was fortunate in that I had managed to whittle down my existence so I was safe from harm.

It only occurred to me this afternoon that I've spent so much of my life convincing people to be nice to me. I've never had such a vivid recollection of such a feeble and ineffectual desire, recurring over and over again. It seems stupid to convince someone to be nice to you when they've just stomped on your neck.

I suppose I'm lucky, in that I once thought the victimisation was justified. I'd string all the incidents together, as if they were in this absurd press kit with all these unlikely characters. I don't think that way anymore. I never deserved what happened. It's just unfortunate that things transpired as they did.

I developed this sensitivity and this consciousness. I was determined never to succumb to that dynamic, I was determined not to believe the hype, as I'd so often joke. Yet, as I write this, I know that I'm back there at this precise moment. Convincing him, unconvincingly, to try to be nice to me.

I've never been able to convince anyone, although. I suppose my arguments have never been that compelling...

Alignment

I'm not a great believer in fate, as such, but lately I've been noticing this feeling of alignment. This feeling that as one important person steps back, another important person steps forward. That every sense of loss is duly compensated by this overwhelming confrontation: I know we've just met, but I have this feeling we're going to be friends forever.

I feel great safety residing with my crew. Mini, Andrew, Missy Laur, Louise, Noreen and even OC at times. Even my exes, the greatest source of lost communication, have become supplementary members of my crew. They contact me when they witness a passing mention of the Smiths. Andrew says it is as if I have set them all onto Google Alerts and now they feel compelled to contact me, as I once felt compelled to contact them.

My crew are unrivalled in their patience, they are unrivalled in their compassion. They are more than familiar with my bullshit excuses, why I don't do radio, why I don't sing, why I don't write. I don't need to explain any of it anymore, because as we sip at our mochas at Madame Sousou, they understand exactly why I don't do it. Just as they understand why the hating gets as severe as it does.

I don't need to answer to my crew when I fall into a pattern of destructive behaviour. The levels of sympathy vary from friend to friend, but I ultimately return to the perennial advice of Mini: You are doing the wrong thing. You know what you need to do. Of course, it's true. I need to eat better, I need to sleep at night, I need to write essays every day. Unfortunately, it's advice I often ignore.

Inspiration, care of Pika Pika
I don't believe in fate, as such, but this alignment has come about from the rare inclusion of new friends in my crew. Strangers, sidling up to me, blinding me with enthusiasm and encouragement. Why isn't C&CM on radio? Why don't you make those documentaries? Why don't we start a band! My established crew have said exactly the same things to me millions of times before. Yet, I get off on the baffling selflessness of the gesture: hearing the same words from unfamiliar lips.

We may not be friends forever, sure. We may not even last the month. But I don't wish to forget this feeling I have now: People don't need to listen, but they do. People don't need to read, but they do. People don't need to care, but they do. Take responsibility for your art and start creating again. It's a miracle that they still care, long after you've stopped.

Evil > Slow Hands

I had been drafting letters in my head again. It gets worse when I am left alone at work for hours at a time. I become fixated with certain expressions, obsessed with the idea that I can clarify matters. I become obsessed with the idea that I can clear my name, not my memory. I really wanted to write to him. As time has passed, he has brutalised my character to anyone who cares to listen. He portrays me as a drunkard, a heartless selfish manipulator. His descriptions of me have become more and more malicious as months roll on. I suppose the lack of contact gives him that entitlement to distort the facts. I have done the same thing, the only difference is that I am compelled to pay homage to our friendship. I am compelled to value the ambiguities and the complexities of it, now it can never be restored.

I suppose we can never change how they feel about us, but I desperately desire control of the way I am perceived. I hate that he hates me, that he feels compelled to punish me as he does. I hate how that punishment is indicative of his own pain and suffering and that, because of his mandate on the subject, I am forbidden from contact. It frustrates me immeasurably, as I find more and more people are invited to judge. They are invited to comment and dispel my actions. Yet, I am not granted the right to defend myself. Instead, I exist in the shadows, cloaked in my trade mark trenchcoat, averting their eyeline, weltering in the knowledge that they hate me. They really fucking hate me. But should I even really care? I never even liked him, in any case.

What is peculiar is that one evening, it all felt so different. Instead of obsessing over my endless mental drafts, I spent the night laughing with a work colleague. We spoke of the Medellin drug cartels, maquiladoras, Keith Richards and kittens. It was a remarkable thing, because I remembered what it was to be seen as person, not as a monster. It was a blessed feeling, to have some kind of implied assurance that they would never bully or exclude me as I have been bullied and excluded. Yet, in a completely different way, the evening revealed the true extent of my self-loathing. It revealed how much I anticipate strangers and acquaintances to witness the same breed of evil as he saw in me.

I'll stop. I promise I will. I'll stop with the hating and the mental drafting and my earnest willingness to believe the hype. I can't control much, but I know I can control something. Even if it's cultivating a delusion that the hate isn't as severe as it really is. That somewhere, at some point and some time, he remembers all the laughter and affinity that I do. I hope, that in spite of everything, I will be able to convince myself of that fallacy. I hope that I will be able to live in the comfortable ignorance that he doesn't hate me as much he says he does. Maybe then, each night alone at work won't seem as painful as it ought to be.