Precision

I knew it was the end when I saw that photograph of your smashed up steel-blue Fender Precision Bass. The headstock was roughly decapitated from its thick neck, the strings were severed and hung loose across the bruised body. Fans cooed dramatically, commenting on how rock'n'roll it all was. You never addressed them, but I know you would have loathed that suggestion. You only ever said: "Goodbye old friend."

I imagined your relief that came from that violence. How it must have felt for you to destroy the object that had kept you away for so long. It reminded me of our first conversation, when you told me about how you saw Richey Edwards' last show with the Manic Street Preachers. Years after his disappearance, you still seemed so shaken by the determination of his violence, diving head first into the drum-kit at the end of the show.

I hope you've managed to return to the life you wanted, free of old friends and draining obligations. I'd be lying to say that I didn't miss your hysterics, they were always so poetic. I still think of the world in terms of us and them. There are those who will swoon over the rock'n'roll gesture and then us, those who will try to derive some meaning out of it. I think we live differently to everyone else.

Experts

Whenever we would have guests around, my Dad would boast about my ability to identify the year of any photograph, film or song. I would be sheepish, downplaying my mad skillz, but I've always made a point to ask the year of everything. Whether it's a deteriorated red hardcover book by Arthur Mee or a DVD of a J. Arthur Rank film, I want to know where it all fits historically. I need to develop this narrative in order to make sense of the past.

When my Dad and I watch old 1950s English films together, he always remarks about how sad he is to learn that all these actors have since died. Together we contemplate what they would have been like in real life, whether the cast were friends with one another, whether they were warm, kind or funny. We often know that they led tragic lives. They were either alcoholic depressives or else closeted homosexuals who would later commit suicide.

His knowledge of this particular genre of film is astounding and whenever we sit together, I encourage him to document all his observations in a blog or even a zine. I urge him to get in touch with his old English teacher, who coincidentally has written two encyclopaedias about the history of British film. He puts it off, expressing anxiety that he needs to learn more before finally making contact. I tell him to hurry up: we don't have much time.

I suppose we share not only the desire to be experts, but also that fear that we may never know enough. I wonder if we'll ever be ready enough to reach out to the establishment. I wonder if we'll ever spar with those we admire, in such a way that might suggest that our views might even carry some kind of authority. I look forward to that feeling that might fill me one day, that satisfaction that would come from knowing enough to finally move forward.

Highly Dangerous

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.

Cracks

My Dad has this fear about Studley Park Road. Whether it be turning right into it or simply walking across it to reach the bus stop, the threat of getting rumbled by traffic gives my Dad the heebee-jeebees. It's gotten to the point where I'm challenged about it whenever I leave the house and it's always the same conversation. Don't run across Studley Park Road. Walk down to the lights. You're wearing black. Because I'm always wearing black, I always ask why wearing black is even relevant. Cars can't see you if you're wearing black. I always insist that black is not a cloak of invisibility. He claims it is... and then I leave the house, walk up the street and run across Studley Park Road.

On this recent occasion, as much as I wanted to, I could not run across Studley Park Road. It was peak hour. I stood tentatively by the gutter, waiting for a gap in traffic that could only be described as gapless. It just wasn't happening. After a couple of moments, I followed my Dad's advice and walked down to the lights, activating my RunKeeper app to ensure no distance went unrecorded. It was warm and I was happy, having spent the afternoon laughing with my writing friends. I wore a pink and cream dress and marvelled at my punctuality, it never used to be like me to make good time. It was half the reason I always chose to run for the bus.

Halfway down to the lights, I stopped, having spotted something in the concrete. It was neither a name or a paw print but a fragment of a poem by W.B. Yeats, recorded in slashed capital letters in the wet concrete:


We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare - W.B. Yeats.

At risk of missing my bus entirely, I felt compelled to read the faint markings over and over. I quickly decided to get out my phone to take a photograph of it, to later examine on my sunset ride to the city. I couldn't help but smile when I marvelled at its surreal relevance, how it seemed to touch upon the debilitating of side-effects of fantasy, of possibility and hope. It's strange when you realise that the chasm between what you want and what you can have is not really all that great. The prospect of having all you ever imagined becomes intoxicating. Dreaming of how it could all fall apart becomes exhausting.

I forwarded the image to my writing friends that night. My friend Anne replied with the full 1922 poem, The Stare's Nest by my Window. She wrote, I wondered what Yeats was about, thought it could have something to do with the occupation of Ireland by the English, but it seems that it was about the civil war in 1922, after Michael Collins signed a treaty with England for home rule, which ended up with the provence of Ulster staying in English hands... It all started coming back, Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera. It all seemed so bitter, bloody and brutal and so totally removed from Studley Park.

I wonder who wrote it. I wonder what they could have meant by it.

Swoon

There are times when I get terribly caught up with Tumblr and I spend ages, scrolling further and further down the page to see more and more images. I marvel at the cohesiveness, when it comes to sites especially devoted to art, fashion and design. I marvel at the obscurity, when it comes to rare photographs of musicians I've loved for too long. For some reason, I carry this presumption that I've seen every photograph of Freddie Mercury ever shot and to see something new still enlivens the fangirl in me. It thrills me to think there is still more to see.

I came across a Tumblr called My Fangirl Problems, a depository where fangirls create faux memes to articulate the habits and anxieties arising from their musical obsession. Although much of it relates to the tastes of the next generation (think, Bieber or One Direction), I have to smile when I read it. I love to relate to the problematic problem of loving them far too much. When I read those posts, I'm back there, in Year 8, with a locker full of Queen clippings, thinking: Why did I have to choose the most popular band in the world to fall in love with?

What's fascinating is the varying tones of their frustration: ... when you see them kiss fans in photos, ... when you try to convince everyone that age is just a number, ... when your favourite fanfic never gets updated. Sure, some of it relates to the impossibility of a genuine romantic interaction, but much of it relates to time, money or technological restraints. I saved the JPG of the problem that stung me most: ... when you can't find anyone to talk to about them because no one you know likes them as much as you do.

I want to assure them. One day, you will have the money to go see them in concert. One day, you won't have school on their birthday. One day, you will find someone who totally gets you. But even then, I possess that very knowing pomposity that would irk any phantom fangirl. I never would have accepted such assurances, because much like everyone else, no matter what conversations I had or connections I made, no one else seemed to understand what it meant to harbour that intense breed of love that was both very real and very made-up.

I still feel it. I derive all kinds of lessons from his music and character and in this, my twentieth year of fangirlism. I can say with a high degree of certainty that I'll love him forever. For now, however, the frustrations of the hormonal fangirl have lessened and I no longer have to think of that loneliness that one stung me. It's more than a serendipitous sequence of chance connections, having conversations that send the heart racing and the mind reeling. It's that odd understanding that no matter what the group or musician, when it comes to that intense breed of musical love, the feelings are vastly synonymous.

I see now that the legacy and the frustration of my fangirlism does not necessarily exist in that search for connection. It's that endless process of working out the parameters of my passion, analysing it and trying to work out how they managed to secure such an unbelievably high degree of loyalty and fascination.

100 Holland Road