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.

Glamourous Glue

Some months ago, I abandoned a piece about the ambiguity of glamour. At the time, I had immersed myself in cautionary pop-tales about pretty teenage girls falling headlong into drug addiction. I tried to make sense of why alarming messages were so frequently accompanied with beautiful imagery. I returned to the glorious scene of Christiane F., the scene of junkie-friends, shrieking and running down the tiled hallways of Berlin's Bahnhof Zoo, occasionally tumbling but never stopping. They were running feverishly, with David Bowie's Heroes playing in the background. It's like they were rushing forth like the heroin running through their veins.

It's an allegory that's been sitting at the pit of my stomach for some time now. Never digesting, never making sense. I was reminded of it, when I saw a picture I'd saved of Gia Carangi, a model and heroin addict who succumbed to HIV/AIDS in 1986. Her beauty and her antics are commonly discussed, in tones of reverence and horror. Stories circulate, such as the legend of the November 1980 Vogue spread, that contained (arguably) visible track-marks on her arms. The tragedy of it is exacerbated by her youth, her femininity, her alluring sense of glamour. She somehow obliterated that traditional preconception: a pretty young girl shouldn't be mixed up with that sort of thing!

I suppose it will be some time before I work out what it all means; what is the function of the cautionary tale in teen literature, what is the importance of veracity in the retelling of the drug tale, what is the role of glamour in making that very warning believable. When I saw Gia's photograph just before, I was instantly reminded of that Frou Frou lyric: there's beauty in the breakdown. I can only assume that I'm turning to that perversely romantic notion that we can unravel and we can deteriorate and no one need stop us. We can self-destruct and yet, it can still be beautiful.