Thursday, January 27, 2005
I had my seventeenth birthday in the middle of a one week trip around English universities. I did my A-levels on the Isle of Man, and my school organised visits to divers establishments so we could have an idea what we were applying to – campus, red brick, Higher Education college etc. This was 1995, before an HMV had even opened in Douglas, and the highpoint of each day was the few hours we were allowed to explore the great towns of the North West. It was on one of these trips that I decided to buy myself some birthday presents – I had already received something from home, a Stone Roses t-shirt – but the walkman had to be fed. So in Virgin Megastore in Manchester, I bought The White Album (understandable for a teenager with completist leanings), The Best of The Beach Boys (an attempt to recapture singalongs with my family on car journeys) and Neil Young’s Sleeps With Angels. I started when I remembered I had bought the last one. I don’t know what I could have been thinking, I had no other Neil Young albums to push me towards his later work. On the bus on the way back to our accommodation at Liverpool Hope University I even asked if we could put it on in the coach – those extraordinary lapses from stifling insecurity that happen at the oddest times when a teenager. I don’t remember what anyone thought of it.
I do remember something else. Rather, I remember a memory. One of the teachers accompanying us was always begging for acceptance from the cool kids. He swaggered down the aisle of the coach, mocking people in a self-conscious demonstration of his Scouse wit, and asked what I’d bought. He made a big show of the Beach Boys, thinking that comedy capital could be forged from this purchase, what teenager would want to listen to that? Of course everyone was delighted though, and demanded it be put on for all to hear. Whenever I’ve thought about it, and my friends and I used to reminisce a lot, when the tape rolled on to one of the choruses of “I Get Around”, myself and the four friends around me all spontaneously picked a different harmony part, and for a couple of bars achieved a balance we could never have hit with training. I realise now it could not have happened that way. We were recalling an idealised image; through our talk and desire we’d shaved off all edges to make something beautiful and precious out of nothing.
As you may guess, there’s not much going on at work today. Also, if you rephrased the above into one or two sentences, it’d be a bit like Proust. But without the beauty, skill or insight.
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I do remember something else. Rather, I remember a memory. One of the teachers accompanying us was always begging for acceptance from the cool kids. He swaggered down the aisle of the coach, mocking people in a self-conscious demonstration of his Scouse wit, and asked what I’d bought. He made a big show of the Beach Boys, thinking that comedy capital could be forged from this purchase, what teenager would want to listen to that? Of course everyone was delighted though, and demanded it be put on for all to hear. Whenever I’ve thought about it, and my friends and I used to reminisce a lot, when the tape rolled on to one of the choruses of “I Get Around”, myself and the four friends around me all spontaneously picked a different harmony part, and for a couple of bars achieved a balance we could never have hit with training. I realise now it could not have happened that way. We were recalling an idealised image; through our talk and desire we’d shaved off all edges to make something beautiful and precious out of nothing.
As you may guess, there’s not much going on at work today. Also, if you rephrased the above into one or two sentences, it’d be a bit like Proust. But without the beauty, skill or insight.
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