A while ago, back when Fopp was still in business and my hair was still dyed red and I still wasn’t even half way through a quest that has lead to this disturbing yet holy place of contentment, I brought an album for 73p.
I actually thought it was an album by The Liars. A Brooklyn arty indie noise outfit fronted by a man who got to have sex with Karen O on a regular basis at one point in his life. There’s a picture on the front of a man with a bunny nose and bunny ears sat on the floor in checked pajamas looking batshit crazy and eating Easter eggs out of a basket. A picture like that coupled with a low low price coupled with the knowledge that it contained music by a man who, at one time, had regularly had sex with Karen O… ‘Cool’, I thought. I gave it to my heterosexual life partner and watched as she flirted with the man behind the counter in that toying-with-the-lines-of-masculine-and-feminine-without-even-knowing-it way of hers (something which people either ‘get’ and instantly fall in love or dismiss just as quickly and lose out) and got further money off the one pound asking price with her employee discount that she was only supposed to use in the shop she worked in… ‘Cool’, I thought.
When I got it home I realized it was an album called ‘Liars’ and was actually by Todd Rundgren.
Here’s what I know about Todd Rundgren:
- Jackie from That’s 70’s Show liked him
- Liv Tyler thought he was her dad till she was 10
- That’s it.
I filed it away in my CD collection, between offerings by Josh Rouse and Sahara Hotnights (alphabetizing my CDs is one of the most fully satisfying tasks I can ever imagine doing. I am that person) fully intending to give it at least one cursory listen but never quite getting round to doing, and then forgetting about it.
Cut to a year and a half later: I’ve inherited an external hard drive and am converting all my music to MP3s. To the untrained eye all that is different from then to now is that the red hair is now a white blonde. Mostly because all the battle scars I got from this intense journey I went on, this intense ordeal I went through learning about myself and the world and myself IN the world were all internal. You don’t see the changes but they are very tangible and real. I get to ‘R’ in the joyous MP3 conversion game and open up the album ‘Liars’ and take out the CD and place it in my laptop and copy the music to the external hard drive. Whilst I am waiting for this to happen I look at the liner notes and read this:
‘All of these songs are about a paucity of truth. At first they may seem to be about other things, but that is just a reflection of how much dishonesty we have accepted in our daily lives. We are raised from birth to believe things that cannot be proven or that are plainly not true. People will often brag of their honesty, when there is so much they have simply chosen to ignore or leave unexamined.
The fact is, we are terrified of the truth’
And I think, ‘shit off’, that’s literally what I said, out loud, to myself (and the dog who was sat looking at me balefully from my bed) ‘how did Todd Rundgren just look into my soul and my past/present/future? Of all the people in the world! Todd-fucken-Rundgren!’
Because this is everything I just learned over the time from when I brought the album to the time when I first opened it up. All of that was written down, waiting for me to discover, and I never knew! If only I’d read those last two sentences in particular a year and a half ago I could have saved a LOT of time and effort getting to where I am now.
Except, that in itself is a lie, if I’d have read it a year and a half ago I would have gone ‘hmm’ not ‘shit off’ and then thought about something else; Edward Norton’s facial hair or a sketch from Mr Show and, from there, moved along to other pressing concerns. This isn’t a lesson that can be taught, it’s not even an experience that can be put into words (though I continue to try), it’s just something that you have to do.
Here’s the thing: my superhero ability, if you chose to call it that (and I do), is seeing everything and everyone not as they want but as they are. In the Emerald city where, seemingly, all anyone else can see is the Wizard I can see the Wizard AND the man behind the curtain. The illusion of truth and the truth itself.
I’ve had this ability for a long time but it took me forever to work out the correct settings; which button did what, which lever goes where. I was given the raw materials but the instructions were written in Swedish, I could not figure out how to make the blasted thing go. I tried my darnest though and sometimes, lord knows how, but sometimes I’d find it chugging merrily along… But then there was always that worrying rattle in the back, sometimes it would cough, splutter, and stop altogether and I would be left to completely start over building this power up again from scratch. This past summer I gave myself time to deconstruct everything, learn Swedish and make it all work in a logical manner.
Metaphorically speaking of course.
In that time frame I’ve had two stand out conversations with two different people that confirmed this ability’s existence. I wasn’t sure if it was real or if it was a little trick my mind was playing on me but then, in Geneva, in a Portugese restaurant, with an overflowing ashtray and a litre of beer in front of me, with an old bearded man watching suspiciously from the corner a boy said to me ‘well, it’s like the Matrix isn’t it. Some people realize the red pill exists but they still decide to take the blue pill’. I don’t think I gave away the dance inside that my consciousness was doing but I knew exactly what he meant and everything went ‘click’. It was glorious. (It was particularly awesome as I’d become obsessed with red pill/blue pill metaphor having recently discovered Gnosticism and it’s relation to that film. Which he didn’t know about). Many months later, in a car speeding along the motorway towards Portsmouth at 4am I had a similar conversation with a different man about the lies people tell themselves just to survive. The mental blocking they do just to make sure they are kept bathed in the dull glow of pretense rather than the harsh light of reality.
I knew then that I wasn’t the only one who felt the way I felt. I could breathe this big sigh of relief. I don’t think either of these gentlemen know the effect their conversations had on me but they did, profoundly. It’s taken me a while to absorb all that profoundness but I needed that time to roll these ideas around and understand them completely.
It’s something that has, on occasion, driven me very close to madness. We all have superhero abilities that are our salvation and our downfall. It’s the way the world works. You may have the ability to charm everyone around you and make them feel better about themselves without them knowing why and yet still feel lonely. You might be able to make people think whatever you want them to - yet desperately yearn for someone to know when you’re lying. My deliverance and my cross to bear is seeing the cracks between the pictures you’ve put up on your wall that were supposed to hide and distract from those cracks.
I know how to work this ability. I know it’s not just all in my head anymore but now I need to work out how I can use it to save the world and, more importantly, myself.
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1 comment:
Effing brilliant.
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