Back in 1986, I would take the tube home to my shitty little bedsit in the arsehole of the universe, Neasden NW10, listening to the concert I’d just recorded on my trusty Sony WM-D6, a device that rather quaintly was the most expensive purchase I had ever made at the time.
A few times, that meant listening to a Dead Can Dance concert that I’d just recorded. As I listened, I’d look at the corporate drones around me, with their gold cuff links and expensive, silly-looking pinstripe suits. What a different world they must live in, I would always think to myself.
I was 19 then. 19 years on, I’ve doubled in age, but, essentially, not much has changed. I’m still a scruffy black-clad bastard and the pinstripes and grey hair of the business world are still sitting opposite me, hiding behind their copies of The Times and averting their gaze when we make eye contact. My Walkman is gone, but I’m still listening to Dead Can Dance, be it in OGG format now, on my audio jukebox or whatever you want to call it.
Enigma of The Absolute formed a fitting backdrop this morning for my walk through Hyde Park, beginning at Hyde Park Corner. No other DCD song seems to more fittingly embody the desolation and isolation of urban living. Memories of listening to this song through my headphones in 1986 as I traipsed through the dismal, rainy streets of London flooded my mind.
I walked from Hyde Park Corner, around the lake and on to Lancaster Gate, before heading into Kensington Gardens. It was bloody cold, but as the rain beat against my face and was chilled by the wind, it seemed somehow appropriate, fuelling my pensive mood and brooding sense of having lived a long time on this earth, my memories feeling so distant now, but no less vivid and all the more poignant for it.
London is infested with branches of Starbucks now. I counted three in the vicinity of Notting Hill Gate alone. I picked one and tried their mocha, which turned out to be a ghastly mistake. It was as weak as dishwater. Still, they served it in a real mug with a handle, not some crappy disposable cup with a cardboard band to stop me from scalding myself.
I walked down Ladbroke Road and then on down Portobello Road, Gone were Plastic Passion and Young Blood, collectors’ record shops where I once spent many an unaffordable pound. Rough Trade‘s still there on Talbott Road, but seems somehow irrelevant now. That’s probably just my age showing through, though. I realised I was past it when I looked in the window at their list of Top 100 records of 2004 and realised to my dismay that I didn’t own a single one of them.
After staring at the spot where I used to stand with friends on a tape stall every Saturday, thinking of the days when I would trade tapes to scrape by, the rain started to come down in earnest, so I made for Ladbroke Grove tube station and made my way back to the hotel.
Fuck, I really do like London. I can imagine owning a second home here. Somewhere around Kensington Garden Road would suit me; in one of the mews around there. I shudder to think what a house in that locale costs these days, though.
Still, apart from the fact that I haven’t yet bought a first house, I’m largely trying to recapture a romantic period in London’s musical history that is no longer there. Were it not for my sense of nostalgia and cherished memories, there would be nothing particularly significant about the area, although it would still retain some very appealing houses.
A human life simply isn’t long enough. How is one supposed to do all of the growing up one needs to do in order to achieve any degree of revelation and self-awareness, and yet still have enough time to act on this newly found enlightenment?
There are so many opportunities open to us nowadays, opportunities that even the last couple of generations could not have taken for granted. The likes of Sarah and me have at our disposal the wherewithal to move to any part of the world that we see fit to inhabit. We could be living in London right now, with a set of close friends we have yet to meet. Or we could be living in Amsterdam, again with friends who are still strangers to us in our current lives.
It’s all there for the taking, is what I’m saying. It’s all but one decision away. We can go anywhere and do anything. Whereas most people just accept their life for what it is or apply minor tuning and adjustments, I have never been afraid to turn my life upside down and begin anew in a different setting.
One unfortunate side-effect of this is that there has never been any continuity in my life. Each new phase is distinct from the previous ones and it can feel very odd to provoke memories of them by retracing one’s footsteps and reliving forgotten moments in time. Friends from one phase are mostly left behind when one moves on to the next. Such human bridges are necessary to link from one existence to the next and provide a sense of smooth progression and interwoven experience.
It’s all rather bewildering, really. If you never have a true sense of purpose, never really know why you are here (or firmly belive that there simply isn’t a purpose to any individual’s life), then you are lost, forever seeking meaning in a world that is devoid of any.
My life could have gone in so many different directions at so many different points in time. If I had never left London… If I had stuck with my musical ambitions… If Sarah and I hadn’t crossed paths… All of these are plausible alternate realities, each of which could have been lived out, if not for the course of history.
And so I continue to seek meaning and to make some sense of my life. I already deem this trip a success, as it’s given me the distance and solitude I need to think profoundly about my life, affording me a spirtitual perspective that is impossible to attain in the spiritually bereft miasma that is the United States, an environment that literally sucks the vitality out of me in a way that I still do not fully comprehend.
Impending fatherhood no doubt contributes fuel to my mind’s furnace and encourages my waxing lyrical about the many pathways down which we may travel. I want to afford my baby every opportunity in life, but mostly just the freedom to think without constriction, that he or she may conjur up thoughts and feelings to rival the landscapes and tapestries upon which my own rambling spirit muses. We may be locked in the prison of flesh and bone, but our spirits and minds are free to meander wherever we allow them the liberty to roam.
It took me all of my twenties and some of my thirties for my mind to mature and achieve a degree of self-enlightenment that would avail me of some inner peace. Yet, the quest for inner knowledge goes on, confused by the vast array of available options, disabled by fears concerning which course to take, invigorated by the knowledge that absolutely nothing is unattainable if only one sets one’s mind to it, and the finite boundaries of a human lifetime.
It pays to think about your life. I’m glad that this trip has removed me from my stifling environment and allowed me a moment of clarity, however fleeting.