It was a couple of months before Oxegen and the Chili Pepper Epiphany, and I was walking home from an interview.

The discussion that morning, late in May, had largely centred on people more qualified than I who were nonetheless not suited to work in that company. And that discussion triggered something, because the interviewer had made certain charitable assumptions and I felt good about myself, and yet there was still something wrong.

My head gets clogged up. Does it ever happen to you? Nowadays, taking less for granted than ever before, I do wonder how easy it would be for me to slip into madness. My younger brother, let’s call him Cauliflower since nicknames are hip with the web, says that mental illnesses are like the rim of a bell curve of human characteristics and some of us, further left than the majority, are blessed with certain useful characters that a further minority are cursed with just too much of .

He has a degree in biology so maybe he’s right. Does my head gets clogged up because I’m a little far right or left? You may have noticed a certain capacity for crazy, no? It’s never meant in earnest, but the thoughts come anyway and the funniest, the weirdest or the most interesting usually get chosen on impulse. Or, do they sometimes compel? I’ve always been a dreamer, never able to concentrate on my homework as a kid (like a weakly inspired Pan’s Labyrinth), but sometimes those dreams are paranoid, or conceited.

I had a game of chess the other night with Curly Dee. She isn’t used to it and I’m not either, but I used to play it the odd time and we’ve now spent a few nights bent over the new chessboard we just bought… Often the game involves D getting an explanation of how chess works, and then actually having the temerity to beat me. At the start though, it would almost always end in stalemate because neither of us could pull off a victory. I understand the pattern of the game much better now, but too many lapses of concentration and in the end it’s down to who made the most mistakes. So when we played the other night we thought it would be fun to see how ridiculous it would get if we had to take our goes immediately. Curly D took a few seconds anyway, but by that time I’d had time to look at a few angles and for my part, moved the pieces instantly.

Unexpectedly, the game was over in under five minutes. Only two pieces taken. Perhaps it was a non-beginner’s luck against a beginner, but that’s not the point. Somehow I did actually achieve a certain clarity of thought that enabled me to see my way to the win, a sharp relief from my normal foggy thought, like skimming through notes for the first time before an exam, and like that clear, sunny morning in May, when I’d prayed my way out of a fog that only I could see.

And somewhere in this poem, first shown on furiousthinking in a rough draft form about a week after that day, but removed at some point when the website crashed, is the meaning of my clogged brain. I’ll tell you about the prayer and the poem later because even if you’re in a different region of the bell curve you may just get different symptoms of the same disease. Enough has been written for one blog-post tonight, what do you think? This is the polished version of the poem, but only to my humdrum standards:

Control

Samsara surrounds around this land and
Revolves, evolves, dissolves and resolves anew
Repairing wounds made bare that come ever undone
To trap again; to surround and constrict until cracking at last
Crackling fire licks ash, forming ash, light to night, night re-lights.

My life spreads before me like a disc.
Like a disc I cannot go beyond myself though many revolutions pass.
My mind, broken in many painful places is
Like a scratched disk whose wounds disrupt its’ song,
Accumulating discord – spewed out with every replay of the wheel.

I throw away the disc, but my hand clenches.
“Drop control”, God says. As I try too hard
It is stuck to me, by my sight’s desire; I am
Enraptured by the swirling, shining gold, yellow, red, blue hues,
Beholding the turning of my life, revolving, unchanging, bounded, flat, safe

Grey haze graces now: a drizzle drowsily descends from a third dimension
“Give up control”, it says and I don’t know what that means.
Blind beyond the rim, I think “How can I change?” when,
Dissent descends. The fog coalesces; fog confesses an iron grey bar.
I am hit. I see myself. I am hit. I cannot move.

The bar is shiny. I had not noticed that.
I see gleanings seep, glittering deeply as they reap
My attention. “Not so swirly, but bright” I remark.
There is sky now, outside, beyond the rimmed reflection.
Should I go? I should go. Have to, Should, Must, NO.

There is no disc, Just a glitch of my mind.
No weavings of evil with holy light,
Just light that will not stop and evil
That can’t persist. No I can’t hold my life.
Now giving up what I never had, I look beyond.

Illusion is everything and everything illusion?
Illusion is a word but whose word? Not mine.
And the speaker has spoken the words I have broken
So if I’m to be real, I must be re-spoken, forgiven through unbroken speech of love.
He died for me. I dispose of my lies. He rose. I will follow his tough acts to unfading joy.

A child had been lost by some family at the last concert. I wanted to know if she had been found but when I asked, the security guard thought I was asking if he’d found my kidney, so I never found out. We trudged on. There were a few girls dancing to disco music at their car and asking for reassurance that no, we weren’t leaving because of their music.

And that was it. We drove back home with 1 tinned rice pudding, 2 tinned scotch broths, 2 tinned stews, 3 tinned beans, 2 tinned curries, lots of parboiled rice, 1 jar coffee (fair-trade), camping pots, 2 plastic mugs, 2 plastic plates, 1 packet of peanuts, a few marshmallows, 1 jar chocolate spread, sleeping bags, airbed, torch with siren and flashy lights in case of emergency, torch, mini torch, 8 plastic bottles of cheap beer, 4 cans of beer, 7 cans of stout, a little water, a bag of light clothes, coats for the rain, toiletry and Oxegen wrist bands that we only figured out how to remove 3 days later.

But I left with a promise, a sense of freedom from dropping control that was an echo of something experienced just a few months earlier. I wondered if it was the beginning of some new spiritual passage. After all, it had been a while.

Aaah, just thinking of the last act sends my mind awash with pure peaceful fluid gold. Two circumstances then conspired to disrupt this peace.

First, the World Cup match viewed on the cinema screen at the camping site was now over. There had been a minor riot (ie. A few chairs being thrown at people, no one actually maimed) because of people standing in the way of other viewers.

The second factor concerned the Chili Peppers’ massive popularity.

Lastly, it wasn’t raining. I reckon at least eighty thousand poured into the main stage’s arena, but then I can’t seem to even count beyond two.

So it began with a gang of maybe five (?) ribald Ulstermen pushing their way through the crowd to get to the front, which, in particular, was my own personal back. Unfortunately it seemed to be stuck in one place. As I turned to see what the problem was, it seemed as though one of them, a small fellow, was having difficulty and wasn’t entirely happy with being squashed. I chivalrously asked the wiry red haired ringleader if he was alright. Did he need help? Thus ensued a conversation about the previous behaviour of the red head.

He had been thrown out earlier for fighting or something. He demonstrated this with some non contact elbow digs to my face. “Yes, that’s terrible!” I agreed, about his predicament, and allowed the monologue to filter out by turning slightly away. How rude of me, but there you go. But this wasn’t the end of it!

No. No, discomfort ensued aplenty. You see, if you remember, the Ulstermen were positioned behind me. They weren’t in front of me. Now to get around this difficulty, this cosmic injustice (perhaps it was caused by some slight error in a planet’s orbit, but it was going to be rectified right now) the red head attempted to use advanced physical laws to break through.

I was well aware of the nature of quantum tunnelling however. There is a certain chance that a quantum particle will jump spontaneously from its state of stability into another stable state. Obviously, given the low probabilities, the relatively low energy of the guy pushing against me, my substantial girth (relative to the most probable distance for the particle to jump) and the vast number of particles in the body of a wiry red head, quantum tunnelling through me would take millions if not billions of years, by which stage the concert would be over.

I turned to address this point to my fellow in case he had merely miscalculated his correlation function, but understanding dawned when the little imp slipped through the space that opened on account of there being less of me in the way.

Curly Dee kindly pointed out that I shouldn’t let people through so I stopped letting people through. I was beginning to get annoyed. Was this going to continue for the entire concert?

By this stage the sun had set. The stage was set: a single figure of red and yellow and all spangled colours, a hunched humanoid made entirely of spice, alone in the darkness and rocking his shoulders from side to side, rolling his head from side to side, moving his waist from left to right and back again to time with the sound of his haloed guitar and the beat of the band he stood for. Weird. Good.

Music had become a living creature, no longer confined to the single sense of sound. Several glorious minutes passed as the spangled arms rocked his guitar as though it were a baby. Then a new sound began as he was joined by a golden storm of voices. The soundwaves would barrel at us, yet only to carress at the moment of impact. “Lie back” the sound said, “Lie back and let me take you with me”.

But then the crowd moved against this concept, against me and my beloved bundle of life, and I moved to protect her. Like a wave the people fell backwards and to the side, then forwards knocking over every body in their path, except me and the girl protected by the perimeter of my arms. I was the hero, but unappreciated, and a tension now held my body that was at odds with the music, and I didn’t want to be near the front any more.

As though telepathic, my wife knew how I was feeling. She told me to relax. Curl E.D. had used the words, “Remember God” earlier, seeing my rage at those who were hell-bent on achieving something small for themselves at great cost to others. She repeated those words now.

Pah!

It wasn’t working. We started moving backwards, despite my surface martyrdom and the severe lack of space. Eventually I relinquished; simply held her hand. But when crowd-wave burst across us to the right, blowing Curly Dee almost to the ground, I stopped her fall and became even more afraid for her safety. Only one thing for it: What did she mean by “Remember God”? This wasn’t easy in the midst of chaos.

Well, rather than talk to Curly Dee about God, why not talk to God himself? I believe my prayer went something like this: “Aaargh! God! Help me to function.”

God said something like this in my spirit: Succumb, relax. I AM. I provide.

I said: Ok.

And it was just a concert, after all. In a way, we are always vulnerable. We really don’t know what could hit us at any time.

I stopped fighting, accepting my circumstances and God’s will for me, remembering that my circumstances, financially, socially, mentally, physically and emotionally have never been down to my own providence and only by relying on those circumstances, those graces; working to mirror God’s grace and enhance them, can we pretend to God’s authority over life. So God looks after Curly Dee too. I allowed the crowd to push us both, and always the wave retracted again, pushing us to our original position. I became a surfer, not of the crowd but of my God given surroundings. Ironically, at that time I don’t know if I’d ever been more relaxed.

For the rest of the concert I simply enjoyed the greatest live performance I will possibly ever see.
I remember the human chili singing a little ditty about loving Ireland in the morning, loving Ireland in the night etc.
I remember my delight when they took a song of Simon and Garfunkle’s and made it their own.
I remember them honouring us with a song they hadn’t played in fifteen years and I remember their playful mockery.

But what touched me the most was the purity in the lead singer’s voice. Each element of the music is distinct. The man-made instruments often rock lively and sometimes simply groove, but that voice at all times breaks down the barrier between the listener’s mind and the music. Too gentle, too soothing to be defended against it takes full advantage of the bodies on stage that have somehow become as much a part of the music as the sound that surrounds us, and it enters your soul but brings with it the sharp beat of the entire song so that you have fallen into a storm that carries you until the music stops.

And then..

Nobody wants it to stop. The familiar cry of, “ONE MORE TUNE” is raised, and raised; and raised. But there is no answer. And yet the masses cannot bear to be left alone without the beauty, and the cry resounds again, falls to a murmur and rises to a choral shout again and again. And there is a drum beat, but it is a single drum beat. There is no light on the stage. No sign of anyone, but we definitely heard a drum beat.

Rise, the cry again! “ONE MORE TUNE”! And it all happens again, and there is a drum beat. The third time it becomes a fragment of a theme, but falters again. Eventually, there is light. The beat does not end. And with massive applause, said to be the world’s greatest live band, The Red Hot Chili Peppers play their last songs to the end of the festival. And this is worth a little more than a picture.

Out came a bunch of office workers to a rousing cheer. Picture a man in plain smart dress beginning to talk BUT AS he goes ON you reaLISE… he. is. talkinginawaythat rhyyymes. And if everyone talked in this way the world would be SO MUCH BETTER, So Much fullofstyle.. (and bad grammar). And as he gets on with saying hello to the audience a song starts, and I’m not sure how or when, and he seems to be introducing the band, Franz Ferdinand.

But their songs held more than great timing, a beat to dance to and good voice emphasis. Their songs generally contained repetition of single pieces of a melody before they moved on to the next part of the melody coinciding with change in beat, instilling a wonderful sense of adventure, adventure perfectly reflected in the singers eyes, staring off into the distance, one arm outstretched, fingers splayed to control the tremors of music emanating from deep within his soul, body twitching to the resultant beat. Brilliant. Plus they are Scottish. They have cool accents.

Now, since you’ve been such good readers, I’ve gone and drawn you an actual picture. Don’t be givin out about me leavin me camera in the car now. Or I’ll bate ya.

Setting

BellX1 aired themselves for our benefit, followed by Placebo as we wandered across the sunny, swampy field. I think BellX1 were actually singing specifically for me, desperately trying to get in my good graces. It worked. They are good. Food! This is where I gave in to the pasta, having first aimed for Abrakebabra only to have my world turned upside down. What do you think it means, for Abrakebabra, to be kebabless and full of mere burgers? To this day it niggles at my dreams.

But this is not a picture of Placebo or BellX1. They’re just part of the mood. You see, my photographs are so good they are like paintings that portray images of photographical quality and yet explore the mood, the inner thoughts; they are a photograph taken deeper inside the head than the eyes. That’s why, around the perimeter of this photo you can see lots of other stuff. That is no ordinary picture frame. No. It’s my mind, soul and spirit. That’s how good a photographer I am.

Foreground

This picture is of The Kaiser Chiefs, a lot of alliteration with no deliberation, making them sound rather catchy. Or is it cocky? Think of things that describe cockiness. What about, quick, smart, na na na naa na, one sidedness, unstoppable momentum (until it lands you flat on your face), sing-songy blasé attitude? Those same words describe The Kaiser Chief’s tunes. Why did I not realise this until I saw them live? You’ll see.

He played a couple of great tunes and then told us about their upcoming album in the Autumn. His speech was a little slurred and I thought he might be drunk when he said he might, “play two, uuuU, or Three” songs from the new album.

If we were his worshiping children he would be the dad who needs to constantly rebuild his ego, showing them what tricks he can do (throwing his mike up in the air, kicking a rugby ball into the audience). Puberty must have hit in at the show because I started realising that he didn’t really build his kids’ confidence up, feeding his own needs instead of ours. Who benefited from the Mexican Wave he made us do?

They do have some good tunes, and when he played one from the new album, it was a good song. But when he asked us to shout, ‘It’s a hit’ or, ‘It’s a miss’ it was the last straw. “IT’S A MISS” we all shouted (being Irish).

The Irish sun, remembering it was summer, came out to confess in apologetic tones how it had suffered from depression, how it was bullied by the clouds, but how looking at things in perspective, it had realised that life wasn’t about it, rather about all the humans who were trying to have a good time.

The Kooks music suits a sunny day, yet the contrast with Saturday’s weather caused an off-key overreaction in the audience. Happiness is a good buzz, but this version didn’t match the gig.

OK, a descending can of alcohol smacking the back of your head is funny, I suppose.

However, due to rampant crowd-surfers I couldn’t get a clear snapshot of The Kooks. I’m sorry. This picture doesn’t show you much.

It had been hard to decide whether to sleep in our wet, bet down tent or go to our car. Thankfully though, we were spared this very difficult dilemma by the presence of Curly Dee’s brother in our tent for a second night.

And we saw that it was bad. And yet, we slept in that car until half three on Sunday afternoon,

which meant we were rushing to get to the Kooks on time, the second day.

But I forgot my camera again, so…

to be continued

I can’t remember what the weather was like at this point unfortunately, or I could spend more than a sentence on it.

After three modern bands it was refreshing to be brought back four decades (forty years). If anyone asks me about The Who’s music they will have to listen to my muffled murmur as I forget yet again that when I’m not talking to myself I have to raise my voice. I kept just shaking my head and going, “Who? Who are you?” but because they were singing those lyrics rather than out of any amazement. I should let you know now that that is the worst that my jokes are going to get. From here on it can only get better. Here, let me give you a massage to abate that permanent wince you’ve suddenly developed. Don’t complain if your computer is one of those primitive twenty first century things that can’t respond with soft firm hands to the massage message I’ve encoded here.

But they were breathtakingly original, despite the commonly acknowledged fact that forty years without breath is generally held to be bad for one’s health, and your music doesn’t quite seem so original after everyone else has developed its raw core into something else.

Their music and bright lights shone into darkness of my vantage further back up the shallow slope where the audience, erm, audiated? Our hosts had tested the weight of rock all through its epic journey up to present moment when it continued and continued and filled out to allow those musicians to stretch its tunes so they could play with it for longer, to meld one song into another, to play one piece for over ten minutes until they ended on exactly that thrill of a high pitched disco beat that they had started on, because those musicians owned the music.

They finished. We moved on. For the next act, the crowd wasn’t lively at the outset but when we left early to try catch James Brown, people were practically running towards the great sound coming from Boy Kill Boy’s tent.

James Brown’s act was sleazy.

What with the Arctic Monkeys gig finishing with a mass of miscalculations, we were looking forward to The Strokes. It was fortunate that we were, because the Strokes were up next.

Yet again though, I had to risk forfeiting my place near the front due to my impolite bladder. I purposefully didn’t take any photos of the toilets. Purposefully. There were certain times (we later discovered) that the toilets were cleaned, and we learned to make full use of those times. Relieved, I met up with Curly Dee to find her eating from a very small tray of costly yet tasteless chips. In a moment of desperation she asked the woman at the stall if she could have a black plastic bag, and to our delight became sole proprietor of said bag. Two guys then came along to ask for a couple of bags for themselves and were promptly refused. “It could have been us.” we heard them moan as they stared longingly at Curly Dee’s back.

They were late, and not fashionably. Everyone knows it just doesn’t work when the waitee is rained upon, but the Strokes are actually proper entertainers who really know how to make the audience feel appreciated so we got over it. And so began those dominant instrumental tones, the plain, flowing mixture of strong gentle voice and heavy mood. Perfectly timed, the sun left us to provide a setting of darkness for an explosion of sound and light. Like many bands they spoke of their emotions rather than the situations that inspired them, lacking the sense of ordinary friendship in the previous groups but replacing it with an open flame of feeling. There was style in the timing of their words but it was outspoken and simple. Just look at the honesty in one of the songs they played: “I’ve got nothing to say”. And they sang that line again and again, and it seemed to affect me in some way I can’t quite put my finger on.

Arctic Monkeys came on. We were drenched. The rain intensified when I went to the toilet but couldn’t squeeze that much out for long, so we just soaked in the brilliant weave of artfully chosen words instead. I had enjoyed Hard-Fi but I really loved the Arctic Monkeys. Curly Dee had forgotten to wear a coat but it was ok cos she didn’t ask me if she could take my parka. But I’d forgotten to bring the warm, inside bit. It was freezing. I stood there against Curly Dee’s back, she shivering in my arms, as Mr. Arctic Monkey said, “Sunshine is for Pussies.” wishing I was a Pussy. We listened to more talk of actual stuff that actually happened in real life.

Words sharp, face blank, instead of moving with the music he contrasted it with a stillness that said: This stuff is true and you know it; I won’t try to pretend it’s anything more than what I say it is. His words were sharp, but he spoke in ordinary naked accents. Of course, anyone can talk about what’s happening in their lives, in a blog, in the pub, walking down the road when I jolly well feel like it, but that’s exactly the thrill of this music. The difference is that the words rhyme, all the time, leaving just a taste of lime for the price of a dime. Chime! This brings out the adventure in ordinary life while retaining the warmth. Kavanagh might approve (I’ll let you acknowledge my fine reference. It’s intelligent). And does their music subtly remind anyone else of some Guns and Roses classics by its meter and, just occasionally by its vocal expression?

clear, striking lyrics

I wanted to get that phrase into a sentence but couldn’t figure out how.

PS: Less is more, so technically speaking, one word is one worth a thousand pictures and if you didn’t enjoy this three hundred and forty seven word blog post, just take a moment to realise: IT SAVED YOU HAVING TO LOOK AT THREE HUNDRED AND FOURTY SEVEN THOUSAND PICTURES!!!

Despite the torrential downpour we weren’t going to waste our hard-earned money on lying in a tent all day. Actually, we decided the money for Oxegen would come out of our monetary wedding gifts, so it was someone else’s hard-earned cash, but we weren’t going to waste it all the same you’ll be glad to know. So Hard-Fi were delighted to see us, even if they didn’t show it. They’re a surly bunch that lot. Earlier in the day though, before we got to the main stage, Curly Dee’s brother told us to pray for it to stop raining and we told him we would. Remember Elijah? He prayed for it to stop raining and it did, for SEVEN YEARS. Well, he was a man just like us, so we thought we might as well give it a go. And just like Elijah, God answered and once more it stopped raining. For seven, ahem, minutes. Well, so what? Faith goes hand in hand with humility, and Elijah probably had a lot more reason to be humble than me and Curly Dee. He was from some backward country where they’d never even heard of a television or massive music stars, unless you count the poetry their prophets would have spouted out. Maybe we should have gotten Hard-Fi to pray, since they are the prophets of us ordinary folks’ shitty lives.

Anyway, we ended up near the barrier in front of the moshpit to one side of the stage (our left). The rain petered out to a miserable pattering, and their lead man gave a rousing speech about how we weren’t going to let the weather get us down. In phase with his music, he sang and spoke with down turned mouth and angry dissatisfaction in his eyes, biting off bits of banality and spitting them into his microphone to be amplified and hit us as a storm that made us forget the rain. Except once, when I noticed it was still raining and said to myself, “Hey what’s this all about? I thought I prayed for this to stop”.

So then something prompted me to start lecturing myself on global warming, and how if everyone who prayed for it to stop raining got their prayer answered then the Earth would end up like a desert or maybe a big ball of water, I don’t know, and then blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah was all I heard cos I just tuned out completely, my discussion being so boring like one of those maths lectures we used to have in college, you know the really bad ones that made us realise that to be good at mathematics you had to be bad at communication and to be bad at communication you had to have alcohol so going to the pub seemed like a better way to get through the year than going to lectures, until the exams started that is and we realised that while we were all by this stage genius mathematicians in terms of our ability, we hadn’t actually learned any of the stuff that the college wanted us to actually know (specifically).

But the flickering telly screen distracted me from the lecture I was giving my ever-captive audience. The man on the stage was playing a dressed up version of one of those piano-flute things that you can never bring yourself to respect as a valid instrument, and he was making it rock out a tune of sad despair, combining with the music of his musicians to wave a slow theme of wistful listlessness across the crowds. But not in the same way as a well timed fart in a crowded room. More wistful, you see. I was looking at the big screens more than at the stage, but it seemed funny when I remembered to look directly at the scene that this voice, a voice of indomitable, bitter fire spouting out tales of unacceptable tedium, a voice that currently filled the world of thousands, came from a single, small man dwarfed by the massive stadium on which he danced and sang. It kind of took some of the awe and fun away when I did think of it, but then the music would grow and shout with a beat that called my body to listen and become involved, breaking my distanced perspective and forcing me to enjoy a beautiful creation, man’s answer to the world he’d corrupted until he’d trapped himself in it.

And though I enjoyed the music, it is a song I could never compose from my own life even when my own circumstances are written in the songs. Bitterness is empty. Had it been I making a speech about the weather I would maybe have told the audience to accept the rain, not fight it; it was a humble reminder that no amount of music or human effort could dispel it but that we could make music and celebrate all the same because there is something wonderful about humanity. I applaud Hard-Fi’s stubbornness. Doubtless we all identify with the bitterness in their music, but there was no message of hope in their music, none that matched my beliefs or any I respect. But that’s the reason I’m not a star. Why am I not a preacher though, that’s the question?