Firstly, can I just say that title implies that the working class have to strive to be world class. Like…it just compounds the percieved “working class” stigma to me. But, hey, that’s probably just me.
I digress.
I guess it could have had a worse title like, say, “Working Class Made Good” or something. I dunno. “The Overachievers”? Lol Who knows?
Anyway!
I enjoyed the interview. But as I drifted in and out of my interrupted sleep through the night, filled with all these bloody hang ups playing out in my mildly lucid dreams and parts of the interview replayed over in my mind, I had questions that I’d love to ask Jim. Like, for example – what kinds of things did he write when he was younger? He talked about needing to write out a dialogue that was in his head. So, was it just…ideas? Was it an internal monologue? Did he write lines of poetry? Did he write passages of fiction? Was it observational stuff? Just like things he seemed to do when he became a songwriter? That observational thing, “the things people say, the things you read, the things you see, the things you think about…” (which he says in the interview on the picture disc interview that was released whenever it was…1982?)
Also, I’d love to know if he remembers the first thing he ever borrowed from Govanhill library that day his dad took him there to get his library “ticket” as he calls it (we were issued library cards in Oz – okay, it may have still been paper at the time, but it was deemed a “card”). I wonder if he ever borrowed music. The talk of the library always reminds me of borrowing their music from the library. Having a clear memory of borrowing and listening to New Gold Dream once or twice and …. I dunno what happened. Why it didn’t seem to chime with me then because other things in their catalogue obviously did and I was quite the fair-weather fan then.
Anyway…I am getting SSOOOO distracted from getting this assignment done. YES! I’m talking uni, again! And God knows it SHOULD be my priority. But here I am…again…going on about this man! Bloody hell!!!!!
I’m writing about Delphi and the Sanctuary of Apollo. At the sanctuary are treasuries and dedications that the city-states of Greece constructed as gestures of honour to Apollo and the oracle at Delphi.
I feel like I have my own treasury here, to my “god”. The “Priptonian Treasury”, filled with a scarily large iconography.
On that note….
You can watch the interview HERE – also you can hear the 1982 interview I mentioned in the post HERE
Thanks for your blog on the interview I did with Jim.
Good point re the title of the podcast. Let me give you a little insight… I called it that because personally I wanted to show examples of people who started out working class but achieved world class status (bearing in mind, world class may mean a lot of things to a lot of people).
By no means should working class people feel the need to be ‘world class’ (and I know loads of people, including many within my inner family and friends circle who couldn’t care less). But on the flip side, I also believe that many people who are from poorer backgrounds cannot imagine achieving things that they would consider world class.
They feel put in their box before they have even started (could be by having no contacts, not having the positive mental attitude, not being educated to the highest levels, being surrounded by others who don’t think it’s possible, or simply just not believing in themselves).
This series is about giving hope and inspiration, and proving that you really can do it, if you want to. Not just for working class people, but for anyone.
Appreciate you taking the time out to comment – and yes, I wanted to ask Jim many of those things too but we had a short amount of time as he had nipped out of rehearsals days before his world tour – maybe next time 🙂
Hi Lynn,
Wow! I never expected to have you visit my blog or see my post, let alone respond to it! Thanks so much for responding. You also highlighted to me all the typos I had in my post. Yikes!
Your explanation for the name of your podcast makes a lot of sense, especially in terms of wanting it to be something that is wholly aspirational. I certainly fall into most of the examples you mentioned when it comes to feeling put into a box when coming from a poor background. A case in point was something a vocational teacher once said to me. See, I grew up with three of my four siblings with a lone parent (my mum). We had shelter, food on the table, received birthday and Christmas presents, never wore ragged clothes, but sometimes my mum would have to visit food banks so we could eat. It was incredibly tough on her and she shielded us from a lot of her struggles. Sometimes she didn?t cope. My family situation never felt out of the norm to me, although I was aware most kids at school had both parents. The term ?dysfunctional family? was used often in the 70s and 80s. I never felt it applied to my own circumstances until a teacher told me that I came from a ?dysfunctional family?. I felt insulted to be branded this way. I told my mum when I went home, telling her how outraged I was this teacher branded us like this. My own idea of the definition of a ?dysfunctional family? was parents that fought and argued in front of their children, and children who were neglected – not fed or clothed properly, or even worse, were homeless.
I?m not sure the point I wanted to make with that – perhaps it just compounded to me that if that was how I was viewed then I probably would never really amount to nothing so there wasn?t much point in trying to climb out of the box you?re placed in.
I think I worded myself wrong. The point I was trying to make was a lot of working class people are ALREADY world class but I didn?t articulate it correctly in my post.
I think Jim has probably grown really tired and bored of me, but I haven?t with him. He has been such a massive inspiration to me and I have done things in the past 8 years of being a Simple Minds fan that I never imagined I would do and a big part of that is down to him.
After more years than I care to admit I am finally pursuing a university degree and it makes me feel really uncomfortable to admit this because I feel it not in my nature to allow myself to feel these things, but I feel proud for sticking at the study and doing the work and studying. Some days I allow myself to feel amazed at myself for what I?m doing and achieving. At long last.
Finally – I?d love the opportunity of a FIRST time to interview Jim, let alone a ?next time?! Lol.
Thanks again, Lynn, and sorry for waffling on at you in reply.