I miss that feeling of a bond. It is genuinely the thing that is the most heartbreaking aspect of this whole thing for me. I used to feel connected and now there is such a disconnect – which I feel stems from him, that is why I keep trying to push myself away (with very little success, it has to be said – like trying to walk unaided after an accident….I continue to need that crutch, no matter how painful it feels).
Yes, I make myself sick going over this stuff again and again! I’m sorry to bore you lot with it too. Sometimes I’m just analysing to convince myself I am not some psycho. I was just a normal fan that got a little swept away with stuff. Read too much into certain things. Invested WAAAAY too much, etc.
Here’s an example of how things still reel me in. How my mind wanders and then I end up questioning myself. Questioning him. Churning it over in my mind. Why does it hurt so much? Why does it matter so much?
So…
Each night I listen to podcasts of various sorts as I settle down in my bed. Firstly, I listen to the latest episode of The Archers. Skipping past the intro music, of course. This is a case in which Jim and I strongly disagree. He once said in an interview that he loves The Archers theme tune. I can’t bloody stand it to such an extent that I skip it when listening to the podcast. As soon as the spoken intro of the podcast is done; “you’re listening to Sunday’s/Monday’s/Tuesday’s/Wednesday’s/Thursday’s/Friday’s episode of The Archers from BBC Radio 4”, I hit the 20 second forward skip and that takes me to the last fading strains of the tune. Yes!
After The Archers, it depends on a matter of things: if I am absorbed in a certain series and there’s a new episode of it available that evening, whether I am in the mood for something darker and eerier or I want to have my mood lifted and listen to some comedy. Also, a variety of new comedy and satirical based shows are added on Fridays.
An example of last night’s listening: The Archers, then an episode of Killing Victoria (a series that discusses the various attempts that were made to assassinate Queen Victoria during her reign), then an episode of Just A Minute.
When I arrive at the BBC Sounds app, I see a list of the latest episodes of all the podcasts I am subscribed to (dozens!).
A couple of nights back the “Drama on 4” podcast revealed that there has been a BBC adaptation made of Siddhartha and I immediately thought of Jim. A bubble of enthusiasm formed within me. A real excitable jolt accompanied with a feeling of “Ooh, I must tell him about this!” And then a few seconds later I am cursing myself. “You stupid idiot! How are you going to tell him? There’s no way you can contact him now. All the ease there was in doing that by posting something on the SM FB page is gone. If you post it on SMOG, you’ll look like an idiot and people will wonder how the thing that you’ve posted is even relevant. And, also…you think he even CARES?! You sad, sad woman.”
But I used to do these things. I used to love that kind of interaction with him. I used to love it when he’d discuss the things that were taking his interest outside of SM and other music.
In the past (when you still could post to the SM FB page) I would post things to Jim that I thought might pique his interest. I’d share newspaper or magazine articles, maybe share an excerpt from a book. He used to do those kinds of things too. Post on SM FB certain articles he’d read and share his views on them. I know it would perplex a few fans here and there, wondering what the relevance of it all was and they’d accuse Jim of being too self-important, but to me, it just highlighted his human side. That he wanted to share things with us outside of the immediate business of the band made it feel less ‘corporate.’ Now, it couldn’t feel any more ‘corporate.’
The post from yesterday about Lucien and ‘chance meetings.’ He spoke about fans being ‘rarely intrusive’, which of course had me thinking whether my letters were deemed ‘intrusive.’ Can a letter be ‘intrusive’? For such a long time I felt such a strong desire to communicate with him. Those fleeting chance encounters – hardly truly by chance if you’re in a particular place for a Simple Minds concert, or you’ve gone to Sicily to stay in Villa Angela – but a genuine chance encounter would be away from all that. Literally just walking down the street. Again, in spite of myself, I left a comment on his post. Talking about how moving to Glasgow I had hoped that at some point, it might have led to one of those ‘chance meetings.’ The one thing I kept thinking about was how easy both he and Charlie found it to skulk around Glasgow last year to film pieces for Everything Is Possible – seemingly entirely unnoticed. I imagined wandering into Govanhill library to find him there. How exciting that would be. Also how intimidating too! I worried that even mentioning the move to Glasgow would throw up this ‘stalker’ idea again. Like we moved up here simply for the purposes of me being closer in geographical proximity to Jim. I almost added this to my comment (the image directly below), but thought better of it – scared the irreverent and self-deprecating joke would fall flat. I came across the image a few days before while looking through my blog’s media library for a suitable image to use featuring Cherisse.
I mentioned Bridlington, and said that I had snubbed him. Lol. I hadn’t. It remains something that is special to me. It is such a mix of everything that would happen and kept happening during my SM fandom and my encounters with Jim. I was so excited about being there and I was having a lovely time. The journey up was wonderful, even with the train being delayed getting into Hull for my connecting train to Bridlington itself. The little B&B I was staying at was lovely. The wonderful encounter I had with the two local children – a brother and sister, by the colourful piano placed on the street for public use. Scoffing a chip butty on the promenade. And then to top it all off, taking a stroll and seeing him out for a stroll. I saw him approaching me from the opposite direction. My heart was pounding so fast! I’m sure I flushed red just from the sight of him. Possibly by that point still far enough away that he hadn’t seen me flush red. I diverted my eyes almost immediately. But I quickly looked back again with a kind of disbelief that he was walking towards me. Of course, he then noticed me – or more that he noticed that I had noticed him and gingerly waved at me. Well, it appeared gingerly anyway. An action that implied acknowledgement that he had been seen but also fear that he’d been seen. The look on his face I read as “Oh, shit. She’s just spotted me! I’m going to have to feign ‘nice’ now.” I also read it as, “Please don’t stop me. Please just go away.” And so, as we came level to one another, I just looked at him and said “I’ll leave you alone” and carried on walking. I didn’t even slow my steps. I genuinely believed he wouldn’t want me to stop him. He didn’t exactly do anything to change my mind. He didn’t really initiate anything. Then again, perhaps he felt he was with his wave to me? I can’t tell you how many times I replayed it over in my head.
In the grand scheme of things it didn’t matter because afterwards there was this…
Not that it was the same. Pre gig, it would have been a conversation just between him and me. Afterwards, Adrian was involved too. I loved the innuendo he used, whether it was intentional or not. When Adrian had asked for a photo with him, he replied “Sure. She doesn’t want one.” So many quips came to my mind later but in the moment I just replied “Oh, I do, please!?” Absolutely said with full innocence and naivety.
So, Bridlington, in the end, always had more questions than answers. What did the wave to me truly represent? That he was happy to see me? That it was okay to approach and stop him? That he liked me?
It was the only thing that ever mattered – whether he liked me.
Back to the ‘chance meetings’ post and the ‘rarely intrusive’ wording. I hope he didn’t feel like I was intruding in on his world by writing to him. I kept writing just praying he was receiving them and listening and that he enjoyed my letters. Liked hearing from me. I loved that epistolary way of communicating. From Kitty in Anne Frank’s diary, to Vincent van Gogh’s letters to his brother, Theo, there has been something very – rewarding, beneficial, cathartic, to the form.
I think about this image a lot. This photo from 2022 in Aberdeen. The meet and greet. I had a letter for Jim. I had asked GG (Olivier Gerard, the soundman) if he would pass it on to Jim for me. I didn’t expect what happened next. I had assumed when I handed it to him that he’d place it in his pocket and hand it to Jim after the gig, or the next day…some time further down the line. What he actually did was walk along the barrier, climb the short steps up to the stage, walked over to Jim, handed him the letter and pointed to me. Jim acknowledged the receipt and went to place it in a pocket that his jacket didn’t actually seem to have. He then tucked it under his thigh instead.
When it came to the photo, because I had my back turned I didn’t see what happened – what he’d done. It was not until a few days later when we were able to collect our photos did I see that he had placed the letter in his hands and posed holding it. I cried when I saw it. I thought it was the most beautiful gesture. With my whole heart I wanted to believe that he was telling me in that single gesture that – yes, he gets my letters and he reads them, perhaps even enjoys them and maybe doesn’t even mind me continuing to send them.
That was early April and by the time it got to October and the release of Direction of the Heart, it felt like everything had changed. When the signed CD arrived from Banquet Records without any response to my wee joke of “being worth it” – it just compounded how worthless I have always felt. And since then – since November 2022 I have been trying to extricate myself from it all.
It was born of the desire to be heard, understood, welcomed, liked. All those letters, I dreamed of just one reply. I keep telling myself that I just demanded too much of him in the end. And how dare I! How dare I expect anything from him. A reassurance that – you know you actually are fine. Stop hating yourself. Stop feeling so reliant on your buoyancy by me. You are MORE than capable. You can keep writing to me. I’ll keep listening.
Anything. Just anything. But maybe, it was this…and then I killed it with my constant self-doubt.
UPDATE: Later in the day.
An article from The Times was shared on SMOG earlier, but I only saw it in the last 30 mins (Tuesday evening, some 6 hours after I posted this blog post.) All of Jim’s artistic and cultural faves – https://archive.ph/DYDVt – it seems very timely, given the content of this post and what I wrote about missing.