I know I’ve said previously that I will be busy this year but now the heat is really on! I have THREE assignments due in the space of eight weeks! The first is due next Thursday, the second exactly three weeks after that, and the final end-of-module assignment (known as a EMA) is due on 4 June. So, yep! Three assignments in two months. Some 7700 words of prose and commentary writing, plus for next week’s assignment 40 lines of poetry. There is a 10% allowance either above of below that 7700 word count which most students tend to you use to ADD rather than fall short of. I tend to very minimally go over the word count – usually by no more than 5% but allowing for such a thing…I could easily go over 8000 words for uni assignments over the next eight weeks. Let alone any writing I need to do in the meantime for uni. I’ll also be wanting to continue work with the book as well but I will most likely attack that with gusto once uni ends on 4 June.
So, yes, lots and lots of writing to come. The book is 75,000 words and I’ve written about 8000 words so far. Really need to get my skates on with that!
So what is this post about and why am I wasting precious time typing it out? Just to give a more adamant warning that things may go very quiet here, certainly for the next eight weeks. And as much as I would LOVE to be galavanting around mainland Europe to see more Simple Minds gigs, not only do my crippled finances not allow it – but I wouldn’t be able to take the time away, either. As it was, breaking for Manchester and then for Easter and the Hydro gigs has made enough of a dent in my schedule. I wouldn’t swap it for the world though!
Once I did get the contract for the book, I thought about deferring my studies but then decided to back myself and believe that I am capable of studying and working towards my diploma while writing Simple Minds: Song by Song simultaneously.
I have been conscious that over the past 12 months especially, the blog has been all at sea along with me as I grappled with my future as a Minds fan and its future as a fan blog. Mental ill health has been something that’s been inadvertently present and evident here. During October and November of last year was particularly tough. I’m really thankful that despite the current pressures I’m feeling with study and writing, I’m trying to work with it to my advantage rather than be hampered and hindered by it. I’m working with it as a force for good rather than let it defeat and debilitate me.
As for the situation I am in as a Simple Minds fan? I currently feel in a healthier place. I’ve done a lot of soul searching over these past months and after a LOT of apprehension in going to Manchester and inwardly being concerned that it could do one of two things to me; either it would (as I had hoped and prayed it would) rekindle my love for the band as they are now and help me come to terms with certain things and allow me to just enjoy it for what it is – or, I would descend back into a kind of crippling limerence for Jim and I’d be back to square one…wishing and praying for a closeness and proximity that is never going to happen. One thing on that I’d like to make clear is I do NOT mean that in a ‘romantic’ sense. I fancy Jim in his early 20s. I don’t fancy him now. Whenever I express “love” for Jim – it’s an inspirational/aspirational thing. And the limerence ultimately comes from that desire to want to be GOOD – to be deemed a like mind, if you will. Someone worthy of his time and energy. He’s said very often that he only likes to surround himself with “good and talented people.” And it is that desire alone – the desire to be deemed “worthy” that constantly fuelled my inner negativity. Low self-esteem, low self-belief…all that negativity I would direct at myself. Imposter syndrome when I would try and turn things positive.
A lot of that desire to be one of Jim’s “good people” would manifest in dreams. One that I had before the tour commenced in 2022. I dreamed a scenario that I would love more than anything to happen in reality. You can read the post HERE
The only thing I regretted about last weekend was maybe not trying to get to have a moment with him. I thought about hanging around the hotel I thought the band were staying at but I wasn’t sure that Jim would be staying there as well. And I thought if I turned up there and hung about, I’d just live up to this notion of being a stalker, and I didn’t really want that. I thought about trying to get a letter to him like I’d done in the past and thought better of it. After Manchester, I really wished to get a gold experience. Just to have a moment again. A great photo – 2022 was still all very Covid-y and hands off and I really wasn’t in a good place then, either. I see the photo ops people have had from the meet or greets or just the very lucky chance encounters people had bumping into Jim either at the airport or outside the hotel, or just bloody walking down the street.
So… I think it might be time. It might be time to share something here that was written last year for uni. It played on the scenario of that dream as well as the meaning of the song First You Jump. I was suicidal at the time and although I was feeling very desperate, I hoped that my writing was beautiful. Very few eyes have seen it. I feel brave enough to share it now – this isn’t what I set out to do with this post but getting to this point as my stream of consciousness carries me away, if feels like the right time.
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A Search for Wings
It’s a long way down. You can’t see the bottom as it ripples and shifts. Looking down makes me feel nauseous and unsteady on my feet. Take the plunge! – they tell me. You won’t know unless you try. Feart – a beautiful Scots word. It means being scared or fearful. I’m feart. I’ve spent my life being feart of doing things.
When you went away, did you miss the sirens? The ones that pierce the sound beyond the silence? The ones that absolutely invade you. There are so many I know I miss…but now and then, there is one so loud. Not audibly loud as such but truly invasive. Demanding my head space. My attention. It shakes right through. It must be so quiet where you are. That tiny place. Barely any people. Hardly any cars. Stillness. Sunshine. Warmth. Insects chirruping away en masse. Shade from the bright lemon trees.
In my mind’s eye, I place myself beside you where you are seated upon a wooden bench. You’re in a garden and as I sit beside you, a surge of heat pulsates over my body. Rising from the alpine pockets of scrub beneath my feet up to my exposed clavicles in line with the hem of my Bardot top. My face radiantly reassured.
I wish to speak with you, again. In the many times I have done this in the past, I see a similar fleeting scenario take place. You, in one of your dear green places, and me wanting to invade it like that ambulant klaxon. Except, once I am there, I have no words to say. More accurately, I can never articulate what I wish to say to you. So, I sit next to you. Knowing that this is enough. Being in your presence is all I want.
I can’t stay in this moment forever, so I soon alight from my seat. I brush past your knees as I begin to walk the path that leads to the garden’s exit. You do nothing to prevent my leaving. Utter no words, nor reach out with a hand to enclose mine as I float by. Your eyes shift slightly to watch me pass. Then you look elsewhere to the garden – all gorse, thorns and deep Kalamata.
Where’s your real paradise? Your real home? Here, hidden away on your tropical idyll? Or…in a heart? Your daughter’s? Your lover’s? Mine? Everyone’s? At the end of a pier? On the top of a hill? The back of a football net? Where’s mine?
Here. Back to my reality. Where that siren wails in a way that feels as though I am the only one able to hear it. In the colour of sky that matches the pavement. In the hedgerows that frame the street and the houses aligning it. It is also in that dream state where I was with you. Where that mechanical shriek took me to see you. Your face. The one that makes me fear it and welcome it simultaneously. The one that I adore and cherish more than life itself. The one that means far too much to me.
So, the shrill call distracted me from where I should have been and took me to you. It’s the only way I get to visit you because I don’t really know you. Not in the way that I wish to. I can’t just take a plane and fly to you. So, I fly to you in my daydreams, but they are far too fleeting and not my reality.
You are in every single thought I have, every day. It has been this way for nine years and I’m not sure if or when it will ever stop. Sometimes I think about the time the inevitable is going to happen and you die and how I will react to it. Will I be as devastated as I think I will? Or will there come some sense of relief? A release. I’ll no longer have to think about when the next opportunity to see you will be, or if or when I may ever get to speak to you again.
When our lives began, you and I lived in not such different worlds. Only that yours was many floors up and mine remained on the ground. You had both your parents. I, just my mother. You were the eldest child. I was the youngest. You, a boy. Me, a girl. I was in Sydney. You were in Glasgow. Well, perhaps there were a few differences after all. But I felt a connection from our working-class roots and despite the inevitable differences there were between us, our paths crossed. It fundamentally changed my life. You have been the seed to many things I have tried to accomplish in my recent life. Searching for a reason to justify my existence, because it would also be you that made me feel like I was beyond worthless. Never to be good enough. Never to feel a success. Never worthy of your time. You have taken up so much of mine.
Is it all just down to luck? The right place, the right time, the right people? Nothing to lose, everything to gain. What if you lose…humility, self-respect, friends, empathy, dreams? I’m trying so hard to make it work. Sometimes I feel like I just haven’t got it in me anymore. Not in the way that it’s needed. I’m almost fifty-three and I’m still here searching and you’re sixty-four and talking about retiring. Although you dare not call it a retirement. A life of service. Job well done. Congratulations. Will you still help me with my search? Help me to find some use for myself?
‘Dinnae fash’, you’ll say, but I’m so feart. ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,’ Franklin D. Roosevelt said. Aye. That’s why I’m a feartie wee bam. I fear fear.
I walk away from the cliff edge. It was no surprise.
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It was pretty painful to write that if I’m honest. “I walk away from the cliff edge. It was no surprise.” That is me expressing that I was too scared to ‘do the job’. Too scared to kill myself. To ‘jump off the cliff’ – metaphorically. Whatever way I would choose to do it…no matter what options I’d consider, I’d be too frightened to do any of them. That’s the cold hard truth. The only thing that truly keeps me alive at times is that I’m too scared to die. I don’t want the pain of dying. That is why when I am at my worst, I wish to be inflicted with something. Have it taken out of my hands.
Right now – I’m just thankful that I am not feeling this way currently. For how long that will last, who knows? All I know is: The gigs brought me back to life – properly. I can’t explain it any better than that. With that piece written above, I was screaming for Jim to help me. To give me a reason to believe my life was worth carrying on with. But that wasn’t up to him. It wasn’t down to him to ‘save’ me. It was really painful when there was no reply from him. I wanted him to be floored by it – as a good piece of writing. For it to mean something to him. Is it any good? I don’t know. I can’t discuss how well or otherwise it did. It was my first piece of writing for this year’s uni module. I’m probably sharing it too soon, but today seemed the time. But I wanted this to be a weird kind of thank you to Jim. I spent a long time hurting and blaming him for my hurt. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t mine, either.
Anyway, I digress and I am taking up MORE precious time! I just wanted to write this post to say that, more so than ever now….if I go quiet, it’s because I’m writing and studying! I have so much I want to do – people I want to contact via email…maintenance I want to do with this blog. I want to share more actual relevant content here, etc…but time is just ticking away and I need to concentrate on other stuff. Uni and the book will be my priority over the next few months.
So, let’s get cracking!