So, where do I start?
TARA FB (AT LEAST FOR NOW ANYWAY)
After the Cloth gig review, there were a couple of posts on the Simple Minds Facebook page that riled me. One was to do with “writing your own story” as implied by the text laid out accredited to Kerr. I think the title was something like “What’s stopping you from writing yours?” or some such positively Pecksniffian pretentious phrase. Admittedly, I fell for the bait once again and replied to it by sharing the post on my own FB feed and responding in the dialogue box on the reposting itself. There was another post that followed shortly after and I can’t even remember the context of it, or its title, and I have no desire to go and open Facebook to seek it out. Whatever it was, it again riled me sufficiently to have the urge to reply but I stopped myself. I decided it was enough.
Every Simple Minds post that was accredited to Kerr was now feeling like bait. I felt like I was being bear-baited each and every time. I’d had enough. I had enough of still being drawn to what was being posted. Even though I had walked away from nearly all of the SM groups and had stopped following the SM FB page, it still just flooded my feed. It felt like a rubber-necker. A driver in a traffic jam that once they get nearer to the cause of the jam, usually an accident, they further the problem by slowing down and trying to glean what has happened as the traffic begins to flow again. I hated this feeling of being riled at every post. I was sick of being angered and questioning and nit-picking. Why the fuck did it matter? WHY did I still care? Why did this man’s opinions and thoughts and words still have such a hold over me? Why couldn’t I just let it go?
I decided that day that enough was enough. I needed to step away from Facebook and take a break. A good break. A proper break. Absolutely, motherfucking, stay away from it entirely. Because that really was the only way I would stop seeing Simple Minds content. The only way to guarantee I wouldn’t see anything was to stay away from Facebook completely.
To be fair, it had a dual function. I also had my first assignment for the academic year due as well. It was due on 20 November and I just didn’t want to have FB as a distraction.
I had placed a target date for the time I wanted to test for how long I could stay away and off FB. I didn’t have an exact date but I felt that if I could keep away until around the end of November that would be a great goal.
Have I wanted to buckle? In the early days, perhaps. Then it became a test to see how long it would be before anyone noticed that I wasn’t around. How long would it be before someone missed me? Would anyone miss me? Did I care if anyone missed me?
A week went by. I handed my (really fucking lacklustre) assignment in. Are they missing me yet? Am I ready for any SM talk yet?
NO MORE SIMPLE MINDS (FOR ME)
Someone contacted me via the blog. Someone I’d never been in contact with before. That is as much as I am going to say about them. We talked about SM at a point where I really didn’t want to talk about SM any more. I didn’t reply to them for a while because I didn’t know how to say that I didn’t want to talk about them any more without coming across as impolite or uninterested in having correspondence with them. I didn’t handle the situation very well. My assignment was stressing me out and I knew I was going to flunk it (I haven’t had my mark back yet but I really am not holding out any hope for it at all). I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t want them to think I was uninterested but that is exactly how it ended up looking. I think I managed to clear the air, and even though the conversion on SM still happens, I try and manage to sidestep it as much as I can.
I also hadn’t been reading the book. I just didn’t have time while I had long books to read for study and an assignment due. I just couldn’t give it any time. I didn’t want to give it any time. For fuck’s sake, it was about (roundabout) Simple Minds (well, more accurately about Kerr and Burchill but, you know, this is now meant to be an interchangeable point now, right? Whatever).
This week I caught up with my studies. I am now running a week ahead of the study planner so I have given myself the weekend off.
On Thursday night I decided to return to OSATS. I had left it on page 237 and the next chapter to read was ‘U2 and Us.’ That was an odd one. Entirely Burchill’s input with nothing from Kerr at all (other than its italicised preamble). I seemed to be doing okay with it initially, then things started rolling in once more. More slating of Mick MacNeil. Well, perhaps “slating” is the wrong term but certainly downplaying his importance to the musical makeup of Simple Minds. My hackles were starting to rise again. Then it seemed like Kerr was going to gloss over all the personal stuff while Burchill was, for a change, being very frank and laying things open about his personal life through the mid 90s to mid 00s. Then I began to hope that Kerr had remained tight-lipped about his own personal life because, well, suffice it to say that it left me feeling even more disillusioned than ever before. I read until the end of the chapter ‘Let There Be Love Pt 2’ on page 264. I couldn’t take any more.
Now, before anyone here gets the wrong end of the stick and thinks it’s some bunny-boiling jealousy thing – that I have this unwarranted “animosity” towards Yumie. NOT A CHANCE! Nothing could be further from it. By my own admission, the only jealousy I ever harboured was for Chrissie Hynde because I have always felt she got Kerr when he was fit as fuck, young, sexy, virile. I mean, come on!!!! That’s where the bloody jealousy was. And even then, I could appreciate it was fucking STUPID because I was 13 years old when they got married. As if! I didn’t even fancy him back then, right? It was my bloody maths and geography teachers at high school (I always liked a brain box, what can I say?). By now, not even that is a thing any more. He’d turned before Chrissie came along. It was already too late by then. Chrissie, you can have the fucker.
No…what it was was the dawning realisation that Jim Kerr is, well…
It doesn’t matter.
THE KERR CLEAR-OUT
I have been so strong lately. I have felt so free. Released from this …. Entrapment. Freed from a BAD misconception that I have been under for over a decade. Freed from a man that had dominated my thoughts and “lived rent free in my mind” (whoever coined this phrase, I salute you!) for so, so long. And there he was again – trying to sign a new rental agreement – “Mr James Kerr seeks to invade the mind of Larelle Read with immediate effect, residing indefinitely, with particular emphasis during the hours of 22:00 – 07:00 daily at the cost of £0.00.” No! Just NO!
I can’t do it any more. I’m not even sure I can finish reading this book. It’s like watching a mirror shattering in really slow motion. I am determined to end this all.
This is why I haven’t posted here lately. Anything I was going to say would just be so angry and hurtful and I am tired. I am tired of harbouring these feelings. I am tired of being angered and disappointed by someone who I had blindingly adored. I keep on wishing that I could express it in the most erudite and articulate way. That I could express myself properly. This part of the post wasn’t going to be this long. I had hoped to be much more succinct and eloquent.
I genuinely have no idea what to do about this blog. I know I keep saying that, but it’s true. I have no desire to update it with “new” Simple Minds information. They have their social media. Whoever is in charge of it now is fairly savvy in keeping the fans up-to-date. Also, I just feel really uneasy with how “commercial” the whole thing is. I mean, I saw the fucking Chat GPT advert FFS. I mean…I guess that’s what happens when you sell your back catalogue for a tidy sum, right? And don’t even get me started on that “Black Friday” email that came in! Oh, I guess I better unsubscribe to getting those bloody email “updates” too – that’s a point.
All these images on my bedroom walls. Thank Christ the majority of them are during Kerr’s 1981/82 glory. I can still appreciate them for their wonderful aesthetic, just about.
And so this has been my whole point of this part of the post anyway. I genuinely cannot listen to them at the moment. I don’t know when I last listened to something. I could still enjoy SAF/SFC but recently I can’t even bring myself to listen to that.
THERE IS ALWAYS MICK
As opposed to what I had subjected myself to with the OSATS book and how that left me, this next thing felt wonderfully uplifting (albeit tinged with more ire for reasons that should be obvious if you do watch it or have watched it).
Mick MacNeil talking about his experiences through the early period of Simple Minds including the recording of Life in a Day. The part about the news of Elvis Presley’s death was hilarious. I just hope he didn’t relay this story to the folks at the care home! Lol. Even during this I found it hard to listen to the snippets of music. Some of it tugged at my heart. The way I used to feel about ‘All For You’ and ‘Special View.’ I even wrote a short story that involved everything that latter song conjured up in my mind a few years back. It makes me feel so…sad. Just sad. Despite those elements, listening to Mick was a lovely elixir.
A GIG TONIGHT – IST IST (AND SOON HAMISH)
Tonight I’m off to see Ist Ist at Oran Mor. I am looking forward to it. I had nearly talked myself out of it, but I saw some footage from their show in Leeds last night and it looked and sounded SO GOOD – I’ve got to go! They are sooooo great live and I have been looking forward to this since the May Bank Holiday.
Hamish played in London last night and seemed to play some new material, so that is also something to look forward to at the Barras gig in just under two weeks time. Damn, I wanted to link to an article he’d written for The Quietus about his love of Ivor Cutler too – I must do that. I will do so in the next post, I promise!
ADIOS FOR NOW
I had other things to say but now I have run out of steam. I have exhausted myself trying to formulate the right things to say to explain my silence here of late and where I am going to go from here. Oh, all I know is that I don’t want anything angry, sad, or upsetting here. All what is happening is making me feel like I can no longer be a Simple Minds fan. I need to let it all go. “Just get on with it,” aye. Yes. Hmmm.
P.S. Oh, and I missed Charlie’s birthday…shrugs. It was the sixth anniversary of my Mum’s death on the same day. It’s getting harder as time goes on…not easier. And today is the sixth anniversary of our move to Glasgow. So much has happened in six years. And yet, it’s only six years.
The photo for the blog post? It was one I chose to highlight what I meant about the bedroom wall….that 1981/82 beautiful aesthetic that no matter how disillusioned, angry and disappoint I get with the man he became, he was something to behold back then. Hopefully I will get to a level of disassociation that allows me to still enjoy the music…the early music. One day.
