Welcome to My Nightmare

So I’ve decided that rather than using this site to occasionally showcase art, I’ll actually start putting some thoughts into words and wowing (or irritating) you with my humble opinions on life, the universe and everything (yeah, that one belongs to Douglas Adams). What is a blog or journal – call it what you will – other than an individual’s thoughts or feelings that are topical to him or her, or sometimes others? So that’s what this will be. It will be mine but may occasionally be relevant to some of you. My last entry, oddly enough, seems to have had more hits than any of my posts featuring drawings and comic pages I’ve done. Doesn’t say much for my drawing prowess does it? Either that or there are more like-minded people out there than I thought. I’m hoping for the latter. That said, perhaps it makes sense to write more of these things. Human beings are relatively resilient creatures. We can withstand extreme weather conditions, be punched in the face, perform amazing feats at sports events, bring down evil dictators and survive holocausts. We are far less equipped, however, to deal with emotional difficulty. This is the human condition. Give us a 50-hour working week or calculus and we’re fine but break-ups, overbearing parents, hurtful remarks or sad movies about beloved pets – whatever your poison may be – are capable of turning us into puddles of tearful or emotionally scarred goo. We are a product of our memories, or rather how we file our memories in order of emotive value. Humans are the only species prone to bouts of indulgent melancholy. Whether it’s a song that you and your ex-girlfriend used to listen to driving home together or dance to, a certain smell, a nostalgia-inducing photograph or a simple household object that belonged to a different time; there are certain triggers that open that little filing cabinet in your mind and take you back to something fond, painful, sad or simply memorable. I often find myself pausing when going through a drawer or cupboard for fear of what might turn up. Scars have been left by various experiences – more specifically relationships – that I often do not want to unearth. It’s curious how one inanimate object, like the hairbrush briefly mentioned in my previous entry, can bring back a flood of emotion, how a song can reduce you to a state of hypnotic melancholy regardless of its content – rather it is the song’s context in your situation that has an effect – or how a photograph capturing a moment that may have been whimsical at the time can induce a state of emotional shock. Our lives are made up of a collection of postcards that capture all the places of interest we’ve visited. They depict the perfection that was there in that moment that the picture was taken and have a message scrawled on the back saying, “I was here”; yet like so many idyllic locations featured on picture postcards those moments can never be reproduced. Shopping malls or parking lots now exist where once there was an unspoiled landscape. Tom Waits sings in his classic song, “Time” that “memory's like a train. You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away”. Perhaps sometimes that train comes around again to remind you of where you came from. You can never board it again but you cannot forget the view from its small square windows; the landscape flying by in phases, from lush greenery to industrial squalor. Good memories and bad blur into motion as you make your way to the station, imprinted into your mind like withered postcards. One of my favourite little pieces of melancholia is Hendrix’s “Little Wing”. From what I gather, it’s an ode to a groupie who had more of an effect on him than he realised at the time. Link and lyrics below.

Well she's walking through the clouds... With a circus mind that's running round. Butterflies and zebras and moonbeams and fairy tales That's all she ever thinks about, riding with the wind. When I'm sad, she comes to me with a thousand smiles, she gives to me free. It's alright she says it's alright, take anything you want from me... Anything. Fly on little wing, Yeah yeah, yeah, little wing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLvND_uav