The Needle Returns to the Start of the Song...

... And we'll all sing along like before...
Goes the song.

Irritating when your internal MP3 is stuck on the same track and no matter how hard you shake it, it won't stop. Trying to get away from it is just about as effective as trying to go on holiday without your head. And don't we all wish we could do that at certain times in our life. Take enough hallucinogens and it's possible, but they're not exactly cost effective and the insurance you'd take out is ridiculous.
No.
No way around it but to play enough music to flush this one out of the system.
This particular musical ghosting is a song by... (I pause, not for literary impact, but because my memory function is compromised by malnutrition, although, it could just be that my powers of recollection are as shite as they ever were)... 
Where was I? Okay. (Breathe) The music... 
It's a song by Del Amitri (who for some unknown reason, I always confuse with Dire Straits). An especially depressing number, aptly named, 'Nothing Ever Happens'. For those who like to listen, go ahead.
Indulge.



I guess it's the theme of repetition that lends the song to my worn out inner ears; and for good reason.
On Monday, I retrace my tracks to the unit where it all began. Back to the beginning.
March 2011, the agonies of which, I captured on this very blog.
Yep.
That's right.
Monday will see me standing outside the gates of hell itself.
And to be clear, it's not that nothing will have changed, because I have. My illness has. My way of thinking has. Three years of various treatments, including seven months as an inpatient, and rather a lot of medication, have put me on a markedly different rung of the ladder.
What is hard, is that it's the same hole. The same darkness. And, pretty much the same distance to the light.
Hence, 'we all sing along like before'.

I want this to work... which means that I will have to work. Very hard. 

It will be bearable, though it won't feel it.
It won't kill me, though the process of recovery will involve the slow death of the illness, so it will feel like it.


In all the darkness, I must somehow manage to fix my eyes on a light I will not always see. 

In order for recovery to take place, you have to believe that, just as there is always a sun and a moon, there is a new life beyond, and there is a different person behind, the illness / addiction. 
The courage it takes to make this leap of faith is immense and for me personally, I don't know if I can sustain it. 

No Way Out

Call you up in the middle of the night
Like a firefly without a light
You were there like a blowtorch burning
I was a key that could use a little turning

So tired that I couldn't even sleep
So many secrets I couldn't keep
Promised myself I wouldn't weep
One more promise I couldn't keep

It seems no one can help me now
I'm in too deep there's no way out
This time I have really led myself astray

Runaway train, never going back
Wrong way on a one-way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Can you help me remember how to smile?
Make it somehow all seem worthwhile
How on earth did I get so jaded?
Life's mystery seems so faded

I can go where no one else can go
I know what no one else knows
Here I am just a-drownin' in the rain
With a ticket for a runaway train

And everything seems cut and dried
Day and night, earth and sky
Somehow I just don't believe it

Runaway train, never going back
Wrong way on a one-way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Bought a ticket for a runaway train
Like a madman laughing at the rain
A little out of touch, a little insane
It's just easier than dealing with the pain

Runaway train, never going back
Wrong way on a one-way track
Seems like I should be getting somewhere
Somehow I'm neither here nor there

Runaway train, never coming back
Runaway train, tearing up the track
Runaway train, burning in my veins

All Time Low

Sometimes song lyrics filter into our awareness and hook into something that we feel or think.
I guess I'm not alone in this experience as I know it's something that has, in itself, been sung about in the "strumming my pain with his fingers" song... Y'know the one... (Frustratingly, I can only think of The Fugees - with their irritating 'one time' spin on it- though I first knew the original version by __________fill in the blank_____).
THAT song tells of someone's shock and disbelief at hearing a young boy singing their "whole life with his words". The narrator (do songs HAVE narrators?) feels that his or her secret pain has been exposed, as though the boy has opened up her letters and "read each one aloud".
Interesting that the song expresses a sense of the agony that can come from being 'known' in an intimate way, of being revealed. The narrator prays that the boy will finish, suggesting that it is absolutely unbearable.
I wonder if the agony was in being known or in being faced with his/her own pain.
Perhaps a mixture.

I digress. I actually wanted to write about the very opposite reaction to the one I've just discussed.

I wasn't listening to the radio I had on as I was driving today but somehow the words of a song I've never heard, pushed their way into my head.
As lyrics sometimes do (and despite the fact I'm not completely sold on the song as a whole) they made something in me feel a little bit heard and understood and realised.
It's odd how a part of you can suddenly and unexpectedly be given a voice through a medium which has no knowledge of your existence, let alone experience.
I guess it's a testimony to the human condition and to the fact that in ways we don't necessarily ever get to experience wholly, we are never quite alone.

Praying won't do it
Hating won't do it
Drinking won't do it
Fighting won't knock you out
Of my head

Hiding won't hide it
Smiling won't hide it
Like I ain't tried it
Everyone's tried it now
And failed somehow

So when you gonna let me
When you gonna let me out - Out

And if you know
How do you get up from an all time low
I'm in pieces
Seems like peace is
The only thing I'll never know
How do you get up
Get up

‘Cos driving won't do it
Flying won't do it
Denying won't do it
Crying won't drown it out

Not really a song of hope or anything, but there may be something ever so slightly comforting in hearing another pose the questions that you have so often asked in the dead of night.

Long December

And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last

These words were going round my head as I stopped the car to take this picture on the eve of the new year.

The countryside was breathtaking as the rays of the winter sunset sliced through sharp trees to spike the cold, crisp grasses.


I wanted to thank everyone reading for the kindness and support you have given so patiently since I dipped my toe into the blog pond.
You guys rock.

For each and every one of you, I hope that this year is better than the last.
x

Still Breathing.

Kind people have suggested that sometimes it's important to just stay breathing and it reminded me of this song which was on the last album released by Lifehouse, a Christian band who, despite that fact, are very good.
- Apologies offered for (not wholly unfair) prejudice.

Depression is like a magnet which locks onto you and drags everything 'living' out of you.
Sometimes, barely breathing is as much as you can manage.

The Broken clock is a comfort
It helps me sleep tonight
Maybe it can stop tomorrow
From steeling all my time
And I am here still waiting
Though I still have my doubts
I am damaged at best
Like you've already figured out

I'm falling apart
I'm barely breathing
With a broken heart
That's still beating
In the pain
There is healing
In your name
I find meaning
So I'm holding on (I'm holdin on)(I'm holdin on)
I'm barely holding on to you

I Need Something

Newton Faulkner says it so well.

I need something to believe in
Cos I don't believe in myself
I'm sick and tired of getting nowhere
Guess it'll all work out

Learning From Lyrics III - Another Brick In The Wall Part III

The final part of the Another Brick In The Wall trilogy is perhaps the hardest for me to write about.
The lyrics show the result of years and years worth of bricks being piled one on top of another to form a brick wall, the scale and fortitude of which is not really even noticed whilst it is being built. In fact, it is only really recognised when the wall has become so inpenetratable that feelings can no longer be clearly identified.

In this last piece of Pink's building work, there is a change in tone, both musically with the addition of a previously unheard aggression, and more importantly (to me) lyrically.

Another Brick In The Wall, Part 3 (Roger Waters)

I don't need no arms around me
And I don't need no drugs to calm me.
I have seen the writing on the wall.
Don't think I need anything at all.
No! Don't think I'll need anything at all.
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.
All in all you were all just bricks in the wall.

The first two parts of The Wall reveal how the foundational bricks have been early experiences of loss, grief and rejection. Later, during Pink's adolescence, the wall was cemented and fortified with his experience of shame. More than that, his sense of being shouted at rather than listened to; humiliated instead of nurtured; and made to stand still and look disgust in the face, rather than encouraged to grow as an individual with a voice.
How many of us lost our voices when we were talked at instead of listened to?

The third part is different. It's a part that I feel I could have written myself and it's a part that no matter how hard I try, I won't be able to fully convey it's meaning because it speaks to a broken part in my heart rather than a logical place in my head.

In my experience all our walls are built with bricks that revolve around one major theme and no matter what different names and experiences each brick has, the theme cements them together.

Unmet needs.

The need we had to be loved, accepted, heard, held, invested in, trusted, fed.

When we have enough unmet needs to cement all our bricks of loss, rejection, grief, abuse... When the walls are so high that we no longer have clear memories of the things that caused us pain... THEN... Then the wall has become our prison as well as our protection.
The wall doesn't just protect us, it prevents us.
We don't feel the bad but we don't feel the good either.

For me, this is where depression steps in.

And in depression, there is only the dull, interminable and indescribable pain of depression itself. You feel the dark shadows cast by the wall, and you feel the dreadful heaviness of the bricks, but you no longer recognise the shame, the loss, the rejection that built it.

Pink sings about no longer needing anything from anyone.
Why?
Because it is just too painful to need things and to never get them.
It's easier to kill the need than allow the desperation of having the need and the pain of never having it met.
We've all done it... We've all experienced the situation where, for example, we haven't recieved the invite we had expected.
"I didn't really want to go anyway".
I work with some fairly damaged young people (and yes, I do see the irony). They are masters of self protection. Their walls are spiked with broken glass and barbed wire.
Last year a tough lad agreed to take an exam. He expected to pass despite refusing to do any work for it.
When he failed he was so upset he turned a table upside down. I told him he could retake it and it was no big deal and all he could tell me was that he didn't want the qualification anyway. He hadn't wanted it in the first place.
We don't get our needs met so we stop needing. We DENY needing.

I feel just like the kid whose anger quickly turned into 'I didn't want it anyway'.
Pink doesn't "need no arms" around him.
I know that feeling.
It's the dead, dessicated pain of not being held when you most needed it.

It is almost too frightening to consider needing anything or anyone and I hear Pink singing about the deadness I feel in this last part of Another Brick In The Wall.

Learning From Lyrics II (more on Pink Floyd)

Having identified the experience of loss, rejection and betrayal as foundational bricks in The Wall, I'm going to go on and have a look at Part II of 'Another Brick in the Wall' (and thanks to the lovely Gail, I can also hopefully manage to embed the song! - I say 'hopefully' warily!)

Another Brick in the Wall Part 2 (Waters) 3:56

We don't need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

We don't need no education
We dont need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all it's just another brick in the wall.
All in all you're just another brick in the wall.

"Wrong, Do it again!"
"If you don't eat yer meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you
have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?"
"You! Yes, you behind the bikesheds, stand still laddy!"

The haunting tones of a young child in the first part of the trilogy, are here replaced by those of an angry and rebellious adolescent. Rather than the earlier focus on loss, the theme changes to the damage done by the 'dark sarcasm' of teachers during school years.
(It occurs to me as I write that, paradoxically, the double negative in the first line is indicative of the fact that they DO need education!)
Waters' experiences with education clearly had a negative effect on him, as he writes about the oppressive schooling which became, 'another brick in the wall".

Few people I know came out of school unscathed and I can particularly identify with these lyrics as I recall a certain year in a very small Roman Catholic Primary School where the numbers were so small that children in Years 5 and 6 had to share a teacher and classroom.
The teacher I refer to was notorious for being a horrible, unfeeling man who had little patience for any child who he deemed to be 'weak' (sounds slightly Victorian, I know. In actual fact, he was a Northerner living with a load of 'soft Southerners' and there was truth in the stereotype in this instance).

I watched that man bully my middle sister, week anfter week, as she failed spelling test after spelling test (because she was dyslexic and not academically inclined).
He would make the class sit down as counted down from 20 out 20 to 10 out of 20 (by which time only a few students were left standing. As he got even lower, I would sit twisting my pencil in my hand, willing him to have mercy.
4 out of 20. My sister would still be standing, by this time, visibly trembling with her face and ears burning.
When she couldn't stand the humiliation anymore, her reddened face would screw up and she would begin to cry with the desperation of someone who knows that they can't afford to be crying.
"Go boil yer head", was his usual, disgusted, response.

I would grip and twist my pencil until it hurt. The unbearable stiffness in my spine makin it hard to even breathe properly as I visualised stabbing him with the pencil, or heroically facing him with the all the cold, angry bitteness of a ten year old child who has yet to become immune to watching the same sister suffer.

Despite the fact that my career revolves around education, I find myself wincing when I see colleagues treating young people badly.
Even in the slightly more emotionally 'enlightened' era we now live in, I would bet that most teachers have NO IDEA how much damage they may potentially do to a vulnerable young person.

When Pink sings about education in Part II, I think that he is referring to the shame that comes from being subjected to mockery, sarcasm, humiliation.
You want a wall built fast? Shame is your material.

Learning From Lyrics (Even More Words on Walls)

Ok. So... If anyone knows about walls, it's Pink Floyd.

I've been thinking about his wall-themed-songs (penned by songwriter Roger Waters) over the last week or so but haven't managed to write anything, partly because I haven't had the time to do so and partly because I am feeling a sense of deadness (which is another post altogether).
Please bear with me as I attempt to collate the assortment of jumbled thoughts I have had about Water's lyrics and why I think they are such a powerful metaphor. It's a work in progress ok?! (Ain't we all!).

Anyway, for those who are not familiar with Pink's brilliant 'The Wall' album (and to be honest, I'm not a raving fan, I just happened to like this album when I was teenager dreaming of rebellion) there are three parts which specifically make use of the wall metaphor.
I have a feeling that when examined closely, Pink's wall might well have similar foundations and similar bricks to the ones that many of us 'building types' have used.
I'm going to start with the first.

Another Brick in the Wall. Part 1

Daddy's flown across the ocean
Leaving just a memory
Snapshot in the family album
Daddy what else did you leave for me?
Daddy, what'd'ja leave behind for me?!?
All in all it was just a brick in the wall.
All in all it was all just bricks in the wall.

The haunting first part of the trilogy refers to Water's father, who left to fight in World War II and never returned.
In this very short verse, we hear the the innocent, and naturally egocentric, questioning of a small child as he struggles to comprehend the loss he has suffered, interpreting it as a rejection.
There is also perhaps, a sense of anger and of bitterness in the question about what the father had left behind, apart from a memory and a photo.
The wall has started in the child. It is not something that the child has planned or wished for. It wasn't a brick that was selected or specially placed, but the impact amounted to the foundations for the wall.

Loss.

I wonder how many of us have walls with huge bricks which would, if touched, speak of loss and grief.

I'm not just talking about death either. I'm talking the loss of anything.
Even if Water's father had returned from that war, it would still have been a loss when he left; a feeling of abandonment would still lodge itself somewhere in the child's frightened mind.
Rejection too. Powerfully destructive and it forces in some of us, a need to protect ourselves from a future of rejections and losses.
We build a wall.

Few children are emotionally equipped to deal with the emotions that swell in and around loss. Even worse if our parents are unable to hold us in the grief and the anger and the chaos.

Like most of us, I've had people die. But the worst losses I have ever suffered haven't been through death. No. The worst loss I have ever felt is my middle sister. And she is still alive, though the word 'alive' seems incongruous if I am writing about her. She exists rather than lives.

My sense of loss and rejection at the start of my teenage years was a founding brick in my wall.

I'm wondering whether anyone else can idenify with this.

******** (and) To anyone reading, do you know hw I can embed a vid from youtube in a blog post WITHOUT having to use the 'share on(name of blog)' option on the youtube site? Is it possible?
Thank for reading *********

Catapult - Counting Crows cover

All of the sudden she disappears
just yesterday she was here
somebody
tell me if I am sleeping
someone should be with me here
(cause I don't
wanna be alone)

I wanna be the knife that cuts into my hand
and I wanna be scattered from here in this catapult
What a big baby won't somebody
save me please
You won't find nobody home

all of these quiet
battered voices
wait for the hunger to come
we got little revolvers and
stupid choices
and no one to say when we're done
(Well I don't wanna
bring you down)

I wanna be the light that burns out your eyes
`cause I know there's little things about me
that would sing in the silence of so much rejection
in every connection I make
I can't find nobody home
I wanna be the last thing you hear when you're falling asleep....

There's something magical about Counting Crows songs. The words rarly make sense when they are all put together to form a song... The song is a blur. More of a feeling than a thought.
I find though, that when you take each line as an individual song, the meaning is crystal clear and very often, I relate.

Today as I drove, I sang this at the top of my voice, and although I don't understand what the whole song means, every word I sang made sense.

I can't find Counting Crows doing a clear version, but this girl sings it well.