Tuesday, October 16, 2007
like the deserts miss the rain...
17.12 On Time
Most of my teenage memories, the real and imagined, are set at dusk in the rain.
Lights just coming on, wet leaves making pavements treacherous, air smelling of bonfire night. All the cliches. But the grey slate roofs and drystone walls of my town revel in the dampness. The Dales were meant to be this way, quiet and still, sheltering beneath lowering skies.
Me too. It is my natural setting; I default to gloom.
Yet when I hear the song, the streets I see are the rain-soaked, early evening, Southport streets; although the location is not entirely accurate it is not inappropriate. The figures are vague and generic, the faces blurred, which is odd, given that they illustrate such sharp, specific, emotion.
It is not, as I had once thought, a happy memory; but that I want to relive it suggests an absence of hurt. I am sure that if I can only rewind and reply the scenes often enough, I will recapture something I've missed before. A look, a gesture, even a word. I will untangle truth from the fiction I have created and, finally, everything will become clear.
I play the song again.
My Uptight Life - Teenage Fanclub
Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime - The Korgis
Somewhere Only We Know - Keane
Loughborough Suicide - The Young Knives
Return To Yesterday - The Lilac Time
Missing - Everything But The Girl
Missing - Everything But The Girl
Most of my teenage memories, the real and imagined, are set at dusk in the rain.
Lights just coming on, wet leaves making pavements treacherous, air smelling of bonfire night. All the cliches. But the grey slate roofs and drystone walls of my town revel in the dampness. The Dales were meant to be this way, quiet and still, sheltering beneath lowering skies.
Me too. It is my natural setting; I default to gloom.
Yet when I hear the song, the streets I see are the rain-soaked, early evening, Southport streets; although the location is not entirely accurate it is not inappropriate. The figures are vague and generic, the faces blurred, which is odd, given that they illustrate such sharp, specific, emotion.
It is not, as I had once thought, a happy memory; but that I want to relive it suggests an absence of hurt. I am sure that if I can only rewind and reply the scenes often enough, I will recapture something I've missed before. A look, a gesture, even a word. I will untangle truth from the fiction I have created and, finally, everything will become clear.
I play the song again.
My Uptight Life - Teenage Fanclub
Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime - The Korgis
Somewhere Only We Know - Keane
Loughborough Suicide - The Young Knives
Return To Yesterday - The Lilac Time
Missing - Everything But The Girl
Missing - Everything But The Girl
Labels: nostalgia
