Lessons in Life

Tues midday. Oppressively grey and wet today. Not very cold. Funny kinda winter. Right at the end of Feb and nearly in March now. Still poddin' it pretty heavy and there aint no sign of a break on the horizon. Just too into it I guess. Now got an XTC playlist together, as threatened in my last post. Trax are -

Making Plans for Nigel
Wake Up
All You Pretty Girls
In Loving Memory of a Name
Wonderland
Towers of London
Sgt. Rock
Respectable Street
Rocket in a Bottle
Senses Working Overtime
Jason and the Argonauts
Down in the Cockpit
Runaways
Dear God
The Meeting Place
Scissor Man
Helicopter
Ten Feet Tall
Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead
The Disappointed
Greenman
Mayor of Simpleton
King for a Day
Scarecrow People
Grass
Everyday Story of Small Town
The Loving
My Brown Guitar
Love on a Farmboy's Wages
Smartest Monkeys
That's Really Super, Supergirl
Books are Burning
Harvest Festival
Another Satellite

Altogether 36 trax in honour of what is without any shadow of a doubt the most neglected group in English rock history. Words can't begin to describe the pleasure the music of XTC has given me over the years. Hey, in the dim and distant past there was simply nothing like getting into a new XTC release for the first time. I say was because they really don't release any stuff anymore, or haven't for a good few years. Given up on us I guess and who can blame them? What a waste, especially when you consider so much shit has been allowed to survive on much higher degrees of collective consciousness. Maybe it was because they were from Swindon and shy enough to give up playing live after only a couple of years. Who knows? Who really knows why some don't make the cut as far as fame and fortune are concerned? There are rules that lie in the realms above us, let's leave it at that. Suffice to say however that the XTC playlist I have listed here and which is on my ipod, is cool, shit fuckin' hot, second ta none.

Grey day, weather oppressive. Not cold. Wrote those words more or less when I began this post. Wind blowin' as well. Do you ever get the feeling the weather is brewing up into an event that will be totally and completely utterly monumental? I do. I mean, really, how long can we go on livin' the lives that we do and not get the payback from Mother Nature? With our continuous, relentless use of motor transport in all it's shapes and forms, how can we possibly complain when the weather bites back because of the effect of the man made pollution on whole rollin' system? Yeah, the clock is ticking. Aint no doubt about that. But then again, some will always pull through whatever it might be that comes over the horizon. Nature innit? Natural.

So, anyway, walking back from the Chinese Restaurant tonight (the White Swan, where I went to get some take away ribs for me and Tamdin) I felt it, if only for just a couple of seconds. Felt the feeling that the weather sometime in the not too distant future is likely to get pretty damn wild an' choppy and there is not going to be much that we can do about it. Batten down the hatches, lay low. Let it all wash over us. Something like that. Pessimistic? Yeah, maybe. We shall see.

Could simply be that I'm an ignorant, that I just simply don't know what is what and that I react with fear when anything comes along that is potentially spooky. Yeah, could just easily be that. Other people with a little more knowledge might not be so freaked out. They might have access to rational explanations for these things. Information that I am not privy too. So I go on, stumbling around in the darkness of my own ignorance. Believing in the superstitions and fears created in my mind.

What am I? What the hell am I? Why should I not be punished by my own fears? Punish, is that right word? But whatever it is the question still remains, what have I ever done to think I could get off lightly? Really, really very little. Ain't dedicated my life to anything good in any way. Like sacrifice. Like only livin' for the welfare of others. Quite simply done nothing like that. So why should I have any possible complaint when things don't go the way I want them? No reason for bitterness there. Just don't understand why I should be upset. I get what I get and I get what I get because of what I have done. Simple as that.

Aint no people, aint no gods, aint no invisible systems conspiring against me. It is all down to me. With a little more vision from my side it would all become so damn obvious. Fact is I just can't see the connections and in my confusion, in my bewilderment at the turns life takes, I get angry and upset. All those little experiences throughout the course of the day, the week, the month of closing my heart to being open, to relaxing and just being a little bit nicer. It is all those things which earn payback in nasty and unexpected ways. But it is important to understand it is not because the world is mean or malevolent or anything like that. The nasties that come along are only my own self-created nasties and nuthin' more than that. There are plenty of people around who make the mistake of not seeing things that way and they are the ones who are prone to repeat like a squalid mantra, "I hate life, life is shit". Well, all that is the food of suckers because it simply aint true. The only thing that is true is that they just can't see the reasons why they are suffering and so they lash out at life and whoever might be in their way. All that is visited upon us is our own responsibility. The buck stops with us and difficult as it might be to see it, it is still the indisputable fact.

We need to loosen up. OK, OK, less of the genera,l less of the plural...what I mean is, I need to loosen up. Try not to be so controlling because being in control of the feeling of being in control is the biggest illusion going. At the end of the day we all have to walk through the Valley of the Dead, and when we're in the kinda landscape all control for the vast majority of us will go right out da window. Yeah, we all have to take a bow to Lords of Futurelife and fly out of our warm bodies like we're heading to the moon. Don't be so vulnerable. Tryin' to stay in control is an expression of intense vulnerability. Simple as that.

Underneath when things don't quite go as planned there is often a hot river of anger runnin' and then it can be devilishly difficult to do much about that. To stop it burnin' ya. So yeah, balance is the key. And that can only come from an open heart. Being willing to take the rough with the smooth because you know you have to have a bit of the rough comin' to you. It's all in the nature of the game. So try to stay sober. Not as drunk, sober, drunk. I mean the sobriety of a warrior, as Captain Carlos said all those years ago. Then you just rock along. Days are days and one day it will all be over. Last thing you wanna do is sway from the extremes of waking in the mornin' grinnin' like a Cheshire cat then going to bed at night same day cursing the whole dirty doggin' deal.

Stability an' a love of life. Think those things will take you a long way. It's like when I write about the weather on these blogs. Dirty weather, grey days and lots of rain. What there is underneath all this observation is a deep love for the world, or so I hope. A feelin' of wonder of just havin' the chance to wake up each day and experience it. A feelin' of not wanting to be anywhere else. You know that is the important thing. Waking up each day in grey old London, busy old London, dirty ole town, with it's constant stream of traffic and noise, but being happy with it. Lovin' it. Being delighted to just have been given the chance just to experience it for however many months, years, decades it is. Yeah. Sounds good ta me. In the end all will be dust anyway so don't go to extremes. High n' low, all that kinda rap.

No point in pushing too hard, wanting things to be different from the way they are, wanting things to be better. Oh yeah sure you don't have to be too fatalistic an' lie down in the middle of the road of life and let it all roll over you but at the same time it is good if we can learn just to take the rough with the smooth. To let go of the obsessive desire to want things to go our own way and no other. To accept no other possibilities. That will only lead to trouble because underneath it all the effort to control things, to twist things so that they fit your your narrow vision, there will be rollin' a hot river of anger and frustration that things just don't shake up the way you think they should. Let go. The world is immense, the world is awesome and rolls along according to rules that are difficult to understand but ultimately just and extremely fair.