Thursday 6 August 2015

'Getting high on the random association vide'

The Marvel universe is the universe of outsiders. Alexander Trocchi's Young Adam is perhaps purposefully an outsider. Adam is the first man according to Christianity. Adam and Eve were the first mutants in Scottish literature.

I make associations with everything[1], mostly at random but not at random. These things are in my head, along with everything else.

There are a lot of things I find confusing, both inside and outside my head, so associations kind of help make sense out of nonsense. I tried making a list[2] but that itself became a massively branching interconnected tree.

The main problem I faced was where to start, as I was listening to Pavement earlier we'll start there, yes we shall.

I associate teenage heartbreak with the Pavement l.p. Wowee Zowee. It happened in my first year at university, after I had turned twenty, but you know, those three sides of vinyl are connected to my first-not-first love. Grave Architecture and Serpentine Pad are for me two of the best tracks on the album which sings from track two onwards (I have mixed feelings about We Dance).

First-not-first-love will have two associations. Tim Booth and James covering Sunday Morning by Lou Reed takes me back to standing in a school corridor aged 14 whistling this and the girl I fancied asking why I was so cheerful[7]. Well, because she was talking to me, I don't know... The other association with first-not-first-love is the female name Clare[8] spelt that way. Just seeing that word will make that melody skip into my head. Do-day-dah, de-di-dah, do-day-dah, de-di-dah.

Breakups are another thing. Here it is It's The End Of The World As We Know It by REM. I know the lyrics are about earthquakes and the rest, but deep in my heart it is about losing one's partner and that feeling that even if it is the end of the world it might be okay. Eventually. After a bucket load of trouble, simply nothing to be done but get on[3].

Feedback. I love screaming guitars, tube screaming effects are the best. Fifteen minutes of feedback and e-bows, hell yes[4]. But, whenever feedback crops in thoughts and conversations it is I Feel Fine by the Beatles. No screaming, more restraint, but feedback nonetheless.

Feedback comes in loops, cycles. Jane's Addiction[5]'s Been Caught Stealing is my bicycling song. It's mostly that lyric, "it's mine, mine oh mine, and I don't have to pay for it", that gets me. The open road, cycle path, they're mine (and yours if you want).

Though I think about music when running I don't associate any music with running. Running is clouds, freedom, floating, with a beat but not a beat I can disclose.

Petanque is suspicion. Messenger bags are Justin's. Bricks sleep and don't hang in the air same way spaceship do. Starship trooper boots. It is more hygienic in bottles. Central reservations broke our gardens. 'Potato on a radiator gonna let it remain in a locket'. The mind gets dirty as it gets closer to thirty, she's flirty and thirty, about the age when women get dirty, it's dirty story about a dirty man[9].

To paraphrase one of my favourite bands (of all time) talking about their shared appreciation of "Stephen Malkmus and the magic of Pavement", I do this all the time. And if I could do it all over again I would do it all over you. And by you I mean me, and isn't that the real truth. No[6].

Notes
1- Almost. Well, depending on my mood. Just watched Great British Bake Off and thought 'and this is my shooting hand' when Sue Perkins asked a contender to show their hand.
2- The Mikado can teach the reader a lot about political cronyism (Lord High Everything-Else), ageism (that song about elbows), and the daily routines of school girls. It also demonstrates the use of demonizing language when describing the other, the unfortunates, and the poor (or was that Peter Lilley?).
3- I am not too proud to say I'm okay that I associate the Pastels with a girl I once knew called Aggi. And that sentence starts with a Belle and Sebastian lyric.
4- Beck, and not the guitarist Jeff Beck.
5- That well-known international source of addiction news.
6- One reference and lots of connections. The Simpsons, the X Files, Leonard Nimoy, Star Trek, the list goes on.
7- Have you heard the lyrics?

8- The girl in the corridor wasn't called Clare. I don't know where Clare came from, it might have been a film or book for all I can remember.
9- All of that because I was thinking about ants while watching a fly.

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