Kindred
Stuck in a dreary office under artificial light, I am listening over
and over to Burial's Kindred and I am back home in London, transported
by his brilliant re-creation of the world I once walked in.
How did he know how much I yearn for my home, for the magical city I
once called home? How did he paint such an accurate picture not of how
it looks or even how it sounds, not how it feels, not even that, but
how it is to be there?
Music to sigh to, it is deeply romantic, nostalgic without
sentimentality but without the cynicism that blights modern music.
Were it a full album, it would be very hard to see another album
beating this for album of the year, and although this could not exist
without the music it mutates and builds on, I doubt I will hear
anything fresher or more innovative any time soon.
The other night, driving Zenella to her mum's, I was playing Kindred.
Suddenly, I said to her, in ten years, get out of this place, Zenella.
Don't be stuck here. She didn't say anything in return.
The road to hell
Sometimes I have a dream, we respect each other for the good we are and can do, for the love we bear, because it is our currency, and we work together so that none of us despairs, none of us loses, none of us has a life that does not fulfil us.
Then I wake up and get back on the treadmill that is all life is, where we are measured in money and instead of an angel of light, I find myself to be a worn-out middleaged man trapped in purgatory by a woman who was and is shamelessly selfcentred.
I wish that I could forgive her because forgiveness is golden, but every day is a reminder that my heart cannot find ease in this sweating trashpile, where I am condemned to pointless anger because I am small and cannot bloom.
Once a girlfriend said to me that one of the reasons she was dumping me was that I lacked ambition. I wanted to say, But I have the ambition to love you for the rest of my days. And foolishly I thought that was actually something valuable and real. But you can't put dollars on it, and I can't deny that dollars fuel the good life. You can't feel bad that a person wants the good life, and thinks you will be a stumbling block, rather than an enabler.
And it is true. I have never been much good for anyone and good intentions really do pave the road to nowhere, if not hell.
***
I wonder whether she would say to me now, But you are just lazy. Because don't you have the capability? Don't you have the power if only you could flick the switch?
But I am putting words in her mouth because I want to understand why people have stopped loving me. So I interpret their silences and omissions in ways that make sense, knowing what I do about myself.
It has to make sense. No wonder people believe in gods. A world without reason, so abstract and heartless, seems too hard to bear.
