#4.

Cripes I never written anything longer than 4 words before, now I find myself in uncharted literary seas, adrift without a paddle, sailing alone and lonely, to who knows where...........Music was the thing

I am a man of passion though not driven by passions, a man with copious draughts of moral outrage and yet not outrageous, some would say not very moral either. My great hero, Beethoven, was a man of passion and enormous gifted talent. A loner like me, a man that lived in his own head, like me. However (I once was yelled at by a teacher for starting a sentence with however, "Never start a sentence with a preposition he cawed, sneering down at me, pompous and offensive he was. I didn't I said, I started it with However!) I walked off and left him there, I was 47 at the time but felt as foolish then as I always did when I was at school. Always a bonus though, so I was grateful to avoid a possible detention. He (The Teacher) didn't have AS, neither did Beethoven, but both had unseemly long hair! Why they have appeared inthis story I don't know, perhaps a sub conscious and clever way of chasing away the writers block, There is though always a rule and one that says,one needs to be a writer to get the block.

I joined a band in 1974, November. In the end I played with that band for over 10 years until they got rid of me, mainly because I couldn't play very well; but possibly, maybe, because I looked not so good on stage. The deformity was pronounced by now and became exponentially more so throughout those 10 years. The sad truth was that I looked bad for a band that wanted to go out gigging and chasing women. The latter of course appealed NOT at all to me, but I liked playing and the money was handy too. I became all but alcoholic, lost yet another wife. Was riddled with AS, whisky is a good cure, well a way to forget maybe.

Life was falling apart by now. Laughed at because of the way I looked, mocked because I was always drunk, the one everyone else wanted to take out because all knew there would be a chance of a good laugh at my expense during the evening. I didn't make maintenance payments (alimony) to one of my former beloveds and was twice arrested whilst on stage, though I came to know the particular officer quite well and he was always as discreet and as pleasant as possible whilst pursuing his duties, and he always had a pint,that was charged to my account. Biggest sadness, not AS, not the booze, not the loss of wives, nor self respect, but that when I was marched off to be bailed, I would chat with Bill (that will do for his name) about the police and the job and I would always slip in that "I used to be a policeman you know". then the moments of sober propriety when I would remember what I had been and realise what I now was.

AS was unmoved by my moral decline, my slide into failureship. AS felt that it really ought to do its duty and grind me down that last inch or two just to ensure that my nose was really jammed hard in the mud. I hurt every moment of every day. When I look back, remarkably, I worked on construction sites by day, played in a band 7 nights a week and then over to the nightclub (The Parkside) where the whisky for a while at least, made me think I was OK again..

The band residency ended and we finished up on the road, so sleep was a rare commodity, it still is. I hated being on the road because apart from 2 hours playing, that's where you spent your days, on the road, except that we were in a van, I mean we weren't actually on the road so much as conveyed hoveringly above but along the road.

I met a girl who was prepared to accept what I had become, apparently, she stole my wallet and was never seen again, another and another and another, always in drink and always in grim realisation of the awakening morning to come, the reality check of my life; and my AS, good old AS, never let me down, then one night, I collapsed............

This is a bit too riddled with humour, I shall try and be serious tomorrow.......

Last edited by ineptwill; 06/15/09 10:08 PM.