The Coffee Spoon Addendum

It's been raining here in Adelaide, quite a bit, over the last week or so. This is a sadly uncommon state of affairs, and we're told to expect less and less of the stuff in years to come. So when it starts to fall, certain sayings get trotted out: "About time we had a drop", "It'll be good for the farmers", etc. But even in the driest state in the driest country on earth, people's goodwill towards cold, gravity-enhanced drops of water dwindles rapidly. It's not long before the next saying, "Haven't we had enough of this bloody rain?", gets its turn, despite the fact that the answer is "no".

I'm not immune to complaining about the weather myself. A couple of weeks ago, while traversing the distance between my bus-stop and my place of work (a journey of 5-10 minutes), I was caught in some of the foulest treatment that the sky can dish out. I had an umbrella, but seeing as the combination of driving wind and pouring rain was effectively simulating the experience of being inside a dishwasher, it didn't do me much good. It was like the atmosphere had taken out a hit on me. Even when I was a few feet away from entering my building I wasn't sure I was going to make it. It could have been the script for some supernatural horror film with a name like 'Weatherstorm 2: The Revengening'. And when people brought it up, naturally I vented my displeasure.

But I do wonder a bit when people complain, almost with a view to finding someone to blame, about cold wet weather. I feel like saying, "This is winter. Has no one explained the concept to you?" Even in Australia, the winter is cold; it's one of those seasonal things. Hell, the country is known for its fierce summers, and yet you can still hear people in January saying, "Why is it so bloody hot?" Somehow a lot of people take any kind of seasonal discomfort as some kind of personal affront, and, thinking it over, I think I know why.

Human beings, all things considered, have things pretty good. Unlike most of the creatures on the planet, we generally don't have to worry about being eaten by anything else; in fact, to be attacked by a wild animal (leaving out less-domesticated-than-they-should-be dogs for a moment), you have to put in an actual effort these days. We've learnt to make use of the natural properties of the world in a number of ingenious ways so that our day-to-day lives are far more comfortable than they should be. We've mastered fire, metal, stone, even the ability to travel the air. Over time we've beaten, or at least tamed, a lot of diseases that were once out-and-out fatal. And while we don't have a cure for cancer or AIDS, amongst others, it's considered very possible that one day we will. Even travel to distant planets, though a long way off, is believed to be something we're very much capable of.

And yet, amongst all these achievements - for they didn't just happen; we put in a bit of elbow grease - we are still entirely at the mercy of the weather. It's not just rain that inconsiderately arrives in the middle of a long-awaited picnic, or a seemingly endless heat wave, either. The news is constantly providing reports of terrorist attacks that wipe out dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of people, and still are dwarfed by the unpredictable and unbeatable forces of nature. I can vividly remember watching the news reports come in from Bande Ache and struggling to believe that such an amount of people could have died, and that the number was still growing. Not that man can't rival nature in terms of quantity - the Holocaust proves that - but it's the motiveless aspect that makes it kind of scary. The weather doesn't target us; it's just that these forces are big and we are small, and when it comes to it, there's no contest.

It's a sobering thought, and, if you have a certain kind of mindset, a galling one too. The fact that we can't as yet control the weather doesn't mean some people won't try. I remember a scientific report on the development of a type of gel intended to be air-dropped into incoming hurricanes that would slow them down before reaching land, supposedly with no ill effects. It's the supposedly that gets me thinking. The truth is not that we can't monkey around with the weather - climate change research suggests that we've been doing that very thing, unintentionally, for some time. It's that we have no control over these forces, so monkeying around is likely to rebound on the monkeys who do so. It'd be a bit like moving around the pillars that are keeping up the ceiling. So though it's annoying to be caught in the rain without an umbrella, losing loved ones to a mudslide or a snowstorm is a tragedy, and no on likes getting struck by lightning, we're probably best leaving the weather to it, and just appreciating the sunny days.

When Prince declared he would party like it was 1999 (in 1982), it is not entirely certain what he was anticipating. Alright, so he was actually anticipating a Nostradaman apocalypse (the sky was purple, there were people runnin' everywhere/tryin' to run from the destruction, you know I just didn't care). But what would that party be like? How would we react? Who would we be?

When 1999 ticked over to 2000, Prince was 42 years old, subject to litigation and label strife, parodied for his unpronounceable, hubristic pseudonym (the artist formerly known as...) and generally just being a funky, walking anachronism. I was fifteen years old, just about to embark on twelve months that would give me passage between childhood and late blooming emotional adolescence. That night was the first time I ever really drank (three beers, joy!), and spent the evening with three friends at a popular beachside suburb watching disappointing fireworks displays and listening to a poorly-mashed mix of everybody's favourite FM classics intertwined with hilarious feigned excitement by live radio celebrities. It wasn't until the following year, the beginning of the real 21st century, that I marked my final passage into adulthood, by drinking copious quantities of cheap wine, meeting people whose names would forever be forgotten, and passing out in the early hours of the morning on the back lawn underneath the washing line. The first thing I did in the 21st century was vomit. That, then, made me a teenager.

If you asked me then what you thought I'd be now, I'm sure I would have predicted more of the same. And I would have been absolutely, perhaps unfortunately right. Sure, I might have mistaken the social importance of Facebook, or the failure of Gordon Brown to carry the Blairite mantle and prevent another Conservative landslide in the UK Parliament, but I would have generally assumed I'd be a layabout perennial student living carelessly between bouts of reckless alcoholism. Only, somewhere between those two ages, I did, for a small but important period of time, think that I had grown up.

I did think that I had it sorted out. That I knew who I was, both in myself and in the world. That I knew what I had to do. That I knew what to expect.

It's funny how an incomplete Commerce degree, a sliding door of awkward friendships, a coat check filled with the remnant items of past relationships, and a large dose of enforced cynicism can prolong your adolescence. It's funny how you can go to a housewarming party and realise that, now in your mid-twenties, you're still only getting started. In fact, you can teach these young things a lesson or two in charismatic overdosing and happy self-destruction.

I didn't feel comfortable with adolescence, the first time around. Now I'm wiser and better educated, I'm travelled and well-read, I've been career-focussed (and now career-destroying) - I'm young, but I'm now aware of just how important that is. I'm going to make every possible use of my unexpected youth. I can no longer claim to know the future - and the last thing I want there are my own expectations.

My favourite record store is a short walk from the office. It lies fixed, 'twixt an old-people's café and an after-work pub. It has been there forever, and feels like it will be forever still. It exists only in my hometown, and it is named after one of my favourite bands. It devotes its basement - as large as the store itself - to vinyl, and on Wednesday afternoon it packs that vinyl away to let bands run loose and play loud. For quite some time, it seemed to be staffed entirely by this town's best musicians. Now I'm a little older, and the place seems to be staffed entirely by my personal friends.

My favourite record store displays that Nick Hornby quote atop one of its two newfangled registers. You know the one. "Yes, yes, I know. It's easier to download music, and probably cheaper. But what's playing on your favourite download store when you walk into it? Nothing, that's what. Who are you going to meet in there? Nobody. Where are the notice boards offering flatshares and vacant slots in bands destined for superstardom? Who's going to tell you to stop listening to that and start listening to this? Go ahead and save yourself a couple of quid. The saving will cost you a career, a set of cool friends, musical taste and, eventually, your soul. Record stores can't save your life. But they can give you a better one." And I do believe that I owe my favourite record store my life; at least, my life as I have lived it. But even Hornby would walk into the store now and cringe.

My favourite record store never seems to carry my favourite records. There was a time when it could be relied upon, but that time is no longer. Have you got the new album? Oh, we did, says my favourite record store. But it has sold out. Really? Already? Well, we only ordered three copies. It's a shame, because I wanted one too. (They never reordered.) My favourite record store does still carry tickets to the shows I want to see, but they sold off their small ticketing agency to the interstate competitor. Now I can only buy tickets when their computers are working, for whatever fee the bastards want to charge.

You see, my favourite record store is running out of money. Downloads, they say. Competition from the majors. And it is true - all of my favourite records, bar none, are available from the giant chain store down the road. You know, the giant chain store which only opened three years ago, the one which is so big it can afford to import five copies of that strange folk album that was never released here, on one person's suggestion, only to then give them away on sale for next to nothing. But that's not the point.

I want to have a favourite record store. I want to have a record store that inspires me to buy records, that leads me down its own paths, that actively glimpses into that better life. I want to find a band, then go to my favourite record store and be able to spend a week's wages on their entire discography. Then I want to have the staff write little notes on the CD covers suggesting other bands I might like. I want to get to know the staff, even if I don't ever talk to them, by their notes and their recommendations, get to know them on taste. Because that's what the chain store can never have - it can have everything, in droves and sold cheap, but it can never claim taste.

My favourite record store is dying, and a little part of me is dying with it.

Before Ben and I embarked upon this joint writing venture, I had already been blogging for a while on my own. All the posts were jokes, of the long, drawn-out variety, written mostly to amuse myself and only incidentally other people. They met, pretty uniformly, with thundering disinterest, possibly because they were rambling, nonsensical and generally reader unfriendly. When the idea for the Coffee Spoon Addendum came up, I decided to change my tack. After all, why do the same thing twice? I have written the odd joke-post here, but mostly I decided to go for something more thoughtful, and I have been inspired by the often entrancing style and content of m'colleague Ben.

To my complete lack of surprise, I am still no kind of blogging celebrity. Some of you fine people read what I write, and I appreciate that immensely and really don't desire any more. I have noticed, though, that a lot of the blogs that do gain wide popularity are distinctly different from my own. Unlike many people who choose to communicate with the inscrutable collective that is the virtual world, I go to pains to avoid writing about my personal life.

I had this put into an interesting light by an article that Ben sent me recently. It's quite a lengthy piece, but the gist is this: the writer (quite talented if this is anything to go by) had been a long time blogger before she was able to make a career out of it. Her posts were of a personal nature, dealing not just with herself but also with those around her. Her professional articles were of the gossip-column variety. Eventually, she discovered that there was consequences in holding both kinds of writing up to public scutiny, and as she was something of a blogging celebrity, she got plenty of that. Her experiences led to her re-evaluating the idea of putting everything about herself up on display.

I was surprised at how interesting I found this piece. The kind of writing she'd been doing - both diarising and examining the lives of semi-public figures - is exactly the type of stuff I never read. I'm not saying I object to its existence, it just doesn't interest me. I'm sure a lot of people have lives that are, objectively, fascinating, but I always feel disconnected from such stories. I can listen with rapt attention to my close friends describing what they did on the weekend, but remove the personal element and I may as well be trying to decipher a physics paper.

But reading this girl's story made me think about the way I chose to write. It's a rather trite little truism, but every time you put pen to paper you inevitably reveal something about yourself. By having the audacity to write, you are presuming that there are people who will take an interest in what you think. So given that I'm already exposing myself to a degree anyway, why not go the whole hog, dangle my personal life on the end of a hook, and see if anyone bites? It can't be because I can't write about myself: I keep a journal that I write in every night, with a kind of imagined audience (though I intend for no one else to ever read it). Additionally, and this is not any kind of boast, I think my life, especially recently, would have enough interesting experiences stored up to hold an audience's attention (I ended a night out in hospital earlier this year, you know).

My first thought, and the most obvious one, is just that I'm a private person, and I don't feel comfortable with my life being dissected by a crowd of people who don't really know who I am. While this is true, it also struck me that there's a certain amount of arrogance to the writing I do. I like to develop a particular concept in my posts, to take some random occurence and apply my mind to it to see if there's a deeper meaning to be discovered. I can't deny that this seems to me a better use of my abilities than just retelling portions of my life. "Look at me, with my fine words. I do not deal in mere recollections of events; I shape ephemeral ideals and intellectual structures into discourses, for the edification of my peers." Can't you just see me in a high-backed leather chair, swirling a crystal balloon of fine cognac in my fingers as I decide which paradigm to deconstruct next? Can I really be suprised when people feel as disconnected from my abstracts as I am from their real lives?

The truth is I'm surprised when the opposite happened. A little while back I posted a piece called 'Flirting, with disaster', dealing with the mysterious art of talking to girls. It wasn't excessively personal, apart from exposing the fact that I have trouble doing something that comes naturally to a lot of people. Once again, the idea was the thing - I was trying to look at flirting as a social phenomenon. I expected it to recieve the same amount of attention as all my other posts, which is to say: not a lot. I was shocked when more than a couple of people responded, not just to the idea, but with advice directed personally to me. People were taking an interest in my actual life. I got a sudden, small idea of the connection other people were making with their readers when they wrote about stuff that I'd always considered a bit mundane.

I don't intend to change my way of writing. And unless I get to know the writer on a personal level, I doubt I'll ever have much interest in other blogs of that nature. But my outlook has changed a bit. I've gotten a better understanding on a current phenomenon, and that's exactly the kind of thing I am interested in. After all, to quote an even triter truism, it takes all sorts to make a world.

She left her teenage years behind,
In a pool of polite vomit,
Delivered to the well-kept rosebushes
By the pool hall,
Midnight chimed and she chimed with it
With tears in her eyes
But no innocence lost.

And I became an adult,
Asleep in the back seat
Of a well-driven cab
On the way home,
Midnight chimed and I chimed with it
With a shot of tequila
And no innocence lost.

Oh, if only one day we'd grow up.
Oh, if only one day we'd all grow up.

And we'll come good again,
If we wake at New Year's,
To a well-driven world
On the way out,
Midnight will chime and we'll chime with it
With a brand new figure
And our innocence back.

As Dave McCormack once screamed over crashing guitars in a uniquely nonsensical climax, the words are important! the words are important!*

Despite many recommendations over several years, I have only just now become obsessed with The National.

Substitute the name 'Karen' for Berninger's real-life girlfriend Corinne - who apparently looked over and corrected the lyrics before the finished product was released - and try not to be softened to a quivering paste by this:

Karen won't you take me to the nearest famous city middle, where they hang the lights, where it's random and it's common versus common? I've got five hundred in twenties, and I've got a ton of good ideas, I'm really worked up. I'm on a good mixture, I don't want to waste it. I want to go gator around the warm beds of beginners...

And then:

Parking your car you said 'I'm overwhelmed,' you were thinking out loud you said, 'I'm overwhelmed.' You said, 'I think I'm like Tennessee Williams, I wait for the click, I wait but it doesn't kick in.' I have weird memories of you.

Even though I have no right to understand, I think I do. I feel my whole life has been lived as a mere incident in Berninger's conception of humanity.

And now I too wait for the click.

* Custard, Nice Bird - This world divides into people who think there's two kinds of folks, and those who don't. Trey's got the Feathers and a 12-guage shotgun, Volkswagons from the Reich! I've got a nice bird, I've got a nice bird. There's a stretch of road out past The Gap, where they are taking some snaps, stick to the music champ, the words are important! THE WORDS ARE IMPORTANT!

I remember this weather,
The dank scent of late May,
The rain closing in, the cold far away.
I remember this weather.

I remember this building,
Your friends saw our first new hello,
A quick glance and then time to go,
I remember this building.

I remember that book sale,
All of those posters I covered in tape,
Only in turn they were all drenched in rain,
I remember that book sale.

All other words don't belong any more,
I put up a poster, you pass through the door.

I remember that party,
When strangers asked how long we had been placed aside,
And we told them how long it had been 'til tonight,
I remember that party.

I remember that evening,
When years of strained anger convinced me to flee,
To new beds to sleep in and new cities,
To new morning coffees and newfound unease,
To new innocence and new casualties,
I remember that evening.

They never believed us, they thought there'd be more,
I put up a poster, you passed through the door.

Tonight I walked to the supermarket, just me and my calico bags, in the dark, in the rain. And, again, I felt brave.

Bravery is a prized human commodity, and it's easy to see why. In almost every situation, somebody needs to be brave. Sometimes we even need a hero. Sometimes somebody needs to pull the trigger, crash the landing, make the jump, the climb, the step. But most of the time, there's no burning building, no trapped children, no screams for help. Most of the time, we meet bravery with ignorant silence.

Yet we certainly still need as much bravery as we can muster. Somebody needs to drive the ambulance, wear the uniform, take the blow. Somebody needs say the right thing (however unpopular). We're not talking climbing Everest here. At some point, we will all need to be brave. Hell, sometimes to even be alive is bravery enough.

As I walked through the rain, I thought of all of my years of cowardice. But in those dark, wet streets I could have been anywhere: the archipelago of Slussen, the street stalls of Rynek Glówny, places where I have walked on my own through the night with nothing but a passport and sense of adventure. Only, that didn't feel brave at all. And sure, this is home, but everywhere is home to someone. Sometimes even to be home is bravery enough.

You know what? I am starting to change. I'm starting to change, and I don't have any idea what I'm doing. It frightens me. Most of the time I feel like huddling in a corner with my hands over my eyes. But maybe, right now I'm the bravest I've ever been.