Day 99. Time after time (9/4/19)

So, let's finally talk about the subjectivity of time, shall we?

Promised/threatened this one ages ago, never quite got round to it. If you're thinking that may have been some kind of ironic prank on my part, you'd be partially correct. I liked the idea of playing with time. And then I forgot that I'd done it. So time passed. As it does. In a manner that might not be entirely linear.

And in the spirit of playing with time: I'm writing this yesterday. I started this and then derailed myself with not talking about Thatcher. At some length. So, here we go, talking about time while breaking time.

(Soundtrack: For that first paragraph it was Hal Blaine's 'Psychedelic Percussion' album. An album released in 1967 that I hadn't realised existed until an hour ago - yesterday - but now have the ability to hear immediately due to all the wonderful tech we have at our fingertips. Thus both bending time and reinforcing journalist/writer/broadcaster David Hepworth's maxim that new music now only means 'music you haven't heard before'. Those discovering Bowie or The Beatles or Coltrane or Genesis or Prince or anybody with a depth of catalogue does not need to discover the work in the chronology that it originally existed. When our Tom listens to Bowie it doesn't matter that there is 15 years between Ziggy and Never Let Me Down, they exist simultaneously for him. It's not that we've invented time travel - despite those scientists who managed to simulate a situation where binary logic broke down and they were able to rewind the unrewindable event that had occurred before them. Honest to god, search it out, it will bend your mind. It's that we've condensed and expanded time, at the same time. Everything is new, everything is ancient, everything is now and the past touches the present at all moments.

The Hal Blaine album though? Bloody hard going that. We established that yesterday.

So I'm on Springsteen. Again. Springsteen has become a default setting for me. Springsteen is basically to my 21st century self what The Bunnymen were to my eighties, The Roses to my nineties. The Springsteen I'm playing is a live show from East Rutherford, New Jersey from 30th August 2016 where he starts with a run of nine songs that don't even touch the early eighties. It's a man looking back at a younger version of himself and summoning him to the now. And I'm playing this because there's a point to make later.)

You know that bit where you have a really good 'in' to the piece? A bit of preamble that leads you to the point you were going to make? My 'in' was the Thatcher anniversary that I had no intention of talking about but then obviously did.

The key to that was the fact that her life is more present to me than her passing. One of these things still exists, still has consequence. That's how time bends and touches itself. There are no straight lines, time weaves.

We are now in the week leading up to the thirtieth anniversary of Hillsborough.

That's obviously something I'm not going to talk about. The perils of talking about it are too real, too obvious. We all know what I'm talking about.

Thirty years. Thirty years that have been an absolute hell for the families of those lost, for those who survived and carry the memories with them every day. It would be easy to say 'thirty years? It feels like yesterday" but it doesn't. It feels like thirty years. Everybody with any involvement in the after effects of that day know exactly how long that thirty years feels like. It feels like centuries.

At the same time, and to move to a much more frivolous subject, this May will see the thirtieth anniversary of the release of The Stone Roses' debut album.

I remember hearing it for the first time. I know how much of my life it's soundtracked. And it feels like it came out five years ago.

I can remember the act of buying albums in 1982 much more clearly than I can recall events that took place last year.

I left a job in January. I left HMV five years ago. Both seem like decades.

Playing live in Vanilla Beserk feels more recent than playing live in The Daze though there are twenty-five years separating the two. I could play you most of the Vanilla Beserk setlist now if you asked, I can't even recall the names of half the songs The Daze played in our handful of gigs. Specifically, I can't recall the songs I wrote for the band myself. There are at least two that I know are genuinely gone from the world forever. If I don't recall them, who does?

In June, The Comeback Special will play in the studio at The Royal Court. The area that used to be the bar. The area that used to be The World Downstairs. We played The World Downstairs in early 87. It was one of the few Vanilla Beserk gigs that J ever saw. Each time I walk in that room the gig is immediate to me. But more immediate is somebody else's gig, a show where a fanzine was passed round that had reviewed us. I am in that moment. I am in that positivity.

The me that will be in that room in June is the same me that was there in '87. And is a million miles away from that person. So removed as to be somebody else entirely. But still rooted.

Those thirty-two years have changed me. As they should. The last five years have probably changed me more than the previous twenty-seven. Your fifties is different to your forties, which is different to your thirties, which is different to your twenties.

Again, as it should be. And blindingly obvious. Though, when in your forties, you definitely consider it an extension of your thirties but with the caveat that you tend to become less career driven.

This house, this job, this life? This is probably the level that we're at, that we'll remain at. A school of thought for your forties. Ambitions become less important. You're not going to be a pop star, not going to play for (insert name of team here). You're content.

That was my experience.

There's one important difference when you move solidly into your fifties though.

You realise there's not actually that much left.

We've talked about this quite a bit recently. Realistically, how many good , useful, valuable years do we have left? How many years are left that we can fill with experience?

I'm fifty-five. What does that realistically give me? Twenty-five years? Thirty if I'm really lucky? Let's be honest, the stats are out there, life expectancy in North Liverpool isn't exactly a definition of longevity.

You get the wake up calls. You already get the wake up calls.

(And if this currently a bit down beat, don't worry, I'm not bathing in the maudlin, not lamenting the shortness of everything, this is all going to move in an upwards direction in a second.)

You realise that parts of your body aren't as reliable as they used to be. That's just a fact of life.

You turn fifty-five and the NHS sends you a letter inviting you to bowel cancer screening. Which is simultaneously terrifying and reassuring. There's the potential but here's the possible prevention. There will be tubes in areas that I have no desire to ever have tubes again but those tubes are essential. The letter was a wake up call though. Here's a reality to slap you in the face.

And you lose people. You lose people you know and people you don't.

Losing a friend yesterday? The second person I've personally known to pass this year. Both of them younger than I.

You see the famous names we've lost already this year: Ranking Roger 55, Jeremy Hardy 57, Mark Hollis 64 and you realise how close those numbers appear to your own. And you realise that you're still young.

Everything inside me screams that I'm still young, that I still have plenty of time to accomplish all that I want to accomplish. And I want to accomplish so much. I want to do so much, see so much, visit so many places.

While a little voice whispers the 'what ifs'.

This is why changing life was so important. This is why 'retiring' in January was vital.

I didn't retire. I couldn't retire. I'm too young for that. I stopped the daily grind because the universe had put us in a place where I could take the chance. Because I knew that there would be opportunities.

Oh, and the opportunities that presented themselves immediately.

All those years that I craved a weekend? I spent the weekend writing. Because I had a deadline. Because I had three days to turn something around. Because the something I had to turn around could be something great.

I haven't retired because I never will. I've changed my job to something that I can, and happily will, do every single day no matter what age my body claims to be.

So, there may be twenty-five years left. Twenty-five years is  a long time. Last week saw the twenty-fifth anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide. We are closer to Cobain's passing than Cobain was to Hendrix's. The twenty-five years before his loss feels so much longer than the twenty-five years since.

Because we were younger and it all speeds up as you age, because each year is a smaller percentage of your life to date.

But, as we've already said, each year is both rapid and infinite. We know the length that the passing of time can take and we know how the good feels immediate.

The answer is, obviously, to fill every day you can, with the good, the immediate.

This is where the Springsteen theory comes in. Since the reformation of the E Street Band in the late nineties, the work has been constant, the touring almost endless. The reinvention of self that saw the residency on Broadway; a way to look back at your entire life with the knowledge that you've acquired and to sit once again, nightly in his case, with those who were lost. To visit the shades of your past.

He's obviously feeling the mortality. He's facing seventy, he's lost friends. He's looking at his own life and he's making sure he does what he feels is valuable. He's making a mark. He's been making a mark for nearly fifty years but now the mark is deliberate, now the mark is informed.

And that's my example. That's my spirit guide. I know the work I wanted to do in my twenties. The work that was never achieved. The work I let slip through circumstance and fear. And I'm at ease with that. I know the work that is now, I know the work that is coming.

The key to all this: challenge yourself. Fill every moment with wonder and joy and experience. Create something that lasts, that others will enjoy/appreciate/benefit from. Everything we were talking about a couple of days ago.

There is always time and you never know when the next great thing is coming. There's the excitement, the ongoing excitement of a league title challenge, there's the fact that we're only three weeks away from the new Avengers film.

And they're frivolous things. But they're things. They're things that give us a little wonder, a little joy, a little something we didn't have previously. Things that will stay with us, that will feel immediate in years to come.

The key is to keep anticipating. To live in wonder. To know that you're doing what you want to be doing. To take the circumstances that challenge you and convert them to opportunity to inspire.

And that's not always possible. We don't know what's coming.

But we need to live every day with the hope that the what's coming is the very best.

Challenge? The second I finish this, I'm picking up a guitar and I'm sitting down with the express intention of writing a song. It's a decade since I last wrote a song. I'm going to need to teach myself something that used to be second nature. And once I've taught myself that, something will exist that didn't before.

That's a wonderful thing.

The creativity is everything.

Every moment of our past is with us, every moment of the future waiting there, already in existence, already happening, just waiting to be embraced.

Time is on our side.

(Tomorrow: day 100. Oh you wait to see what I've got for you for tomorrow. It may be the greatest piece of blogging anybody has ever done. It's certainly the longest.)