Lou Reed

Strumming my pain

It isn't often that a performer dies and I feel something inside me really ache with sorrow. I remember it happening a little when Elizabeth Sladen passed away (the actress who played Sarah Jane Smith in Dr Who). Of course I enjoyed her work but I didn't know her, never met her. What I felt was that a little part of my history had just been snuffed out. So when I heard of Lou Reed's death yesterday, his real death not a hoax one, I immediately wanted to mark the moment. I wanted to post a song on fb that meant something to me. But which one?

When I was 16 I joined a band on a whim. I sang with them in various guises for four years and went out with the lead guitarist for all four years too. My musical tastes were reinformed and matured from teenybopper New Romantic into something loosely called Indie. If I had to find us a category it would be new wave 60's influenced jazz punk. We listened to The Velvet Underground continually and knew someone who knew Maureen Tucker. He became our champion because I sang like Nico. And I lost my virginity whilst Walk on the Wildside was playing on the radio.

I listened to tracks like Heroin and Venus in Furs with no knowledge of the subject matter they danced so darkly with. Yet it was a darkness that I came to recognise. After the death of my father in 1985 I suffered from bouts of depression that verged on despair. This was no Emo fixation nor an intellectual appreciation. Velvet Underground were writing from a dark place and their music connected with the dark place I was in. Cale's violin peeling the skin, Tucker sounding the beat of an inevitable but always postponed doom, and Reed, voice bleeding, making poetry out of pain. It was the poetry that made the works masterpiece. Like Hamlet dreading the nightmares his life-ending would bring or Keats walking in sensory deprivation after the nightingale's song was lost. The darkness becomes sublime. The light all the more worth living.

Reed's ability to place simple words into simple melodies carried by majestic arrangements lead to some of the most charismatic expressions of ordinary human emotion and extraordinary human existence. The one never far from the other. Perfect Day carries in it all the ordinariness and extraordinariness of love. The most common and valuable emotion. So simple yet beyond our understanding. When love is as right as this it is hard to ever imagine that it will not be there. But I always felt Reed knew that this day, everything just as it should be, was worth more celebration than any big adventure or pomped up circumstance. Always his voice expressing the fragility of joy and the moment made special by its transience. This was his carpe diem song riding on the exhilaration of being more than just a survivor.

"It was good what we did yesterday and I'd do it once again" Pale Blue Eyes

 

Tweet Tweet

Will the real Mrs Penn-Thomas please stand up

I've just had a lovely conversation with Abby Donovan on twitter. She is such a funny, caring, intelligent but underappreciated woman. Life is hard at the moment for her and, though he is really hot, her husband can treat her like shit sometimes (I haven't told Abby I think this). Oh and in case you don't know Abby that well, she is a fictional character.

I have no idea who is running @TheAbbyDonovan or @TheRayDonovan personas (inspired by SHO's new hit show Ray Donovan) but I like this game. If I had been in the US rather than catching up in the UK I would have joined in and adopted a persona from the programme myself. The internet  makes this easy to do as for all I know the person playing Abby could be a trans-sexual cage fighter from Glasgow. Ray's tweets could be provided by a hermit nun on Bardsey Island. So when I tweet them...who am I? Am I me joining someone else's game or am I already in a bigger game?

Since last year (and a blog spat with a man who doesn't deserve to be named) I have been using MrsPenn-Thomas as my online signature. She, "MrsPenn-Thomas", started with a very clear back story that wasn't mine. As time has moved on I have embraced her, not as a fictional persona but as my online voice. She says things that I would probably not say and often with a greater eloquence than I can muster off the cuff. I suspect she will become more daring the more rope I give her. Why do I need her to say these things for me? Am I slightly weird? Well maybe a little but not that much.

You see we do this all the time don't we. Today I am John the Headteacher - I wear a shirt and tie and speak with great authority and a little compassion because I am a good headteacher. Tomorrow is Saturday so I am going to wear a hat and scarf and shout Fuck or Twat or Fucking Twat every time the ref misses a foul that should have given my team a penalty. Then on Sunday I will wear a nice jumper and chinos to church, carve the roast and spend the afternoon crawling on the floor so my grandchild can pretend they are hunting down dragons (or riding one depending on how my knees/elbow/back are holding out). We all play parts all the time. By doing so the world not only functions but sparkles delightfully. John is a headteacher, a sports fan, a grandfather and a dragon. And perhaps a Glaswegian cage-fighter.

I am, of course, the real Mrs Penn-Thomas. ;)

The Journey Begins

One woman's attempt to pretend this isn't purely procrastination.

If you are my age you may well remember a programme by Carl Sagan called The Cosmos: A Personal Journey.  I don't know if he ever uttered the lines, or if it was just a shortcut to mimic him in the playground, but he started each show with the invitation to "Come with me on a journey through *slight dramatic pause* The Cosmos *cue big Vangelis theme tune*." Well as I started to think about what the point of this blog could be I started to get Sagan's New York drawl bouncing around off the walls of my brain, inviting me to unlock the secrets of the universe.   If instead you can imagine me speaking Sagan's words from inside my head (hold on I'll just see if I can squeeze them out of my ears for you to get an idea of what I mean) but replace 'The Cosmos' with 'MyMind' then THAT is roughly or thereabouts what this blog may, or may not, under the right conditions provide you with. There was also the possibility of likening my attempt to Loyd Grosman intoning the words "Come with me through the keyhole" but his was way too annoying a voice to be allowed room in my brain for too long, and doesn't come with a groovy electro soundtrack.

So here it is. Seemingly unconnected asides about random stuff that happen to spark my brain, and throw it into overdrive, will be a feature I predict. All those thoughts too complex to be done any justice by twitter will pop up here. Subjects with too few lolz for facebook will be allowed free reign. I promise nothing but do hint at the chance of poetry, film reviews, baseless opinion, grammatically incorrect ramblings, beards, tigers, loosely labeled art, random insertions of the word random to annoy people who find time to be upset by such abuses, grounded opinion, celebrations, fangirl gushings, critical commentary, rugby, things I want to say to my kids but won't, things I want to say to their teachers but shouldn't, other Mum stuff, possibly some Woman stuff, invariably some Human stuff - the list could go on into infinity and still have room for a few more as they plop into my head so I will stop here.

And start soon with something bloggy over by there...