Prozac and Whimsy

I hate purity.

Hate goodness.

I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere.

I want everyone corrupt.

Picture the scene. You’re an awkward teen growing up in a dead end dying market town in the mid 90s. A friend’s older brother is drip feeding you bootlegged tapes of the sixth form staples Faith No More and Metallica. Then one week you see a lunatic wearing a balaclava  with his name written on it, screeching about butchers and architects and purity and perverts. On Top Of The Pops no less!

That performance of Faster by Manic Street Preachers is legendary, sparking a record number of complaints due to the militaristic imagery and imagined IRA sympathies whipped up by the tabloids. For me it was life changing. I went to Woolworths the next day and bought the album The Holy Bible (on tape) and have never looked back.

I can and will look you dead in the eye and swear blind that The Holy Bible isn’t just an absolutely perfect album, it’s the best album released in the 90s and second place isn’t even close and is open to change at a moments whim.

When I say I consider this a perfect album I genuinely mean it. There isn’t a single sample, a lyric, a song or anything I would change at all. Everything is exactly where it should be when it should be. It formed my politics before I knew where I stood. It introduced me to Plath, Pinter and Miller but most of all it gave my fledgling depression a voice and an outlet.

Looking back with clarity and understanding, I’ve been experiencing periods of poor mental health in wildly varying degrees since my very early teens if not earlier. There have been periods of blue skies and rainbows along the way but I’ve always had this underlying sadness that just bleeds into my soul and pollutes the world around me.

For over 30 years now I have hidden and wallowed and reveled in the world of misery this album brought to me. It has helped me contain if not fully understand the darkness that has at times threatened to overwhelm me.

It is absolutely, truly perfect.

Each listen throws a new favourite at you. You can still notice little things you’ve maybe not quite caught before. You can find a lyric to cling to and find solace in, repeating like a mantra as you struggle through your day.

I can go months and months without playing The Holy Bible but when I do, everything feels like home. I’m 14 again and I’m lying on my bed crying but not knowing why. I’m 15 and watching my neighbours hug in their living room the day after their 13 year old daughter hanged herself giving me the knowledge there will always be a way out if I want. I’m 18 and I’ve buried an old school friend knowing it should have been me instead. I’m 21 and facing a life of dead end jobs. I’m 23 and marrying a woman I know doesn’t like me let alone love me. I’m 25 and my marriage has failed and I’m technically homeless. I’m 33 and I’m having a full blown actual breakdown. I’m 39 and I’m kinda dying. I’m 46 and the clouds are drawing in but I know everything will be OK because it always is in the end and I’ll always have this record.

I am purity.