Prozac and Whimsy

Music is how I make sense of everything. It’s how I try and control or at least acknowledge my mood or state of mind at any given moment. It’s how I remember things and it’s how I link it all together. All of my key memories have a song linked to them. Sometimes this isn’t really a good thing.

I’ve not been able to listen to Nirvana’ Unplugged album since the night I lost my virginity and blew my beans before the end of side one. The Street’s A Grand Don’t Come For Free, or more precisely Dry Your Eyes Mate, is the sound of me crying in the bath as my first marriage fell apart around me. Encore Un Fois came out 30 years ago this year but still sounds like my ex getting ready to go out and get shitfaced drunk and probably not come back home that night. Just thinking about that song makes me feel sick and panicky. Go With The Flow by Queens Of The Stone Age is my best man asking me if I was really sure I wanted to do this as we made our way to the church where I married her.

Stiltskin’s one and only hit, Inside, takes me back to the night in 95 when my neighbour hanged herself and nothing would ever be the same again. So far this breakdown doesn’t have a specific soundtrack, it will, it’ll have to. I just hope it’s something good.

I’ve spent most of this weekend with my dad and I think I have figured out that he does the same. He *loves* Pink Floyd, I’d class myself as a big fan but he is streets ahead of me in terms of dedication. His favourite album is The Division Bell. An album we have talked about a lot in the last couple of days. It’s not my favourite, that would either be Wish You Were Here or Meddle depending on what mood I was in when you asked (No one ever asks what your favourite Pink Floyd album is, it’s an opinion you offer unpromoted [It’s currently Wish You Were Here BTW])

My memories of it are of dad listening to it through *HIS* headphones (you were NOT allowed to touch them) and it being so loud (or the soundproofing that bad?) that you could still hear it in a different room or even upstairs. I briefly taught myself to play the intro to High Hopes on piano (me and my relationship with musical instruments is a topic for another day) And I also mention it in Stay Happy. I’ve always had a good relationship with it or at least I thought I did.

It’s not that The Division Bell is a bad record. Its not got Roger on so isn’t ALL the way up its own arse but its also not got Roger on so it doesn’t have THAT lyrical edge to it. But it does have Stephen Hawking on it so there’s that I guess?

It came out in 1994. Much later than I first thought but the release date is what has sent me down a rabbit hole and come up with the theory as to his relationship with music mirroring mine, or mine mirroring his I guess.

My musical memories of dad from this time revolve around three songs. Sacrifice by Elton John this was released in 1989. The Living Years by Mike + The Mechanics, released in 1988. And then The Division Bell. They were all played as loudly as possible over and over and over. His dad, my grandfather (that’s how families work) died in 1991.

I loved my grandfather, absolutely adored him. It is him I stole the name James Josiah from. It is him I have tried to be over the years. He was the kindest, gentlest, funniest man you could ever wish to meet. Everything that a granddad should be. He was a paratrooper in the war and I can remember him teaching me how to countdown to when to pull the chute by using the elephant method to mark seconds after jumping off the wall in the garden and “floating” down the lawn. Another time he took me and my sister for a walk while my gran made us lunch, we came back hours late much to her fury as he had insisted on using dandelion clocks to mark time. He taught me how to play snooker using fruit and a poker on the living room floor. Fruit also featured in our games of bowls in the same room.

Dad carries a lot of guilt over his dad’s death. It was a long, slow drawn out affair in that way that only cancer can do. He died a shell of the man we all knew and loved on his 71st birthday. I’ve only visited his grave once but I admired how neat the headstone was (my relationship with grief and death and graves and my funeral plans are another topic for another day) He wishes (or wished as I hope and pray this is a past tense thing for him) That he did “something” to “help” him along the way.

Looking back with the clarity that only time and poor mental health can give you, this is where his depression began in earnest. The Living Years is a bad memory song for me. It takes me back to 91. I was 11 and while he wasn’t the first person I knew and loved to die it was my first funeral. He was cremated and the finality of the curtain closing around the small wooden box destroyed me. The Living Years sounds like my granddad dying. And I think I now know it sounds like it to my dad as well.

Sacrifice sounds like affairs and my parents not splitting up (yet). The Division Bell and High Hopes now sound like my dad hitting the rock bottom of his depression and grief and getting little to no help.

I was a kid back then and only figured all this out while driving back from his this afternoon. That he classes it as his favourite and will argue this case until he is blue in the face means (to me) he has an emotional attachment to it in the same way that I do with The Holy Bible.

My happy music memories of my dad are of him blasting Gary Moore’s 1987 Live at Isstadion Stockholm VHS as loud as the telly could go on a Saturday afternoon while mother was at work. He saw Gary Moore on the 1987 Wild Frontier tour and the t-shirt he got is my benchmark for all tour t-shirts. Picture on the front, tour dates on the back. I will pretty much always buy merch but if there is merch with tour dates on the back I WILL get it. Saturday afternoons were when he had to look after me and my sister and this usually involved us getting the Lego out and him playing music really fucking loudly.

He taped all of his favourite acts from Live Aid and watched and rewatched them that much that I can’t remember what I can remember of that day as it is all spread over years and years of what little I can remember of my childhood. I know the trumpet malfunction during Kool & the Gang’ Cherish is something that we still laugh about now on a fairly regular basis. He also taped the Freddy Mercury Tribute concert and would take great glee in telling me how if Guns N Roses (who were my favourite band at the time) were playing in the back garden he’d close the curtains. A line he happily repeated this weekend when I was somewhat bizarrely trying to explain the relationship of At The Drive-In, Sparta and The Mars Volta (I’ve been very squirrel brained and was trying to explain how great a song 198d is)

I don’t remember much of my childhood. This is something I was worried about for a long time until I was told it is a trauma response. And while that doesn’t make it better it does make it make sense. My childhood was shit. We were poor, proper dirt poor. Something that never quite leaves you (another another topic for another another day). My parents should never have been together and certainly not for as long as they were but divorce wasn’t as acceptable in the 80s as it is now. I think have hinted at mine and my dads relationship and how we have only really built one in the last 5-10 years. We are closer now than we ever have been. Closer than I ever thought possible.

Last night (14/02/26) it was getting late and we’d had a few beers we had spent the day buying me crap for my flat (Another topic for another day) and he’s frankly given me too much money to cover the deposit and “other bits”. I tried to thank him for everything that he is doing to help me as we were going to bed. He said I didn’t have to thank him and that he was my dad and that’s what he was for, but then he went all quiet and said…

I missed your childhood.

And he did. He worked a lot, having two jobs at one point and then a massive period of lodging all over the country. So my mother raised me and my sister. As a result dad took the blame for everything, even mother’s affair that I was sworn to secrecy about. That was his fault as he was never home. I was sent to watch him play football so he had to come straight home once he had finished. It’s why I hate football with a passion to this day. Spending time with him then was a punishment.

He is a local legend. When he retired from playing they held a testimonial game for him. I was known as Pye’s Boy not me in any way I could ever claim for myself. I lived in his shadow and was just never good enough. I was never him. I wasn’t sporty. I was shy and quiet. I stayed in my room and read a lot. My nickname (before Gupta stuck) in infants (shout out to all my 80s babies) was Gentle Ben.

I thought I had found a peace with my past as it had all brought me here. All the inadequacies and abuse and guilt and shame and just all the shit that has ever gone on along the way has made me what and who I am today.

I know some people would, could and even do use their terrible upbringings as almost an excuse to be equally terrible people. But I want the opposite. I need the opposite. I never want anyone to go through what I did. I want and need to make this world a brighter, lighter, happier place. This is why I arrange Christmas present toy drives for a local charity that helps families who have next to fuck all. It’s why I will do anything and put anyone first before my needs to my own detriment.

Me and dad have never spoken about the past, not properly. And we still haven’t. I thought for years. Like most of my fucking life that he just kind of didn’t like me. Or that he was ashamed of me. Or maybe even both. I can remember asking him on my first stag do (my only stag do I didn’t have one last time) If he was proud of me as if getting married and having kids was all that would have taken. Despite everything I still had that need for his approval that I never got. I have no memory of him ever saying he loved me as a kid. We tell each other we love each other every time we speak now and he has told me that he is proud of me and I know he means it but.

But.

I missed your childhood.

Changes everything. It makes a lot of fucking sense as to why he does what he does and is doing now. But I never knew. I never knew that he had any regret over the years we have lost. I had written them off as what we have now is better. If we had been close when I was growing up we wouldn’t be able to be so close now. I thought I understood the rules of the game.

And now I don’t. I had come to terms that we were more alike than I ever thought, but this weekend. Things have clicked into place and my world has been rocked.

I have some serious self loathing issues. I can’t look at myself in the mirror as I don’t like the person who looks back at me. I was tipped over the edge a few weeks back because of a picture of me where I literally do not recognise the person in it (it’s a long story and one I’m not ready to tell and don’t know if I ever will be).

I never feel like anything I ever do is or will be good enough and I have always felt this way. Always. And I know all of this goes back to being a kid but I thought I had found peace with it all. That this was just how it was and was always going to be.

But if my dad likes me.

If he has always liked and even missed me.

Then why can’t I?

Why can’t I?