tales from an ordinary world

2000-07-01

"and they'll say that you're so sick, boy
but you're only sick of love"
The Blackeyed Susans.

It's an odd place to hear a band - a free gig, in the bistro of a largish pub. Most of the people aren't there to hear the band, and don't pay them too much attention when they start. By the end of their show, closing with a song called "my body has a mind of its own", many of the patrons have been replaced by a more appreciative audience.

A guitar played the right kind of way - that delicate soft wail - sends my head to other places. Wide open spaces. They've been on my mind a lot lately, as if I could somehow escape my life, like I've always wanted to.

A few years ago, I picked up a particular Blackeyed Susans album with a cover of some song called "Apartment number 9", about someone lamenting been dumped - "and the sun will never shine on apartment number nine". Having just been dumped, and living (at the time) in number 9 in a block of flats, the song meant something to me. Deliciously sad, the ambient noise of traffic in the background, and Evil Graham Lee's pedal steel just to help set the mood.

They all seem so much happier, now that I'm out of their way. I deserved every inch of pain, every tear, every sleepless night. And it'll only happen again and again until the big sleep, with my ashes scattered across this city.