Lou Reed: Vicious
Not drinking is going suprisingly well. I have achieved sobriety on four out of five nights so far. Admittedly on the fifth I became mind numbingly plastered on a combination of damn fine pinot and damn cheap scotch, but a girl has to live sometimes. My main complaint is that sobriety is dull. Not only is it dull, but it is the antithesis of rock'n'roll, and maybe I am getting a bit old for rock and roll now but it rankles that I am losing all my vices. Obviously I'm not exactly proud of being half-cut and half-crazy, but looked at iin a certain light it has a narritive sattisfaction; a sort of war-wound charm. Filtered through a story of myself it sort of works. Obviously it would work better if I was not, in fact, living it. And it will n
be better still in the future when I have overcome, yadda yadda, to find fame, yadda yadda, and love, yadda yadda, and children and an occasional slot on woman's hour (the middle class girl's mark of success). The only other possible end to such a tale of sorrow and vice is ending up dead in a hotel room, abandoned by my brilliant but wastrel sometime boyfriend, who will later immortalise me in song. I'm too chubby for that. Immortalisation in song requires you to be immortalisable, which I, along with most of the population, am manifestly not. So the overcoming ending it has to be.
Which means, in some way, that I have to find success. Now I am trying to work out what that means. As I piece my life back together I am trying to carve myself out some sort of future. I am abandoning academia and philosophy for good and in the next month will complete applications to music college to study singing as a postgraduate. In my mind, I try on different futures for size. My therapist harrangues me to list my goals. I am stumped. Or at least, I am semi-stumped. Because I find that far from the sort of goals I have always felt are expected of me- brilliance, success, achievement- mine are all to do with quiet and calm. I want to earn enough money doing something I enjoy to bring up some children somewhere with a garden. I want to be surrounded by people. And that's really about it. I want to sing, because, as I have leaned by trying to do pretty much anything else, it is the thing most guarunteed to keep me stable, which I can do without it ever palling, and which I am naturally good at, not good at by dint of neurosis and a constant feeling of not quite meeting expectations. That's it, though. It would be nice if I could support myself with it one day. If not- c'est la vie. I'll teach. Or something.
I feel like I have had enough excitement already to last me a life time, and like I have reached the age where I want to retire. More than that, I feel like I have had enough brilliance to last a life time. As a child I was surrounded by brilliant people- my family, aunts and uncles who make films, save the world, write poetry or history or get interviewed by Melvin Bragg. My mother- a feted young artist who gave up her career for me. My father- brilliant, funny, imaginative but functionally incapable. And all their friends. We lived in Devon where a group of London artists had moved when they started having kids. We'd go to parties and people would talk and draw and read out loud. The kids, all under twelve, would steal bottles of booze and go and play in the studio. Sculptures made wonderful adventure playgrounds. Everyone was good and everyone was clever and everyone was going to succeed. There were books everywhere and the pervading ethos was not exactly bohemian, but was full of making good. It was about making things happen. We were taught that you do what you need to make what you want come true. That there is nothing you can't achieve if you work hard enough. That you are free, to experiment, to mess up and fuck up and come down. All very exciting, all very liberating, and maybe if I had been older then it would have had a different impact on me.
I did work hard. I did try to make big plans. My shameful secret is that I have always wanted security more than success. And I never really wanted brilliance. I'm not lazy, but I also don't want to burn that brightly. It always seemed a bit too effortful, a bit too edgy. It always seemed one step away from falling down.
There were parts that I loved- beautiful houses, wild gardens, long lunches. I'd like those things. But I'd like to be able to enjoy them. Oddly, I still like to be surrounded by people who are similarly driven, who are determined to make things and make them good, but I don't really want to be one of them. I wonder, is mediocrity a goal? Is it something you can willingly set out to achieve? It's not a particularly good end to my story, I'm aware of that-- I went through the fire of depression and self-harm and mental illness and survived, and then I got an early night with a glass of milk and a good book. It's not going to make a very interesting novelisation. I probably wont even sell the film rights. No semi-tragic heroine I. On the other hand, there is a part of me which feels that if anything gives you the right to aim for mediocrity it's such a survival. I know that peace, continuity, steadiness, are no mean achievements. I know that if I ever manage to retire to somewhere without storms that will be a success all of it's very own. If that's mediocity, then that's what I'm hitting for. Altthough I can't say there wont be a shot of whiskey in that there hot milk.
be better still in the future when I have overcome, yadda yadda, to find fame, yadda yadda, and love, yadda yadda, and children and an occasional slot on woman's hour (the middle class girl's mark of success). The only other possible end to such a tale of sorrow and vice is ending up dead in a hotel room, abandoned by my brilliant but wastrel sometime boyfriend, who will later immortalise me in song. I'm too chubby for that. Immortalisation in song requires you to be immortalisable, which I, along with most of the population, am manifestly not. So the overcoming ending it has to be.
Which means, in some way, that I have to find success. Now I am trying to work out what that means. As I piece my life back together I am trying to carve myself out some sort of future. I am abandoning academia and philosophy for good and in the next month will complete applications to music college to study singing as a postgraduate. In my mind, I try on different futures for size. My therapist harrangues me to list my goals. I am stumped. Or at least, I am semi-stumped. Because I find that far from the sort of goals I have always felt are expected of me- brilliance, success, achievement- mine are all to do with quiet and calm. I want to earn enough money doing something I enjoy to bring up some children somewhere with a garden. I want to be surrounded by people. And that's really about it. I want to sing, because, as I have leaned by trying to do pretty much anything else, it is the thing most guarunteed to keep me stable, which I can do without it ever palling, and which I am naturally good at, not good at by dint of neurosis and a constant feeling of not quite meeting expectations. That's it, though. It would be nice if I could support myself with it one day. If not- c'est la vie. I'll teach. Or something.
I feel like I have had enough excitement already to last me a life time, and like I have reached the age where I want to retire. More than that, I feel like I have had enough brilliance to last a life time. As a child I was surrounded by brilliant people- my family, aunts and uncles who make films, save the world, write poetry or history or get interviewed by Melvin Bragg. My mother- a feted young artist who gave up her career for me. My father- brilliant, funny, imaginative but functionally incapable. And all their friends. We lived in Devon where a group of London artists had moved when they started having kids. We'd go to parties and people would talk and draw and read out loud. The kids, all under twelve, would steal bottles of booze and go and play in the studio. Sculptures made wonderful adventure playgrounds. Everyone was good and everyone was clever and everyone was going to succeed. There were books everywhere and the pervading ethos was not exactly bohemian, but was full of making good. It was about making things happen. We were taught that you do what you need to make what you want come true. That there is nothing you can't achieve if you work hard enough. That you are free, to experiment, to mess up and fuck up and come down. All very exciting, all very liberating, and maybe if I had been older then it would have had a different impact on me.
I did work hard. I did try to make big plans. My shameful secret is that I have always wanted security more than success. And I never really wanted brilliance. I'm not lazy, but I also don't want to burn that brightly. It always seemed a bit too effortful, a bit too edgy. It always seemed one step away from falling down.
There were parts that I loved- beautiful houses, wild gardens, long lunches. I'd like those things. But I'd like to be able to enjoy them. Oddly, I still like to be surrounded by people who are similarly driven, who are determined to make things and make them good, but I don't really want to be one of them. I wonder, is mediocrity a goal? Is it something you can willingly set out to achieve? It's not a particularly good end to my story, I'm aware of that-- I went through the fire of depression and self-harm and mental illness and survived, and then I got an early night with a glass of milk and a good book. It's not going to make a very interesting novelisation. I probably wont even sell the film rights. No semi-tragic heroine I. On the other hand, there is a part of me which feels that if anything gives you the right to aim for mediocrity it's such a survival. I know that peace, continuity, steadiness, are no mean achievements. I know that if I ever manage to retire to somewhere without storms that will be a success all of it's very own. If that's mediocity, then that's what I'm hitting for. Altthough I can't say there wont be a shot of whiskey in that there hot milk.
posted by tattybluetrees at 5:00 AM
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