Six months on, tomorrow at noon - it feels more like 60 years. My life has changed beyond recognition. I need to keep moving forward but it is difficult sometimes, not to get pulled back. Recently I have found myself retreating into the music of my youth. To the time before my life became shared with another person. When my musical influences and what mattered to me were my own. I spent time in Macclesfield, Swinton and Salford growing up, and did my undergraduate degree at UMIST on Sackville Street, living in Rusholme in South Manchester. I've lived and worked in London for decades, yet in the queues for standing Prom tickets this summer I listened to the Smiths relentlessly. I was bemused by Morrissey dancing on Top of the Pops with a bunch of flowers at the time (I think it was always more about Johnny Marr for me) but it somehow seemed right. I've always had a fascination with Joy Division, Ian Curtis and New Order. I was too young to really get it at the time, but I think watching Tony Wilson on Granada TV sort of stuck in my consciousness. I was an awkward, geeky student in Manchester and the Hacienda was something on my periphery, rather than something I actively engaged with. I did go once but it was already a shadow of its former self. I regularly danced to New Order at my student hall’s weekend discos though. When I studied sound engineering in 2009-10, it was Martin Hannett’s production of the ‘Manchester Sound’ and Stephen Morris’s drumming that influenced how I engaged. I started to pull together everything I knew, listened obsessively, watched the films, read everything I could get my hands on*, and realised just how much Joy Division and New Order had pervaded my life. I have always had huge admiration for the way that the band picked itself up at the bleakest of times. They were hard on themselves, consumed by grief and trying to comprehend what had happened: "This sounds awful but it was only after Ian died that we sat down and listened to the lyrics. You'd find yourself thinking, 'Oh my God, I missed this one.' Because I'd look at Ian's lyrics and think how clever he was putting himself in the position of someone else. I never believed he was writing about himself. Looking back, how could I have been so bleedin' stupid? Of course he was writing about himself. But I didn't go in and grab him and ask, 'What's up?' I have to live with that.” Now, unexpectedly alone after 20 years with the person I thought would be my life partner, I find myself going back to their music. Over the years I had never imagined it would have such personal resonance for me, but here I am, picking myself up after the bleakest of times. Listening to Blue Monday or Temptation reminds me of Manchester, student discos and a time when I could be anything I wanted. Ceremony makes me think of the band’s transformation – a pivotal point when they could have legitimately given up, but instead they started to created stupendous pop, and they still do. In 2015 New Order released Music Complete, a stunning album containing the spectacular track Singularity, with one of the best intro builds I have ever heard. It’s my favourite running track, and running in the city this month as I come up to a sort of anniversary, I realise that they have nailed it for me again. Winter came so soon Now I am here, with a surreal life thrust upon me, that I still can't quite believe. I have a choice, give up or make it a pivotal point and create something stupendous.
*Touching from a Distance by Deborah Curtis (Faber and Faber, 1995). An essential, and poignant, read.
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Have you watched the episode of Sex in the City where Mr Big leaves town to move to California? I realise I am dating myself here, so for those of you haven't, or can't remember...
Carrie and Big aren’t currently an item but spend a fairytale final night on the town, cut short at a pivotal point by Miranda going into labour. Carrie rushes to his flat the next day, straight from the hospital, to find it empty. She is too late. There is just a return air ticket to California, and the vinyl copy of Moon River that they danced to in the empty apartment the day before, propped up against a wall. As she walks home, bereft, a single leaf falls into her path. There’s a chill in the air, a whole season has passed. The summer has gone, taking Mr Big with it. Autumn in New York will pass without him. This episode has always had many resonances for me. We danced to Moon River at our wedding. It was one of my husband’s favourite songs (either sung by Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s or by Frank Sinatra). That episode of Sex and the City*, and the song, now have an extra poignancy. My husband died on the first of April 2017. At noon on April Fool’s day, only it wasn’t a joke. A whole season has passed without him. Nights are drawing in, I feel a chill. It’s Autumn in another big city. I think it will be a long time before I can watch that episode again, but I do feel ready to reflect, in the hope that it might help the sadly inevitable travellers who will follow me on the journey. We will all walk our own path, but sometimes it helps to stop for a minute, look back, and then hopefully look forward and carry on. *Season 4, episode 66: I Heart NY http://www.hbo.com/sex-and-the-city/episodes/4/66-i-heart-ny/index.html |