So, no, I’m not a big reader.
JJ
Our cultural program was all on my shoulders, because none of the others knew anything about anything. Maureen got books out of the library every couple weeks, but she didn’t read stuff we could talk about, if you know what I’m saying, unless we wanted to talk about whether the nurse should marry the bad rich guy or the good poor guy. And Martin wasn’t a big fan of Literature. He said he read a lot of books in prison, but mostly biographies of people who had overcome great adversities, like Nelson Mandela and those guys. My guess is Nelson Mandela wouldn’t have thought of Martin Sharp as a soul brother. When you looked at their lives closely, you’d see that they’d wound up in jail for different reasons. And, believe me, you don’t want to know what Jess thought of books. You’d find it offensive.
She was right about me, though, kind of. How could she not be? I’ve spent my entire life with people who don’t read—my folks, my sister, most of the band, especially the rhythm section—and it makes you really defensive, after a while. How many times can you be called a fag before you snap? Not that I mind being called a fag blah blah blah, and some of my best friends blah blah, but to me, being a fag is about whether you like guys, not whether you like Don DeLillo—who is a guy, admittedly, but it’s his books I like, not his ass. Why does reading freak people out so much? Sure, I could be pretty anti-social when we were on the road, but if I was playing a Gameboy hour after hour, no one would be on my case. In my social circle, blowing up fucking space monsters is socially acceptable in a way that American Pastoral isn’t.
Eddie was the worst. It was like we were married, and picking up a book was my way of telling him that I had a headache every night. And like a marriage, the longer we were together, the worse it got; but now that I think about it, the longer we were together, the worse everything got. We knew we weren’t going to make it, as a band and maybe even as friends, and so we were both panicking. And me reading just made Eddie panic more, because I think he had some bullshit idea that reading was going to help me find some sort of new career. Yeah, like that’s what happens in life. “Hey, you like Updike? You must be a cool guy. Here’s a $100,000 job in our advertising agency.” We spent all those years talking about the stuff we had in common, and the last few months noticing all the ways we were different, and it broke both of our hearts.
And all that is a long-ass way of explaining why I freaked out at Jess. I’d left one band full of aggressive illiterates, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to join another one. When you’re unhappy, I guess everything in the world—reading, eating, sleeping—has something buried somewhere inside it that just makes you unhappier.
And for some reason, I thought music was going to be easier, which, considering I’m a musician, wasn’t real smart. I only have a lot invested in books, but I got my whole life invested in music. I thought I couldn’t go wrong with Nick Drake, especially in a room full of people who’ve got the blues. If you haven’t heard him… Man, it’s like he boiled down all the melancholy in the world, all the bruises and all the fucked-up dreams you’ve let go, and poured the essence into a little tiny bottle and corked it up. And when he starts to play and sing, he takes the cork out, and you can smell it. You’re pinned into your seat, as if it’s a wall of noise, but it’s not—it’s still, and quiet, and you don’t want to breathe in case you frighten it away. And we were listening to him over at Maureen’s, because we couldn’t play our own music at Starbucks, and at Maureen’s you’ve got the sound of Matty breathing, which was like this whole extra freaky instrument. So I was sitting there thinking, man, this is going to change these people’s lives for ever .
At the end of the first song, Jess started putting her fingers down her throat and making faces.
“But he’s such a drip ,” she said. “He’s like, I dunno, a poet or something.” This was meant to be an insult: I was spending my days with someone who thought that poets were creatures you might find living in your lower intestine.
“I don’t mind it,” said Martin. “I wouldn’t walk out, if he was playing in a wine bar.”
“I would,” said Jess.
I wondered whether it would be possible to punch both of them out simultaneously, but rejected the idea on the grounds that it would all be over too quickly, and there wouldn’t be enough pain involved. I’d want to keep on pummeling them after they were down, which would mean doing them one at a time. It’s music rage, which is like road rage, only more righteous. When you get road rage, a tiny part of you knows you’re being a jerk, but when you get music rage, you’re carrying out the will of God, and God wants these people dead.
And then this weird thing happened, if you can call a deep response to Five Leaves Left weird.
“Have you not got ears?” Maureen said suddenly. “Can’t you hear how unhappy he is, and how beautiful his songs are?”
We looked at her, and then Jess looked at me.
“Ha ha,” said Jess. “You like something Maureen likes.” She sang this last part, like a little kid, nah-nah, nah-nah-nah.
“Don’t pretend to be more foolish than you are, Jess,” said Maureen. “Because you’re foolish enough as it is.” She was steamed. She had the music rage too. “Just listen to him for a moment, and stop blathering.”
And Jess could see that she meant it, and she shut up, and we listened to the whole rest of the album in silence, and if you looked at Maureen closely you could see her eyes were glistening a little.
“When did he die?”
“Nineteen seventy-four. He was twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six.” She was quiet for a moment, thoughtful, and I was really hoping that she was feeling sorry for him and his family. The alternative was that she was envying him for having spared himself all those unnecessary extra years. You want people to respond, but sometimes they can overdo it, you know?
“People don’t want to hear it, do they?” she said.
No one said anything, because we weren’t sure where she was at.
“This is how I feel, every day, and people don’t want to know that. They want to know that I’m feeling what Tom Jones makes you feel. Or that Australian girl who used to be in Neighbours . But I feel like this, and they won’t play what I feel on the radio, because people that are sad don’t fit in.”
We’d never heard Maureen talk like this, didn’t even know she could, and even Jess didn’t want to stop her.
“It’s funny, because people think it’s Matty that stops me fitting in. But Matty’s not so bad. Hard work, but… It’s the way Matty makes me feel that stops me fitting in. You get the weight of everything wrong. You have to guess all the time whether things are heavy or light, especially the things inside you, and you get it wrong, and it puts people off. I’m tired of it.”