How to explain?  Where to start?  What a band means to you, and why?  How far back it goes, back to the younger you, back to good times and good music, but you can’t explain, you can’t word it, you can’t express it enough.  Back to slaving over mix tapes, pausing and playing, getting it right, ticking the songs off in biro, writing them carefully on the inner card.  The Stone Roses, Love Spreads, Ten Storey Love Song….writing the lyrics out in love letters, knowing you feel the same as they do, circling words in a heart, going to bed with the music and the words thumping through your brain, waking up with a smile that ached all night…

Waiting… waiting to finally see them, when time has spun us forward, and lined our faces, we still feel the same underneath, still dance around the kitchen and turn the cd up loud…Still remember what it felt like back then, what brought us together, what is always there. Why does it mean so much? Awed by the power of music, the immense effect it has on moods and emotions, on entire fucking days, good or bad!! How those spiralling guitars can set your heart on fire, light up your eyes, make everything alright again, better than alright! Because it feels so good…

Friday night, crushed among a crowd of thirty-something Indie kids, grown up but never forgetting…surrounded by the sweet smell of weed, no twats, just immense spreading love and smiles that hurt your face…we were in the middle of joy, in its purest form, in the centre of belonging, arms in the air, voices sung raw, hearts exploding! Never wanting it to end. Wishing you could crawl bedraggled and grinning up onto the stage with them, to soak it all up for longer, to let it infiltrate your skin, seep inside and take you over, to shove your head up against the drums and feel the floor shaking under your body.

But it always has to end….We stumble, sweaty and weak, laughing and crying, following the herd back down the Holloway road, arms still aloft, the cry of This is the one, this is the one, this is the one, we waited for….echoing down the road….We can’t stop smiling, we can’t stop talking…We have the memories forever, the best night, the best gig, the best feeling…That’s what music does for you.

What else can you say but fuckit?.

And I mean to say it as one word, because that’s the way I feel it, that’s the way I felt it, fuckit, fuckit, fuckit!! I want to scream and shout and wail and cry, stamp my feet and pound my fists against the wall. I want to do something.  I want there to be something I can do, but there is nothing. I am just like everyone else, I am just like every other living thing, every piece of living matter on this planet and beyond.  I am ageing.  I am dying.  I am slipping faster and faster towards the end.  Towards nothingness.  Towards a void of emptiness that will forget you so quickly. I want to tell someone that it is fine, it is fair, it is as it should be, but just to be kinder, just to be a little more gentle on someone who is soaking up this life as much as they possibly can, just to know that actually that kind of makes it even worse, just to say slow down…slow down…can’t it all just slow down a bit?  is there any way?  Does anyone know a way?

Moments build into hours, hours rush by in days, days flood into weeks, and this timetable, this human calender propels me towards old age.  It is not dying I fear, it is not ceasing to exist that bothers me; it is getting older, getting older faster!  The years make their mark as they do on everything and everyone. They stamp and stain you.  They try to pull you down, to sadden and dismay you.  I fight back.  I rage against it.  But in the end that hurts more; the futility of it.

One day I will still be me, trapped and scratching beneath a crinkled skin.  I will still be wailing and raging underneath it, enraged that it happened, furious that time took me.  You might hear me screaming it, fuckit fuckit fuckit! I cannot deny myself the truth.  I cannot pretend it is okay, I cannot pretend I do not mind.  Because when I see that storm of youth below me, I want to soak it up, but I am on the outside, and it makes me want to cry.  Cry out with the injustice, that the more you love and enjoy life, the faster it seems to go. The end days are upon us always.  Mowing us down, so brutal, and the memory of yesterday just slays us, just hurts and it takes me out, it takes me down.  Fuck it, I want to freeze time! I want to slow it down, make it fairer. I want missed chances and too lates to be wiped out and freed. I don’t want to be hurled screaming towards the light, I want to dance slowly towards it instead

All I can do is warn them.  Warn the young.  Even that is futile and pointless, because the young never believe they will get old until it has already happened.  I will tell my children, I will coach them, steer them clear of my own mistakes, and try to impress my learning upon them. Stupid stuff.  But it is always the stupid stuff that haunts you.  Slaps you in the face, ha ha, you can’t go back! When they go to a gig I will tell them to make sure they have enough cash to buy a t-shirt, to buy a memory they can touch and hold and smell. I’ll tell them, when you’ve moved on, keep it anyway.  Put it somewhere safe, and by all means forget about it, but know that one day it will be important to you again.  Roll up your band posters and store them carefully. They might be vital again one day, you never know.  Let life be in you.  Let it surge through you and don’t have any regrets, and don’t slow down until you have to, and see everything, and everyone, and know them, and know you, and breathe it all in.

And in the meantime, while the days scramble on, fuckit, I’ll do whatever I can to fight back.