Day Three hundred and thirty three - Somebody

With a little over a month to go until the end of the year, and the conclusion of this project of mine, why not break another bit of kayfabe? Kaywhat? Kayfabe. We good? Good. I don't think it's any sort of secret, really, but every single post's title is the name of a song. Is it obvious? I think it was. When I made the first post of the year, it was supposed to just be 'Day One', and then move forward as I went along. But what happened is that I found myself thinking about a book by Nick Hornby called '31 Songs'. Way back in the late 90's/early 00's I got myself in a huge Hornby kick, and I read and re-read his books numerous times. One such book was the aforementioned '31 Songs', where he waxes about his well, favourite, 31 songs. Some years after I first read that book, in one of my first blogs - the long defunct Souvenirs d'un autre monde - I re-used that same concept and wrote about what I thought were my then favourite songs. I can't remember which songs I chose, other than a small handful. Many of them, though still songs I adore, would hardly feature now in an all-time favourites list. What I tried to do then was explain why each song was important to me, how I first came across it, and if there was a story tied to it, I'd tell it. 

It's a funny thing, but the only time I ever told a specific story about something that happened in my life was during that time I was writing about the songs. I never told it to anyone afterwards, I will not tell it here, and nor shall I be telling it ever again. And for the life of me, I can't even remember what song the story might've been attached to. For the vast majority of that project, my writings were of the slice of life variety, but at least a couple I tried to write some fiction around the song I chose. I tried to tie some form of narrative to the emotional pull I felt coming from the song. There was only the one post I felt proud of having written, and no wonder it's the one post still extant on that blog. When I started writing for the first post, and having pondered about what I just wrote about, I thought why the fuck not, why wouldn't I add a title to the post? Why not a song? And let me tell you - coming up with a different song every day is not as easy as it sounds. Sure, I've repeated bands a lot of times, and every now and then I find that the song I'd picked for that day's post, I'd already used months ago. As far as I know, I do not have any duplicates. So for quite a while, I was just using the song titles - and these would often be from songs that I'd just heard - and they weren't tied at all to what I was writing. It took a bit for me to realize that - and especially from a certain point of my life on - I could use the songs titles to my advantage. The titles became a herald for what the post would be. Still, some did not come easy - at all.

A part of me hoped that I could stretch the telling of my life's story for the duration of the year, but alas - my life really has been that dull and uneventful. I experienced a moment of panic as I approached the last few posts about my story, not knowing what would come after. Something - though now I would not be able to specify just what - moved me to fiction once again. And I don't dislike a lot of what I wrote. It's not great, it's barely passable, but there were some good moments here and there. For the fiction part of things, the song titles - and the songs themselves, I'd immerse myself in them for hours - became paramount. I always let what the songs made me feel inside guide my hand. I'd say that for the most part I achieved what I set out to do. This leaves me thinking about how sometimes a song can be intrinsically tied to one person - and not necessarily in a good way. Today's post is titled after one of my favourite songs of all time - 'Somebody', by Depeche Mode. And Depeche Mode, though I had known of them, and to be sure, knew a lot of their songs without knowing it was them who was playing, don't really come into my life until 1995, when I was dating Dora, who was a big fan. And it was through listening to them - especially the superb '101' live album - that I fell in love with the band in general, and with 'Somebody' in particular. And it's obviously a love song, a very tender ballad sung by Martin Lee Gore, which speaks of (and I'm speculating here) a form of idealized love that must be his own, and that came to inform and shape my own idea of love. My first relationship, when I was with my son's mother, though we liked each other a lot, it wasn't really love. And love became something I actively sought after for a long time, and when you seek something, and are desperate to find it, sometimes you'll confuse something for what it isn't.

But 'Somebody' I also connect to two other people I've known, one of whom I can no longer recall her name - a Danish girl I worked with back when I was living in London for the first time. Super beautiful, super nice, super good smelling, and for some reason - super into me. There was a line that I hadn't been willing to cross, though, and I rebuffed all her entreaties. For Christmas in 2000, she gave me a CD she'd bought for me, a tribute to Depeche Mode called 'For the Masses'. I still remember that December morning when I got to work and she saw me coming in, and went down the stairs with me, and when we got to our break room, she rushed to get it for me. Why can't I even remember her name? Damn. And I treasured that CD for years, I listened to it a lot, though I wasn't a fan of every single cover there. I do love covers, but some work, and some don't. And here there were quite a few let downs. But what's good there, is actually really, really good. And in it, you can find a cover version to 'Somebody' by Veruca Salt, who, if anything, produce an even slower, mellower, more tender version of the song, and I've loved it since the first listen. But it's intrigued me since then, because they put their own personal stamp on the song by means of a spoken interlude. And for the longest time, I couldn't quite grasp what was being said. Thank the lord for the internet, though, and many years later I found a transcript of the actual words, and the song gained a new, deeper dimension for me : 

'Every time we talk, every time we fight

 Every time we forget each other
 I know it won't quite work out.
 At the beginning when I was no one
 And now that I am, all that you've taught me and more
 You revise me when I'm dead
 You invite me 'cause I'm the last choice.'

It's funny how time flows, because only a couple of years later - though both instances seem at once lifetimes ago, and separated by a lifetime - I would be talking about this very song with another girl - Carla. I worked with her at a big department store, and her husband worked with me in music, while she worked in the books section. We were friendly enough at the time, but not real friends. But both of them were an invaluable help in late 2002 when my relationship with Dora finally had run its course. They were people who were at my side when needed, and it was to Carla that I'd confided my adoration for one of our co-workers, a girl called Ana. I don't think I mentioned her at all when I wrote about this time of my life, but for a brief period of time I was wildly in love with a girl I worked with - Ana. But she was dating one of my bosses at the time, and I kept things mum. But blimey, what an amazing girl she was - and still is, I like to imagine. One day something weird happened at work : the guy she was dating - who was also one of my higher ups - was caught stealing, and that precipitated the end of their relationship. Which, coincidentally, happened around the end of mine, and we were these sort of kindred spirits, lost at sea, not really knowing what the future held for us, and for just the briefest of moments, that kinship developed into the possibility of a togetherness - something that, naturally, never came to pass. Oh, what dreadful poetry I wrote to her. But getting back to Carla, we shared a love for all things dark and gloomy, and Depeche Mode was one of her favourites. In one of those occasions when we were talking about the band, I spoke at length about my love for 'Somebody', and she listened to me raptly, even commenting on and praising my (admittedly) very romantic take on the song. But as things are wont to, sometimes break downs happen, people drift apart - whatever. And eventually - for some reason I never quite got - me and Carla weren't exactly on the friendliest of terms. I suppose now that the reason was that her relationship was on the rocks as well, and maybe she had little time or patience for anything else. And the outcome of that was a heated conversation where she ended up chastising me for the romantic views I held, and how they'd never translate to real life. Something started dying inside me that day.

I return to this song often, though now not as often as I once did. In fact, the whole of '101' used to be in heavy rotation, it's probably one of my most listened to records ever. But I never stopped being that kid that read those words, and wanted those words to be true. I hoped they'd true one day, and for a time they were. I wasted those opportunities. But there is not a single day where I don't hear Martin's sweet and delicate voice singing to me, inside my head, 'And when I'm asleep I want somebody who will put their arms around and kiss me tenderly' - and by God, how much I miss that. How much more I will miss it from this point on. Not sex - though obviously I miss it - but intimacy. It's all gone now, like so much dust in the wind.