What follows this short introduction is from a file on a disc full of material I saved from my old laptop. It’s dated 14th October 2008 and looks as though it was the start of some sort freewriting exercise (hence some of the slightly pretentious but poorly written lines in the first paragraph) but then I think it became something else. It made me think it’s time to dust the cobwebs off this old blog and write something in it again.
My life - a movie
I’ve walked out the door at the time when it is not quite night time yet. The sun has fallen from sight but the sky isn’t black, just a much darker blue, and the street lights have come on shining tangerine red glow. They’re just warming up.
I look for something that fits the right mood on my ipod… Ah, Coldplay, the Parachutes album. Don’t mistake me for being a Coldplay fan, it was something I downloaded for the right moment, the right mood. I think now I’m in that mood. It’s been on my Ipod for over a year and this is the first time I’ve listened to it. As the song”Don’t Panic” starts, everything seems to sync together properly. The drab wetness of the pavement, the passing cars greying under a fading light, and the total bleakness that I’m feeling in my soul, falls into step with the music and I suddenly feel like I’m in a movie, or one of those indulgent angsty teen dramas like Dawson’s Creek (if it was setting in grey overcast Britain). I feel a strange sort of comfort in my depression now, an healthy thing of course that serves only to feed it further, but why not? I feel it’s here to stay so I might as well make it feel welcome.
I start to wonder about the movie I’ve placed myself in and why I have so arrogantly assumed i’m the main character, or even a supporting character for that matter. I think on the possibility that the world I’m inhabiting really is a part of some fiction - I haven’t decided on the genre - but what concerns me is the role I play in it. Perhaps I’ve got just a supporting role, or a one off walk-in part. Perhaps my role in the film has already been played out, i’ve served what ever function I was supposed to fill and now I’m carrying on with my life. I’m not on the screen anymore, the audience has forgotten about me, in fact they didn’t really notice me in the first place. I bet in the credits I’m not even credited with a real name, I’m probably just “Blockbuster employee no.2”, I didn’t even have a speaking part. So while the movie goes on so does my life but nobody knows about it. I exist in the world of ideas and fiction, given life for the purpose of filling one brief scene but then forgotten about by my creator.
The movie goes on. This all sounded a lot better in my head when I was writing it earlier on today.
