Nausea (Part 2) – Virginal Highs
Just over five years ago now I went to my first music festival, I dropped my first Class C drug, and a few weeks later I got a hold of my first electric guitar.
It was Splendor in the Grass 2007. Back when the ecstasy was still good. Or back when it at least seemed good for it was my first time…
In the middle of Bloc Party’s set I lost my hat in the mosh pit and went down to search for it amongst the mud and legs. When I re-emerged, grinning high-eyed and triumphant and wearing the filthy hat, I’d somehow worked my way to the front of the stage and was an arms reach away from the rail. It wasn’t long till Arctic Monkeys walked on.
I didn’t lose myself in the music that erupted from the stage. I’d already thoroughly lost myself to dehydration, heat exhaustion and the effects of the drug I was on. But I felt like I found something in it. Some kind of aspiration. Something I felt I’d never really had.
I stood at the feet of the front man Alex Turner who blazed with his youthful demigodliness. Despite my damp hat I had the sensation his aura was frying away the roof of my skull. I knew within seconds he’d expose my naked brain. Then suddenly his eyes swung down towards me and hooked into my bare grey matter. The crowd slowed till they hung in the air. The music disappeared as the swan song of a thousand dying hair cells swelled from my inner ears. Amid the intense ringing he mouthed a lyric to me in slow motion, and from this shaman I caught the devil. I found something to exist for. I had to become a rock musician.
A month earlier I’d withdrawn from a degree in Biomedical Science. I was feeling nauseous – sick with the thought of having the next three years of my life splayed out on the timetable in front of me. And, then, most likely a lab coat at the end of it all that just looked too much like a strait-jacket to me. So I quit the degree and decided I’d do something I couldn’t see the outcome of. Something I might actually enjoy. Music was high on the agenda. But not for real till I received that burning look. So the scholarship money they’d given me went to an electric guitar. Then I started my first band.
Down a winding road flanked by farm houses and wire fences we played our first gig in the Dooralong scout hall for our friends 18th birthday. It was only a week or so after we’d formed. We didn’t have a name but settled on The Mounzers for that evening’s show. Once again, there were mini revelations. I’d never been so high in my life. But this time it was solely off the experience of performing. I’d never felt so alive. I HAD to do this again. And again and again.
Needless to say it wasn’t pleasant for everyone. I’d just lost my rock gig virginity and was still riding a wave of oceanic bliss when a girl came over to inform me that our cover of Helicopter was so terrible it would prevent her from ever listening to Bloc Party again. But that night I was unbruisable.
I took two jobs to distract my parents from questioning my new life trajectory and career. One was in a pizza store, which I dug. If I wasn’t on a delivery driving around listening to music I was writing lyrics into a greasy old Nokia when I was meant to be washing pizza trays. The other job I loathed. It was in a clothing store. I spent the majority of my time in the storeroom. When I was out on the sales floor I did my best to convince people not to buy anything.
“Do you really need another pair of G-Star Radar Denim Tapered Jeans? Yes I know they are low slung and streetwise but really you look fine in the pair you’re wearing. Why don’t you go outside and get some air – I think the shopping center is getting to you.” Somehow I lasted three months before they fired me.
The band raged on for two years without hiccups. We met a lot of interesting characters during that early period. A self obsessed power broker hoarding musicians like trophies. A homo-erotic rich guy eager to host after parties in his jacuzzi. A sensitive and impassioned but semi-deluded film maker who might have already imagined the unfolding of our ‘story’. A softly spoken mouse from the city, and the big rats from our small town who all had ideas for us. All with their own visions and advice. Some of it smelt a bit fishy. Some of it turned my gut a bit. We tried to remain uninfluenced. But I don’t know…maybe we didn’t. Maybe I didn’t. I wonder now about its effect on me. Did they plant the seeds of this confusion that is finally in bloom?
Eventually we struck a solid relationship with a local producer and ex-international musician. The recording process was a refreshing experience. As musicians it was meant to be the point of our existence. But the delays and nags of the industry, the patience required to do something serious, slowly took its toll. And then slowly members dropped away. In late 2009 one member left – perhaps he succumbed to the nausea. And then another one a little over a year later. The shows continued – some were a blast and most were well received – but they didn’t quite feel the same to me. No longer imbued with the virginal highs. Marked, if only in my eyes, by a faded buoyancy.
But then I was rescued again. Dragged by the same producer out of the water. We set to work on the half finished tunes I had kicking around in my head, and then music had its life breathed back into it. For 9 months I was alive again. Until that emotional fit – where the nausea flared up.
Perhaps I’m just a drug addict upset by my diminishing return curve; hooked on my own neurotransmitters. It is possible. It is likely. I guess the debate I’m having is whether to get off this junk or not. Music is both the cure and the cause for me.
To be continued…
