Friday, June 06, 2008

NOBODY'S DREAMING

There was a kid at school who was accorded demigod status by all of his fellow pupils for possessing the most incredible skill for which we would all gratefully have sold our eternally inspired souls to emulate. No ambitions of being train drivers, firefighters, movie stars, or astronauts for us - just the dream of having Danny's unique skill.

Danny would cheerfully do demonstrations in the boys' toilets, whose urinals ran adjacent to an external walkway, by elevating his stream with such infernal diabolical accuracy as to pass cleanly through a tiny slit window near the ceiling thereby splashing golden droplets on unsuspecting passers-by. The height alone that he effortlessly achieved was miraculous and yet, despite diligent practice, our own attempts to get anywhere close were in comparison - quite frankly - derisory.

A couple of years later, having now left school, I saw Danny shambling along the street looking rather down on his luck and cutting a rather lonely figure, and despite much lingering nostalgic affection for him, realised how utterly silly our erstwhile admiration seemed in retrospect.

This morning I noticed a story about John Lydon in the Guardian and, by the time I got to the full list of tour dates, realised that it's just a desperately fucking pathetic press release.

4 comments:

Rob said...

It's a sad state of affairs when the whiteness of one's teeth is the feature of the article rather than musical ability.
Although since they barley had that to begin with the point is moot.
I find it funny that now "johnny rotten" is now wanting to go by john lyden after all these years it's a little late in life to now want to be mature isn't it?. What do you think william?

. said...

He stopped calling himself Johnny Rotten in about '78. By the time PiL came around he was just plain old John Lydon.

I actually really wish PiL would get together for a reunion, but I'm guessing that it won't pull in anywhere near the same cash as a Pistols reunion, and who knows how good it would be anyway.

Sypha said...

Yeah, the PiL second album was really great... I kind of liked that song "Rise" also.

This reminds me of how yesterday I was flipping through my old high school year books and, out of curiosity, began to google the names of some of my old classmates. It kind of amazed me to see what some of them are up to these days. But I had a bit of a shock when I came across the MySpace page of someone who had once upon a time been my best friend. I had met him in grade school and we had hit it off. He was something of a JD, so it was odd taht we became friends, but he had a very sick and twisted sense of humor that I admired. We were friends for years, but come high school he started staying back in grades and as a result we kind of lost touch. For many years, I never saw him again. Then, when I was in college, I encountered him one night when I was working at a supermarket part time. I didn't even recognize me at first because there was just something different about his face, He told me that he had a "life changing experience," and that he had been pretty fucked up for awhile. He didn't elaborate further, so I assumed he had found religion. That was years ago. Yesterday I saw his MySpace page, and it appears that over the years he's metamorphed into a Koran-reading, hard-drinking, Irish Pride sort of fellow (I had never even known that he WAS Irish!). Weird. I don't know, it all just made me very sad.

Odile Lee said...

This makes my childhood wish that the big boys of the block would take me along on their tree climbing and fort building die.
Better tea with horsies and ballerina time. Than pee.
Or as Noel Fielding allows me to think, chasing someone with dog crap on a stick.
I missed nothing.
Viva la difference! Keep the mystery, boys. I wouldn't understand anyway.
Feminists think they are missing out on something. Is it pissing thru windows?