God Damnit…
October 6, 2008Yeah, that whole “post more often” thing didn’t exactly work out as planned…
So – a few things have changed a bit in the past month or so… Let’s start with the significant ones…
- I’m single again. Without going into too much detail, Susan and I were too dissimilar – and we both felt that it was unfair on one another to carry on. We were both a bit upset about breaking up, but we’re still talking so it’s OK.
- No longer work for Das Polizei – my last week was good, and have hinted that I might be back at holidays.
- The reason for this is because I’m back at college studying music! Yes! I haven’t spoken about it here since my audition – but it’s all sorted and I’m 3 weeks down!! Certain aspects of the course are a little tedious, others not at all relevant to me, but thus far on the whole it’s been good!
So that’s a quick update on my life recently – but I decided to write a blog that was a temporary return to a slightly more lugubrious tone than in the past (even though I’m quite smug for being able to use the word lugubrious… twice)
This weekend, my best friend from school and college got married… This in itself is not a particularly significant event – people get married, it happens – but it made me realise the distance between us. Throughout school and college, our names were inextricably linked – where one was, the other was most likely nearby – we were even awarded the Alton College Music Department “Pear of the year” award when we left. Now, it’s 3 years since we left Alton, and in the time since then we’ve spoken maybe twice. I can’t see any real reason for it – except that university got in the way. I’ve in the past spoken of how I feel that there’s a kind of “elitism” that university bestows on people (maybe not written it here, but I’ve made it known)
Basically it’s an idea that university somehow gives it’s students and graduates – the idea that unless you went to university, you are inferior in every way. Which, of course, is loose-stool-water of the highest order. Utter arse-gravy. I’ve done things a little differently, I got a job rather than go straight into Higher Education – but I spent those years learning the ways of the world, I grew up, and I got better at my craft. Because of that extra time I’m one of the best guitarists in my class (top 2/3) and of all the guitar players I’ve seen (excluding teachers obviously), I’m easily top 5. A young female singer even commented on it saying “You can tell the people who have what it takes to make it, and you’re definately one of them. I’ve only found one other…”
I whole-heartedly believe I made the right move. In college I missed lessons, and didn’t appreciate what I was missing out on, but now… I’ve got 100% attendance – consistently on time, spend a decent amount practicing, and i’m getting details of a collection of musicians for various different projects and the like! I’ve develop personal skills that some of these people can only dream. Like articulacy, good spelling and grammer. Especially knowing the difference between WHO and WHOM!!!
From inside the walls, I’ve noticed that too – in myself and in other people. You start to find it hard holding small talk: ’so, you got a job? That’s interesting; what do you do?’, fighting back this horrible elitist, ‘I’m at university. I am better than you’ thought which you KNOW is totally irrational, completely and utterly bollocks. It’s not even as simple as that; because for example, I have the highest respect for how you’ve done things, and for the choices a lot of people have made.
University is easy because it’s the obvious choice, and people who don’t do the whole university thing either at all or straight off have to make an active choice to do that while we’re all herded along into this environment, sheltered and looked after, given internet access and cleaners and very simple step-by-step guidelines on how to live, how to cope. I’m not really one of them either: I made the decision to change everything I was doing to be here; but that’s only made me more aware of that divide of which you speak.
And then you look at the ways in which students live, and you think, how the fuck can you justify thinking of yourself as this utterly superior being when you’re passed out under a lamppost and covered in your own sick? When you’ve lived on Pot Noodle for a week and Pesto has become haute cuisine? We’re sheltered, and we act like children, and I just want to apologise for the lot of us because – like children – we’re fucken’ arrogant about it.