Rags and Bone.

Rags and Bones 

A friend told me once they lived too much inside their own head...it’s one of the most profound things anyone has ever said to me. They were describing me as much as them (though they didn’t really know it) and it is the source of most of my issues with myself and my interaction with the world. I don’t think much about my childhood...to be honest this past few years i have been so focused on simply fire fighting and keeping things going i don’t think much about anything other than the immediate problem to be faced or the situation to be dealt with. The shop...my father...my health...I move from one weekend to the next without looking up from the ground at times...metaphorically if not literally. It’s dangerous (especially literally) and not the best way to be but it’s how it is...i don’t know any other way to survive. At the heart if it is fear of course. The fountainhead of all woes. Roosevelt was partially right about fearing fear itself...i’d take issue with the “nothing” part but i get the gist. But back to the point...of sorts. I was an only child and in Newry where i lived for the first fourteen years of my life that was even more isolating...i was a Prod in a republican stronghold at the height of the troubles...it wasn’t a comfortable place to be and where we lived was right in the heart of the “wrong” bit...the Armagh Road opposite St Joseph’s School and just across from Derry Begg (nickname Beirut) on one side and Linnen Hall Sqare on the other. Suffice it to say I didn’t go out much...the local youths used to burn stolen cars on the patch of waste ground across the road from our sitting room (we were elevated from the street looking down on things) while our windows were frequently broken by the stones aimed at the various passing army patrols ...i’d say about once a month we were gathering them from the bottom of the front lawn. The back of the house was well hidden from the road...a sort of haven that extended all the way up to an area of ground and a half acre hayfield field beyond where we periodically kept the odd pony...it was well closed off from the front road and accessed only by a long lane backing at least 4 other houses which exited some distance up the road. That was my domain...i rarely played or even ventured round to the front of the house and was always a bit nervous

 of being round there for any length of time...you felt oddly exposed at the top of the sloping lawn and steps looking out across the grim seventies vista of the odd burnt out vehicle and pro IRA graffiti  scrawled on the grey surfaces opposite. If I did spend time there I stayed up the top well away from the road...an irrational fear perhaps but one grounded in the atmosphere and vibe of the time. At the back , but for the outline of Camlough mountain peppered with housing estates in the distance you could have been in the country...blissfully oblivious to the gulag like vista and potential dangers (real or imagined) at the front of the property. That was my world...and it was mostly mine. Most of my school friends lived in the “prod” part of Newry which was way over on the far side out the Belfast road...which to me might as well have been on another planet. So I rarely had anyone round...and going to someone’s house usually want a fair bit of organising. So began the inhabiting of my own imaginary world that was to characterize my mental and psychological outlook well beyond those relatively care free days in my hidden haven on the Armagh Road. And they were relatively care free...I had a fairly content childhood without major trauma. I was alone rather than lonely. I made my own entertainment and developed the world of the imagination accordingly. When you don’t have much company your own takes on a different perspective...you are forced to build worlds in your mind and to put yourself at the center of them. Over time however I moved from the center to the periphery...I became the observer ...almost the narrator in a way...the characters were my characters but they in some way were not fully me...it’s hard to explain. There may be a number of reasons for this. In an odd way I felt more comfortable in a detached role...I mean looking back on it. I read a lot as a kid...before the age of ten mostly comics...and mostly Marvel comics which were aimed at a young adult readership. The visual aspect was integral to my thinking...those panels from artists like Barry Windsor Smith and Jim Steranko plus a host of others framed my early life and instilled in me an abiding sense of the visual...and not just comic book art. It was through Marvel that I discovered WB Yeats and from that an interest in poetry  (lines from The Second Coming on page one of an old Defenders story) and it was through those super hero stories and characters that I learned to conceptualise ...to understand about relationships...about love and loss...and yes about sex. I was reading well above my age range...especially the American imports which were like hens teeth and which were considerably more graphic and adult in their themes than the UK reprints of the time. I recall the “Song of Red Sonja” from Conan the Barbarian circa 1974 or thereabouts and the strange warm feelings that some of those beautifully drawn panels evoked...Smith’s art was like a series of paintings and his evocation of the female form is not something i’ve forgotten...even if at the time i wasn’t entirely clear what was going on. The point is those comic books (as they were called) with their visual panache and relative literary prowess more than anything else shaped my imagination and and my understanding of the world...albeit a fantasy one. I did read books but I preferred the visual stimuli of words combined with pictures.  I transposed those influences to my real world...or the one I created for myself till everything blurred together. I also watched a lot of television...mostly science fiction from Star Trek to Blake’s 7...and developed an interest in cinema ...i recall in my very early teens reading about Kubrick and Kurosawa..or pouring over the art direction of the likes of Alien...which further fueled this sense of the visual...my life was like a film peopled with actors with myself in the directors seat. Though mostly i confess i felt more like i was in the audience watching it unfold on screen. Its a sense that has remained with me to this day...of being both of in front of and behind the camera at the same time. I often wonder how unique that perspective is...not being able to get inside others heads of course is a big obstacle to knowing. This sense of being on the outside looking in cannot be just me...a result of all those years of playing out relationships in my head fueled by images and words on a page...or watching characters interplay on a screen big or small. The characters i was drawn to were always the loners...the slightly dubious ones you were never quite sure about...Logan in Wolverine (i disliked Captain America intensely )...Avon in Blake’s 7 always on the cusp of betrayal ( Blake did nothing for me) but in the end the one who is betrayed by the “hero”....the darker more complex characters always fascinated me more than the straight forward heroic types...the archetypal antihero was my outline for character formation in my world of imagination...my preferred perspective if you like in these created worlds. Such characters were in some sense morally superior ...because they were honest about themselves perhaps...they knew their demons and had accepted them...made accommodation with them...were single minded and ruthless but also capable of emotional depth and empathy when necessary...complex and contradictory. Such characters are always more interesting than the straightforward hero or do gooder ...at the time though I was attracted to something in them that was not a result of such critical analysis but something deeper and more instinctive. I suppose I felt a bit like an outsider...a fish out of water...or in the wrong water...it’s a feeling i’ve never shaken. I told someone the other day that i’ve never been comfortable in my own skin...and it’s a deep truth. I don’t know when that started and whether those early years playing in worlds of imagination contributed to the feeling...the isolation of being my own best company a lot of the time playing its part maybe. I did see other kids ...I had a few close friends...but in the main they were slightly odd like myself...also I suspect lost in their own imaginary worlds a lot of the time. Or maybe it was just me. And possibly i’m overstating things. Everyone has their hang ups brought about by a myriad combination of traits and circumstances. Nothing unusual there but yiur own are always defining. Mine haunt me down the years. But to get back to the point at the start of all this...if one could call it such...namely living in ones own head. It is perhaps inevitable to some degree given how our brain chemistry functions (we are our brains are we not) ...there is only what is inside our heads as we cannot see from any other point of view. We are all perhaps the main character in our own narrative behind the eyes...our version of reality projected through our perception filters. I can’t speak for others. Maybe it’s just that I think or second guess things too much. In some ways i’m still that kid in Newry creating imaginary worlds...worlds greatly preferable to the “real” one. Worlds in which I am looking for something that i cannot readily define...something that will answer questions i haven’t thought to ask yet...that will provoke such questions. Or something like that. Another friend of mine said the other day that when we fall in love or think of love it is an idea we fall in love with as much as a person...and I think in a way i can’t quite explain he is at least partly right. We project our ideal or our idea (subtle difference) onto the object of our affection and it is that which we truly love. When we come up against the reality then the cracks appear and the rift opens. Again i struggle for clarity with such things. 

And the title? It’s from Yeats poem “The Circus Animals Desertion”...in the poets mind I believe it is to do with the origins of poetry itself but it has perhaps also the connotation of love that comes adrift...or the letting go of valued things by necessity and the return to the dark beginnings of inspiration...a reset almost of the mind at the deepest level of compulsion and need. I am I think being propelled towards such a reset...and I believe it will be as gruelling as they come. 

“Now that my ladder's gone 

I must lie down where all the ladders start 

In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”

Or maybe it means something else entirely. It is a poem after all.