writing my future

I recently watched the film Sing Street which is based in Ireland during the 1980’s. It’s about a young boy, Conor, who gets moved from a private to a public school and we get to see his experiences as a young teen, as well as starting a band with his newly found schoolmates. So much of this film reminded me of stories my dad would tell me of his school years in the British Midlands and how he similarly left for London, just as in Sing Street, with his band. 

It’s a tale as old as time but there’s something uniquely British about the music scene during the 60’s, 70’s & 80’s; Siouxsie & the Banshees, Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Jam, The Who, The Beatles, Duran Duran, Ultravox, the list is endless! Every country has its Golden Era for culture and for Britain, I believe, it was definitely these three decades.

My father really shaped the creative blood I have. I’ve experimented with art, photography, and film but writing has always been my go-to and it all began as a kid following my dad’s orders on the bass guitar whilst he strummed away a tune on his guitar, or walking down the street on the way to a cafe for breakfast on a Saturday before Greek School and he’d be whistling a tune, or (my favourite memory of all time) cruising down the North Circular Road with the car windows down, music screaming at volume 40 filling the streets with any sort of punk or alternative rock music of dad’s era, head banging and getting thumbs ups from local skin heads whilst shouting along to the Sex Pistols’ Pretty Vacant, which can be quite euphoric.

I wanted to be my dad! I wanted to create music. I wasn’t a talented musician but the one thing I did have was a pen and paper and that meant I could write lyrics. My first experience in writing was song lyrics. They have a structure to them; your classic song format will have an intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. This structure basically became my tutor on how to write, just as a teacher sets objectives at the start of a lesson and throughout the lesson you follow them. 

"It was like divine intervention giving me something to cling onto and keep some form of sanity on the right path"

Writing lyrics and following this structure gave me something I could relate to when I chilled with dad and music. Yes, I enjoyed the music of my era too - X-Tina, Britney, Usher, Blink-182 - but they rarely inspired me the way the music of my parents’ era did. I remember distinctively during secondary school that there was a shift in the ‘structure’ I followed. I began studying English Literature & Philosophy and really got exposed to the likes of Shakespeare and Plato. I then realised that there is a clear relation between song writing and poetry and my shining artists became Guns N’ Roses and Metallica.

They had the traditional structure I was used to but the fluidity and gutsy outlook of poetry in their lyrics. Metallica’s One blew my mind and Roses’ November Rain took me through a story which made me forget reality. Here ensued my next chapter in writing: poetry.

Poetry entered my life at the same time as depression. It was like divine intervention giving me something to cling onto and keep some form of sanity on the right path. I remember in one of my poems I discussed having vices and I would always touch on the subject of wanting things that are not good for me but knew there’d be some higher entity looking out for me anyway. My poetry divulged my deepest secrets and, whereas my every day vision looked at the world with the eyes of brutalist Plato and I questioned every miniscule thing about life, my poetry was my Shakespeare and I could romanticise about all the things I wish I had or could be.

This was all happening between 2004 to 2010 and Florence & the Machine was in the charts. Their lyrics, especially the album Lungs, merged my two chapters in life of lyrics and poetry. Florence, along with the likes of Lana Del Rey, brought us a sense of nostalgia that I had been craving for my whole life and now it was cool! My poetry became my lyrics, I blended the two and a new me was born. A new me that finally felt authentic - depressed, but authentic - and art became life. That little kid that always wanted to be the artistic mystic she felt her dad to be was finally feeling one herself.

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I look back at those years now and although I’ve had many hardships and hurdles to jump over, I’m proud of that little kid that made sure her art didn’t get lost in adulthood. I’m not as involved as I used to be but I know it has never left me. It’s something I don’t ever want to give up on and it all began with having a musician as a father. Sing Street has reminded me that my story is one a lot of us have but I do fear it’s becoming lost now.

Music is not what it used to be. If you have a retro style about you you’re either alternative or it’s just a theme for an album being made, some artists aren’t even involved in their song making anymore, they just turn up and sing, and the thought of playing bad guitar is frowned upon. However, old souls like myself are proof that the ‘old ways’ will never die and who knows, maybe by the time I’m 70 I’ll be on a spaceship sponsored by Virgin Atlantic, or Elon Musk, listening to Jefferson Airplane sing about the future they imagined. Maybe when I first meet an alien I’ll introduce them to XTC, now there’s a band I’m sure you’ve never heard of… 

Rhéa x