put that nostalgia away, you're scaring the children...

I must have streaked my eyelids with lead this morning, instead of mascara because I can't keep them open.

"air cushioned soles, i bought them on the portobello road on a saturday..."
(blur)

I should be writing an essay on censorship and the interests it seeks to preserve as well as those it denies with specific reference to Eminem and the Sex Pistols.

"...i stop and stare awhile, a common pastime when conversation goes astray..."
(blur)

But I keep rewarding myself for every sentence typed with thrilling fact-finding missions in cyberspace, searching for things to do on my first weekend in London which--fuck me--is THIS weekend.

"...but please don't give up on me yet, don't think i'm walking out of this..."
(blur)

I keep drifting away, on a raft that nostalgia built, to the mid to late nineties when Blur and Oasis were engulfed in a bitter(ly ironic) Britpop war and Pulp's Jarvis Cocker was the new Elvis (Presley, not Costello) at least, as far as I was concerned.

"...i don't really want to change a thing, i want to stay this way forever..."
(blur)

Its the place names mainly. Damon references London like a street directory: Portobello Road (Blue Jeans) and Primrose Hill (For Tomorrow) and the underground (Advert). Suddenly I can feel the prickle of a pleated wool skirt on my bare knees and contempt for an inspid blonde with an irony deficiency who shushes me during assembly builds at the back of my throat like a phlegmatic cough.

"...blue, blue jeans i wear them every day..."
(blur)

I can taste the weekend. I'm writing notes to the girl sitting next to me about the places I want to go. Italy, France, Jamaica, Scotland. And I want to drink beer in London's Bar Italia because Pulp wrote a song about it.

"...there's no particular reason to change..."
(blur)

I can't wait till high school is over. For my life to begin. What I don't know yet is that this takes time. Maybe forever. That way into the discernable future, I'll still feel like a clueless teen most days, minus the itchy skirt.

"...my thoughts are getting banal, but i can't help it, i won't pull out hair another day..."
(blur)

You know what's funny? Blur albums--this one, Modern Life Is Rubbish, in particular--weren't happy, despite the killer hooks. Lyrically its an acridly-cynical posturing on how stale the world has become.

"...you know its to be with you..."
(blur)

So why do I break into a knowing grin just hearing those songs in my head again?

"...you know its to be with you."
(blur)

I'll turn in now, make a messy tower of books and incoherent notes. Promise myself I'll finish this essay tomorrow, because I have to. I'll tuck Modern Life away, in a shadowy corner at the bottom of my CD rack where it will sleep under the dusts of time (as I choose to call the scary tumbleweeds of dust I haven't got around to vacuuming, gives it a more romantic feel dontcha think?) But there is a room in a distant corner of my mind where those songs will play forever. Every now and then someone goes out for more beer and leaves the door open just a crack, enough for me to hear. Hear and remember. But I couldn't enter, even if I wanted to. Leslie Hartley 's past is another country; mine is another room. The floorboards are sticky from spilled vodka and raspberry and countless girls who look just like me (maybe a little chubbier, minus the lead mascara and the beginnings of crow's feet) squelch across them with blind confidence, sure they know exactly what their lives will hold and equally sure that that's a good thing.