This is Always Yesterday

I walked home in the rain. The sky was heavy and grey. I felt heavy and grey. It was hot. I was hot, sweating in Mum’s navy-blue blazer and my ripped jeans. Although I’d been given my diagnosis two years ago, I was unaware that depression and OCD could affect you physically as well as mentally. The half an hour walk home was such an effort, I was crying. Rain mingled with tears. Clutching the small Woolworth’s bag in my right fist, I tried to concentrate on how lucky I’d been to be able to get a copy of the album inside, even though I’d asked the cashier on the music counter to reserve me a copy of the CD when it came in, weeks ago. I’d feel okay once the music was playing.

It was August 30^th, 1994; I was 16 years old; the album was The Holy Bible, by Manic Street Preachers.

As the riff from Yes played from my stereo for the first time, I was shocked. It didn’t sound like Gold Against the Soul.

Gold Against the Soul was how I’d discovered the Manics, and, being lost, and feeling totally alienated from the rest of the world, I’d thought I’d find the familiarity and stability in this new album, by the only band in the world who’d ever made sense to me. However, despair didn’t have time to set in, because, within seconds, I realised I was listening to something profound, earth-shattering, heart-rending, and beautiful; something shocking and uncomfortable and ultimately true; something that would go down in history. I scoured the CD insert. I read the excerpt from The Torture Garden. And I played that album over and over, and it has been either in my CD player or in my bag for the last 30 years.

Because of that album, I decided that I would – somehow – leave my small town in Devon, and that I would – somehow – become a writer who would write the truth as they saw it.

There’s no denying that the Manics’ sound has changed over the years, and I am surprised when people are surprised that it has. Life in its every aspect, is in constant flux. The Colour my hair lyric in Die in the Summertime distils a feeling I’ve had for much of my life. I’ve been dying my hair ‘permanently’ black for several years, and without bleaching it, or chopping it right back to its roots, there’s little I can do to change it, and in rebellion and frustration against myself, I now frequently suffer the urge to dye it purple or red or blue. Change is as necessary as it is inevitable. We’d all stagnate and die, otherwise.

Yesterday, the Manics released Decline and Fall.

At 46, I often think that I missed my ‘day’; that I should have been publishing in my 20s. Yes, I could put it all down to my illnesses and injuries, but maybe I just didn’t have the courage or the drive or the discipline, or maybe even the talent. Whilst not really believing in it, I subscribed to the prevailing design for life, and I tried to do what I thought I ought to do, to the prescribed timeline. I failed.

But I kept getting up in the morning, and am now a published author. I am a published author playing a commercial game that I despise, which makes me a hypocrite. I thought about ‘breaking the system’ by giving my work away, only to find that I am not a revolutionary. Art is as much a commodity as coffee or soap. The only difference is that if you talk passionately about Art, in the vast majority of contexts, you come across as a wanker. Which isn’t fair. Another thing that isn’t fair, is that, when there are programmes on TV dedicated to entrepreneurs, writers are told that they should ‘write for the market’ if they hope to sell anything. Again, with the Chaos Theory – change (chaos) is predictable and vital.

Still, self-promotion makes me feel like I’m selling my soul. Which – in a way – I am, which makes me a (culture) slut. I’m constantly examining my motives. What am I writing for? Is it a trauma response? Do I have some desperate need for validation? Or do I simply want to connect with others? Or is it just something that I was ‘born to do’?

In the midst of this, a not-particularly-close friend bought The (D)Evolution of Us from me when I was selling them at a fayre. She said, and I quote, that she never has time to read, and hasn’t read a book in years. Maybe she’d been on the cider, but I was happy enough to take the sale (£6 bought my 7-year-old a football). A couple of days later, she messaged me to tell me she was loving the novel. Then she called me. She’s hooked, she’s in awe, she loves it, am I in later, so can she get the next in the series? I am, and she does. A few hours later, I get another message – she’s on page 94 already!

When I wrote the Glasshouse series, I was trying to make a social and artistic statement. My friend, though, just finds the novels brilliant from an entertainment point of view. And that makes me happy.

Ironically, this has happened at a time when my novels are only available directly from me, before #SpellBoundBooks begin publishing them in Spring 2025.

Since the Glasshouse series, I’ve self-published a few short-stories, one of which has a comedic element. I’ve published a collection of various forms of poetry. I’ve published a not-so-bleak crime thriller. I’m currently writing a piece of political satire, and a speculative novel. Life changes, we change, how we choose to express ourselves changes.

In an ostensibly isolated system, we’re inextricably linked, and are of each other. I listened to the Holy Bible on my commute today. I also downloaded The Torture Garden, because I never did read it. I’m coming off the drugs that have been supposed to make my life better – to save me both mental and physical pain. Suddenly, I’m inspired again. My OCD is hampering me significantly again, and I am in pain from fibromyalgia, but I’m happy, because my brain is back. I’ve ditched the alcohol, the nail varnish, the jewellery. I’m stripping it down, going back to how I was when I was at my most creative and inspired, when I was in my teens and twenties. I’m using my past to affect my present, to propel me onward. Tomorrow, it’s September, Autumn. It’s darker, and colder. The so-called decline, and (F)fall. So much for that.

This is always yesterday.

#Writing #Writerslife #ManicStreetPreachers #TheHolyBible #DeclineAndFall