Life Has Surface Noise

There have been a lot of not great things happening recently that I have been linked to in a remote fashion that have been traumatic for others. We want our life to be perfect , I certainly want mine to be perfect, but when someone or something you love is taken from you it is an almost impossible situation to deal with. All of a sudden the connection is broken and can’t be fixed.

Eventually people have no choice but to move on and it may take years.

Today I spoke with a friend suffering from cancer , in palliative care who has been told she has 12 to 18 months to live , but she is partying on despite disapproval from a lot of people. Like the Doc Martin scene where the small boy asks “Am I Going To Die?” and Doc Martin replies “Yes, But Not Today”.

I also have two friends who unexpectedly lost people close to them.

This is the thing life is imperfect , it’s not smooth , and sometimes the breaks can be too traumatic to deal with in a short period of time. The scratch becomes a thunderous crash.

Someone once said to John Peel that vinyl was no good because vinyl had surface noise. Peel replied "Life has surface noise mate", and I agree with him , although digital music is convenient but sanitized , Vinyl is closer to real life.

My life , as you all know , has lots of surface noise , but not anything that I am unable to deal with , though that's always been me , as the eldest in my family I could always look after myself .

I lost my mum who was only fifty in 1990 to a stroke and heart attack and when she died my dad was distraught. He was always going to take her on holiday next year but work was more important. I was a little callous saying you never know what is going to happen and you need to realise that work is not the only thing. Six years later he got a girlfriend and actually started having holidays and he was still curmudgeonly but became better. He had learned a very harsh lesson , though at my mum’s funeral he said he was worried about my brother and sister , but knew I would be alright.

Two other friends lost their husbands to cancer partly because they did not go to the doctors early enough , after many years and therapeutic endeavours they are living full lives , dating and enjoying themselves but the cracks in their lives that those deaths caused will not be forgotten. To that end they contact me almost every day and tell me off when I ask how they are doing. But I know they love and care for me , but the feeling is reciprocal.

Sometimes it is just a flat tire , missing a bus , losing some money or being unable to solve a problem.

When I split from my first girlfriend it hit me really hard , especially as she went off with a complete git , but eventually got married to a really nice guy and I was and still am incredibly happy for her. That was an incident that provided considerable surface noise for my life. At the time Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” was out about his marriage break up , and the song “If YOU See Her , Say Hello” summed up my situation perfectly , so I will take that as the lead in track.

I am not sure why I wrote this , apart from that John Peel quote and thought I could sneak in the Vocal Macaw Challenge because it is a threatened species , extinction is a very big surface noise , but I have a month to do a proper one.

The cracks and crackles on the vinyl record of life can be dealt with if you have a good enough player , but it is finding that player.