Eat ‘Em and Smile
Its been a while since I blogged but been busy writing other stuff and organising the apartment (I love the liberties the Americans took with English - I mean, doesn’t apartment sound so much better than flat.) I’ve also just reread a really inspirational book which I pinched from my bro. - “Crazy from the Heat” the autobiography of David Lee Roth ex-(or possibly now rejoined, its difficult to keep track sometimes) singer of Van Halen. I know that sounds terribly bimbo doesn’t it? I’m supposed to find great literature inspiring, something with very little story but way too many pages, or I should be inspired by poetry, art, music, (classical or opera of course). If I had intended to read autobiographies for inspiration then it should be some obscure feminist writer, or someone who lived X hundred years ago. I certainly shouldn’t find the memoirs of a blonde haired, rather pretty rock singer inspiring and I’m certainly betraying my principles as a women by finding encouraging someone who insured himself against paternity suits, well…Sorry, I do. And if he’d lived X hundred years ago it would be OK to be inspired by him so I’ll just bypass time and cut to the chase.
For those of you who don’t know, and there may be a few of you out there, as I mentioned David Lee Roth (DLR) is/was the lead singer of one of the biggest, if not the biggest rock group of the mid 70’s early 80’s who then went on to have a successful solo career, play Vegas, write a film script, rejoin and leave Van Halen and in his spare time climb mountains and trek across most of the uncharted territory of the world. The thing that I love about it all is not just that he did it with a grin that looks like the cat ate the canary, the cream, the goldfish, your best friends sister and the cheer leading squad, but that every photograph, every stunt, every T-shirt, every rumour was a deliberate set up. An illusion carefully created in order to conceal the real intent which was to get as successful as possible as fast as possible.
For example and one of the rock myths you may have heard of is that Van Halen demanded that their rider contain a huge dish of M&M’s sans the brown ones in their rider - (a rider is the stash of food and drink given to the band in their backstage dressing room.) If there were any in the bowl then they wouldn’t go on stage. As a prima donna story it’s guaranteed to cement their place in the rock and roll hall of demanding diva’s - however the reason why they insisted on no brown M&M’s is breathtaking in its brilliance. Van Halen’s stage set involved pyrotechnics, huge lighting rig’s and a wattage of electricity usually used in firing up a town. The technical specs for such a show were very precise. By inserting the anti brown M&M’s clause in their contract somewhere in the small print DLR knew instantly whether or not the venue had read the technical spec’s. If there were any brown M&M’s in the dish then the chances were the venue hadn’t which meant that things would go wrong on stage.
To cram all that in one lifetime (and he ain’t dead yet) is pretty inspiring in the first place. To do it while maintaining the persona of a beach bum is sheer genius and brings me back to the point I made in my last blog about making your life look casual - whistling while you make your escape.
Which is a roundabout way to get to the point of this blog…( if you could just telepathically bone up on the references that I’m likely to throw at you - rock music, drug culture, mindless films, the importance of wonder bra’s, lipstick, exotic shoes and trashy novels - it would be helpful to me and make reading these a lot shorter for you.)
The past couple of weeks I’ve been putting my house in order. Literally. Its never been a pigsty as mum (and dad) ingrained the need not to have ingrained dirt but its always been surface clean not really clean. Throwing out the crap, reorganising my files, scrubbing the places that I haven’t scrubbed for weeks if not months, ironing, washing windows, sills and paint work, putting things into closets in an ordered fashion, has declogged my brain. You get inspiration while your cleaning the u-bend of the sink. Gems will pop into your brain while your ironing the sheets. Honestly.
So I’ve come to a basic set of conclusions about happiness, the real double expresso stuff. The leap out of bed in the morning and wanting to do your sit-ups type of happiness cos god it feels good to be alive. And when you’re happy, everything else you do is a breeze.
You won’t read any of my conclusions in a self help book because they aren’t glamorous. They aren’t new age, and they aren’t touchy feely. They aren’t about relating to your inner child, they’re about giving it smack and telling it to stop whinging.
You don’t get me time, you don’t imagine yourself a colour and you certainly don’t look in your wardrobe to discover the clothes you buy for the person you would like to be unless your ironing them and hanging them up.
They are about boring, old-fashioned words like responsibility, self-respect and duty. They involve concepts like hard-work, elbow grease, strategy and denial.
They certainly don’t involve any phrases like creative fulfilment. Because if your getting on with it then you are.
Before I begin I’d just like to point out that all my thoughts, writings and concepts are copyright to the author (me) and that they are put up here on the condition that they remain so. I do not give permission for them to be reused by anyone other than me, in whole, in part or even for someone to take the essence of what I’m saying and rewrite it and my company pay’s a law firm a vast amount of dosh to make sure that this remains the case. If you do want to quote me - then e-mail and ask and I’m sure we can come to some arrangement. I do not subscribe to the theory that in the great scheme of blogs everything up here is up for grabs out of the kindness of my heart. This is my life and I only have one, these are my thoughts and I’m responsible for them, this is my time that I’m using to type them out and I’ll never get it back again. And here ends the first lesson in self respect.