The old saying, “be careful what you ask for, you just might get it” I never applied to myself. Maybe I was just ahead of my time in stating my needs so clearly (I always figured that a no was simply a word used by someone who hadn’t given in yet,). Maybe as the most righteous MC Grandma S of the WI posse once definitively stated, I was just plain spoilt - although how she can reconcile that statement with the fact that she now buys pop for her younger grandchildren when we older ones were only allowed one small glass a week (as a special treat after Sunday dinner) I don’t know. Maybe it was just that I had the logic of the truly self obsessed and had figured out that if I was asking for it - then I wanted to get it - that being the whole point of me asking for it in the first place.

Until last week. Last week was when it all went pear shaped. I’m not blaming anyone. The only thing that saves me from complete and utter egotism is that when the chips are down, the jig well and truly up, my back’s against the wall and the final cigarette’s stubbed out– I’ll take my medicine like a man and stand firm against the crashing tides of the (usually blown up out of all proportion) consequences. I asked for it. I got it, and being brought up in the belief that if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime, (but always have a good lawyer on retainer) then I’m not going to whinge about it (well not that much anyway).

It’s certainly not CH’s fault for starting this. I was the one who said “please please please, with a cherry on the top, please tag me to do this twenty tracks thing – it sounds like fun”. And being the really sweet and nice and wonderfully kind person that she is, she tagged me and it’s not been fun. At all.

Bad enough to choose twenty tracks out of the hundred you have scattered around your head, even if you are given subheadings to file them under – they don’t make it easier at all. For example. First question – “A track from your early childhood” Do you mean the track I knew all the words to and could sing before I have any proper linear memories of being alive? Or, do you mean the track that I associate with my early childhood? Or, do you mean the track that was constantly played throughout my early childhood? They aren’t one and the same thing. Or “a track that accompanied you when you were lovesick” That presupposes that you’ve only been lovesick once (or that you played the same song each time). Man, throughout my teens I was lovesick at least twice a week. And because I truly believed that love was a once in a lifetime thing – that was it. I was doomed to the dark unyielding emptiness of a life spent alone and without love. Forget the butterfly turning on the wheel, my heart was a Limoges swallow that had been knocked off the mantelpiece and lay amongst the ashes on the hearth of despair, my aorta an advert for superglue. And each particular occasion had its own signature tune, endlessly played, depending on the personality of the heartbreaker, the mode of heartbreak and how humiliating the experience had been overall.

Difficult too, dealing with all the other memories that these questions unreeled. All those archive boxes we have in our heads – they’re like big boxes of old photos. And once you unpack them, you’re done for. You end up sitting on the floor, surrounded by a carpet of snaps, engrossed for hours. People who aren’t around any more, places you haven’t ever been back to, places that no longer look the same even though you go back regularly, people who have changed, people who never will no matter how much you may want them to, and not forgetting how much you’ve changed over the years. Some of the memories have been along the lines of “hey wow! I’d forgotten about that!” and some of the memories have been along the lines of “oh shit! I’d forgotten about that” and it’s tricky to say which of those statements is the most painful. So it’s been difficult dealing with the memories that these questions have brought to the surface. Harder too, to actually put yourself back in certain places when you play a certain song (and obviously I’ve been trawling through the playlists for the past week) and sometimes harder to leave that place once you’re there.

What I’ve realised this past week is that I’m obsessed by music. I don’t mean obsessed in a material sense. I don’t haunt record fairs (do they still have record fairs these days? Probably not) searching out bootleg copies of tracks that are exactly the same as the copy that was released by the record company except for a slight misspelling of the second engineers name on the cover notes. Nor do I buy obscure ezines featuring strange bands known only to themselves, their mum and a small group of strange people who meet once a year and drink real ale. I’m not hip or trendy. The music I like has never been cool, even when it was cool. I’ve only every bought NME once – when there was an article on the band that F was in at the time – and I would have been less embarrassed buying a copy of Razzle from a newsagents run by the little Sisters of the Sacred Heart. I’ve never done that take-an-album-out-of-its cover-by-only-letting-your-fingertips-lightly-touch-the-edges-before-blowing-upon-it-gently-and-reverently-placing-it-on-the-pristine-needle-not-worn-down-at-all turntable which has been carefully calibrated by a German master craftsman. In fact, it used to be a miracle if I put an album back into its cover at all – most of the time they were frisbeed across the room and on with the next one. I always figured that albums were like jeans – the more beat up they were, the better. The CD age didn’t change that one jot – and I can still pick out the tape I want from a pile of identical unlabelled cassettes, simply by looking at the way the tape’s wound.

This obsession is nothing to do with the fact that I live with a musician. Although many would disagree (anyone who’s ever been in a band with F while he was dating me, for a start), for the record, I’d like to point out that; being fully cognisant of the fact that I’m obsessed by music, secure in the knowledge that I always know best about everything, even things I know nothing about, coupled with the desire never to do anything which might make me look even faintly ridiculous (I haven’t always succeeded at this), the one thing that I’ve always been careful to avoid being is a Janine. This means that any firmly held opinion (I’m referring to the Spanish knife throwing incident here) that F might hold is entirely his own opinion and nothing to do with the satanic power I wield over him. It’s his job and I tend to take as much notice of it as I would if he were an accountant or a lawyer or whatever. I don’t thank him for saying things like “wouldn’t that look better in orange?” or “why not use a different word” so why the hell should he be thrilled and enthralled if I suggest that it might sound better if he recorded it without dobley (and yes, the misspelling is intentional). When he’s working to a deadline, I may I occasionally throw him a cup of coffee but most of the time I don’t – I stick my head round the door and ask him to turn it down. I rarely venture an opinion on what he does. Chances are that if he’s playing guitar then it’s perfect (there are only so many times you can say “I like it” and sound sincere) and if he’s scoring something then to be honest, once you’ve heard the same track played non-stop for 24 hours, the opinion you have of it is not something that you’d care to repeat out loud – not unless you were a fishwife anyway.

Neither do I have any deeply rooted subliminal desire to be a musician. If I had, I’d be one. I’m not completely tone deaf. I play the violin – badly. I gave it up in disgust when Johnny picking up the dough beat the devil, who I always thought was a way better player, although I always suspected that the devil let Johnny win because he couldn’t bear the sound of the fucking red neck fiddle for all eternity. But I took it up, not out of any deep seated desire to play the thing but because it got me out of double maths and thus was the lesser of two evils. When we swapped schools I took up the flute for the same reason. Show me a microphone (and feed me a few whiskeys) and you can’t get me down with a gun, but that proves nothing. I’m exactly the same in front of a camera. I’m self-obsessed but at least I admit it. And I’ll confess that I felt disappointed when it became apparent that I was never going to be an infant prodigy but not because I particularly wanted to be one. It’s just that I’m so damn competitive that I hate to be in a race that I’m not dead certain I’m going to win. Forget the quiet satisfaction of achieving a personal goal – I want the medals, the ticker tape parade (with majorettes and a brass band) the keys to the city, the eternal thanks of a grateful nation and a pizza, and I want them now. I don’t have the patience to do things badly. I know that this sort of thinking is anathema to most people and they will quite rightly point out that if you chose to do only the things that you can do – then you are limiting yourself. That’s true. There’s a lot to be said for genius being 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. But you need to have the flash of inspiration there in the first place, that burning picture of what you want to create and when it came to music I never had that flash.

Possibly that’s why music is so important to me. It’s the one thing that speaks to me solely through the emotion and not the intellect. Something that I’m not saying, “oh, that’s how they did it” or “ Christ a three year old can achieve the same thing if you leave them alone with a set of magic markers and a clean wall” about. I’m glad of that. I can get my ideas down in a form that satisfies me in most other mediums, which means that there are very few works that I approach only through the heart. There are some that do. Van Gogh (apart from “sunflowers”) makes me cry great choking, heaving, wracking, sobs as soon as I see one of his paintings and it doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen it before – but it has to be the real thing and not a print. I think its something to do with his brushstrokes – they hit me like razorblades. There are paragraphs and poems that leave me uplifted or gobsmacked or howling with laughter or plunged into the depths of despair but there is nothing that does it as regularly or as deeply as music.

Maybe obsession was the wrong word. Addiction is probably closer to the truth. Having music around is like having the key to a pharmacists and the ability to compound your own pills. I discovered at an early age that music could change not just my mood but also my entire outlook on life, that a certain sequence of notes could leave me happy, or sad, or beautiful, or afraid, or invincible. That a certain song might make me want to paint or write or smash something. It’s like a Pavlovian reaction…when the song plays – you will feel this emotion. And I do. I have playlists entitled “happy”, “sad”, “painting”, “writing” “drunk” “stoned” “memories” “angry”… you name it – I have a playlist of it (and in the days before playlists I had tapes – and still do. In fact I transferred most of the contents of these tapes to the playlists). Take everything else away from me. Brushes, paper, pens, books even the computer, but as long as I could still listen to music, I wouldn’t give a shit. And even if you did take away the music it wouldn’t matter because it’s all in my head anyway so I can run through a favourite album at the drop of a hat, lyrics, solos drumbeats weird keyboard sounds, the lot – its like being mainlined into my ipod (which is where you’ll usually find me anyway).

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