the joys of being byron

it's been a bad day, please don't take a picture.

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mister, mister, can we can we can we? one shot, pleeeeeze?

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did you not hear me?

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what? no. the club's loud. come on, quick, we've got him. argh, he's getting away.

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quit shoving that camera in my face. and get these groupies off me.

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watch your mouth, sir. we're band-aids. we're here because of the music. do smile now. don't be scared. it's just us. you're in safe hands. you're lucky we need you alive and undamaged... mwahaha.

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geddem off me! sheesh. they think they're evil. just you wait. i'm gonna make a funny face and ruin the picture.

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keep still, goddam it.

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these groupies.

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band-aids!

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maaan... whatever. just another day at the office. oh well. boo hoo. it's not my fault i'm byron.

10 o'clock news

there's a huge crowd of me gathered in the main square of my state's capital, burning records, waving banners and clamouring against radiohead. i think. they might as well be yelling we want barabas. the same crowd used to preach radiohead in my churches, teach radiohead in my schools, perscribe radiohead in my clinics, grow radiohead in my gardens, sell radiohead in my markets. only a few days ago did they all become aware of its destructive effects, as a consequence to the allarming increase in the number of reported cases of acute neurosis, paranoia, schizophrenia, insomnia and abulia. there is now talk of radiohead in the context of heresy, misleading information, malpractice, poison, counterfeit. the people demand compensation for the damage.

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offended by the protest, radiohead are sending troops over. it is feared they have already broken the defense line and are moving forth at full throttle.

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the news of this epidemia-revolution-war situation has startled the brain government. a decision will be made as soon as the right and left sides come to terms with each other and their weakness. the right are discombobulated and quite incapable of taking action, while the left promote a radically lucid approach that can be neither echoed nor carried out by the deadened nation. in the mean time, the illness is spreading, people no longer go to work, the economy is collapsing, villages are being plundered, laws are losing all credit.

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sometime around christmas i became obsessed with radiohead's ok computer. it wasn't a pot shot. their hunt was long and patient, and though it was my every intention to get caught, i just wouldn't. then i did. life in the age of shuffle and skip had made me forget how it is to listen to an entire album, to preserve the original song order, to see it how it was meant to be seen. the mood it creates. the world it contains. the vortex of emoness it drags you into. hehe. it is located right where two eras of radiohead overlap: pristine radiohead, with its innocent riffs and unpretentious lyrics, and dehumanized radiohead, with its creepy synths and hermetic poetry. rock but electronic, warm but cold, heartfelt but eerie, stirring but lulling, introspective but audience-friendly. two layers of meaning, just like le petit prince or gulliver's travels or the wizard of oz. there's more than meets the ear, and what meets the ear is great. no use. i could write a book on ok computer and still wouldn't find the words to pinpoint that something that does what it does to me. i haven't felt this way about an album on the whole since the hazy times of my early teenage addiction to linkin park's hybrid theory. ouch, me and my dirty past. i was not a fan of radiohead, but of ok computer itself, as an attitude, as a phylosophical system, as one hell of a record. silly me. what did i know? i was soon to be overthrown by the kid a - amnesiac - hail to the thief triad and dragged even harder into the above vortex of emoness. ok computer? happy bubblegum pop. outside world, leave me be. all of you. shush. radioheadness permeates my skin, turning me into something i'm not. this i have to see. be gone. i've lost my way back to the real world. there's nothing but radiohead around here. no palpable coordinates. in limbo.

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but no. lying in bed all day like an antisocial junkie chewing on those four albums and a couple of accidents on the bends was not enough. i had to get myself into the frantic chase for b-sides, unreleased tracks and live performances. this just wouldn't have been called a true obsession otherwise. what have i become? where does it stop? tomorrow i'm definitely joining that crowd of me that's been burning records, waving banners and clamouring against radiohead.
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last minute info: if there were anyone sane left in this country, they would be perplexed by this strange occurrence. the rebels in the main square of the capital have all suddenly lain down on the pavement and drifted into peaceful slumber.
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crap. what do i do now? i can't go out there by myself. they'll arrest me on the spot. guess i'll stay at home with my radiohead.

damming my stream of consciousness

i woke up choking on a cold, long before dawn. it was eerily dark. i'm no creature of the night. nor do i just hang around until someone switches on the buzzing neons of life for me. i provide my own light. and it's natural. and it's warm. and it's pretty. ha ha.

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so i fixed me some hot tea with lotsa lemon, and waltzing feverishly i sang in exaltation: "paracetamole shall take me under its wing/ paracetamole, the end of all suffering"... then i lit a candle just to set the mood, turned on my square-headed partner and sank into oblivion with the daunting yet soothing sounds of late radiohead.

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i soon found roaming about the blog world quite galling. for it is the world of people who can write. and by that i don't mean people of great skill and knowledge, who can wield their sharp wit as scissors to taylor a language into delightful garments for ideas of true substance. i mean people who can actually press the freakin' keys to make freakin' words appear on the freakin' screen. i'm talking from emo confessions to pseudointellectual reflections on the world and from faint to picturesque. i'm talking spontaneous. i'm talking a dork who don't know much about much but sits down, signs in and types away. pours out the anger, the frustration, the confusion. and then rubs it back in. now i could never find it in my heart to patronize the above dork. because the dork has something i've forfeited: an unbiased train of thought. the dork does not get consumed in schemes and drafts and revisions. and nor do some at-times-not-all-that-dorky people i know. yet i self-destructively march on to derisory perfection, ever removing the extra words with my scissors.

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hey, i'm impulsive. impetuous, i am. i'm a goddam flood. yet i seem to be fine and dandy just damming my stream of consciousness into a festering little pond.