In April I started learning to play the guitar to distract myself in a sneaky way. Now I'm blogging irregularly...a second sneaky distraction perhaps? Nah, it's not a distraction, it's just something slightly less stressful than thinking about having to do work for university, yet is still productive, so all those negative connotations a distraction can have just...vanish.
I often feel that what I produce is very shit at actually representing me. Even writing that sentence, and this, and the next however many, make me sound like a dick. I can't even work out why. Self-reflection and thought processes just seem to have this air of pretension. It's the idea of putting too much thought actually into yourself and then having the complete arrogance to write it down. It's too complicated...I'm not even arrogant and yet I find myself sitting here in my beret (because it's cold) and my cashmere jumper (because it's cold) in a hotel (because my Grandmother booked it for me) in Frankfurt (because I'm studying at university) and all these factors point to 'posh bitch'. Stupid connotations. Stupid stereotypes.
But I've just distracted myself within my distraction. What the fuck is this? I want to write about my song. The song that I have half written. Because I write songs now too. (oh God. this IS boho) (But why am I so self-conscious? Does my self-consciousness cancel out my possibly posh impression? I'm cutting down on ellipses now) (Sorry) I have half written a song about a stereotype. The man who sits in Business Class. There are two reasons for this: I was sitting on a Lufthansa flight in seat 4D this Friday and I was separated from the Business Class section by a blue curtain, a cheap looking blue curtain at that, and I thought "If that blue curtain were to be chopped down somehow (perhaps by an angry raccoon trained to cut down curtains or a tall dyspraxic brandishing a very strong plastic knife normally used for plane 'food') then all that would have separated myself and Mr Business Class is the cost of the ticket." I also wanted to write a comedy song. And with this conjecture I began to hum a tune to myself about the merry one hour and forty minutes Mr Business Class and I would have, breaking the boundaries of the bourgeois as we made bandannas of the blue curtain and flicked the non-believers the bird.
The chorus went like this:
We'd dance up and down the aisle singing Nena's biggest hits
99 Luftballoons with some made up English bits
Oh, if it wasn't for this blue curtain
Keeping us apart
I'd gladly give you my cheap ass economy heart
And then later, I decided, the verse(s) would go like this:
Dear Mr Business Class, you do look very smart,
The type to bring down a company
Or suppress an angry fart
Dear Mr Business Class, as I watch you from afar,
I imagine your sexually frustrated wife
Shagging the postman in your car
While you swan around the airport
With your Emporio (sm)Armani suit
A blatant small-man-complex
And 3 year's therapy to boot
I know I should not judge
But you're likely judging me
Thinking "Who is this boho-whore,
A gypsy? Has to be!"
Dear Mr Business Class, this song is quite benign,
We both know that blue curtain
Is an inconclusive sign
That you and I can never be
This cheap divide is far to great
So fuck off behind your curtain,
You high-class, pin-striped state.
The dilemma therein lies in the attitude. The mood changed completely when I was thinking about it later last night. The initial chorus is joyous and harmonious, and the verses are brutally judgemental. I want the song to be humorous and for it to achieve this I should look at the comics I admire...right? Let's think...Jack Dee, Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey, Jo Brand, Victoria Wood, Russell Howard...and their comedy styles? Bitter, bitter, mix with music, bitter, joyous, joyous. Although nothing but a snippet of the comedians I can remember right now, the general over-riding feeling is of bitterness. But my personal attitude to life is much more affiliated with the likes of Wood and Howard. So do I write this song bitterly? Or joyously? Do I write it for the audience? Or for myself?
