Disintegration

Remembering You

The danger of a photograph is that it creates a physical incarnation of a memory.

A memory tainted with imagination can instead be in held front of you in a sort of laminated visual grab, in such a way that is a piece of undebatable reality. A fragment of a sense that experienced a moment. I could safely bet that you have forgotten the smell of the fresh dew on the grass on the morning your heart had been broken for the first of many times, or the feeling of the crowd pushed up against you at all sides of your first life-changing gig.

What it takes is to look for so long at these pictures that you have been pulled firmly by your collar, stumbling forwards, back inside of a memory.

- 1988

Reds and greens of decorations, pine and their needles, and litter have been saturated by winter in white. Almost as if adding to the similarity of the unenthusiastic cottage-homes are the snow-caked stone streets. Holiday tinsel and the short-lived wrapping paper with telltale signs of loved ones having torn it impatiently, or carefully unravelled, crept out mournfully from the unruly bins.

A scarce Ford ploughed by in slow sync with the slight breeze, which shook excess powdered snow onto my natted bedhead. Hard on my eyes have been the reminders of another aging year as I gave the last shove of more recent trash from the few days preceding my 29th Christmas.

- the next evening

Deadweight. There was not much else of fruitful language to describe how much more and more I had become detached from writing with the other members of the band I had now known as a family.

I fumbled with a notepad, jotting down the odd string of words that resonated with my ideas a bit, "remembering you" "remembering me" but scratched out almost as much as I wrote in erratic pen marks. Occasionally I would burn unworthy lyric notes in the collection of candles I littered around my house. Writing had become an almost completely private, self-aware practice for me.

Seated next to my usually outspoken but oddly tight lipped bassist and occasional closest friend, Simon, I wondered how he felt youth had treated him. His big, tousled hair matched mine regardless of how much the quiff of a 50's biker would suit his rock star dark features. Both in appearance and vigor, you would mistake Simon Gallup as 10 years my junior. I loathed being reminded of this. He was least likely to crease his face with a grin or let any signs or weariness crack his features.

"The writin'." Simon muttered. He pursed his lips to the side.

"Pardon me?"

"You'll have t' get more onto paper, y'know since takin' the writing duties all by yourself" he said passively, almost like an ad-lib of something someone had told him to get through to me.

There was no need for a response. In the quiet I felt the dead weight of a band that has just had two members (including him) return after years. All as the downward spiral I had played witness to with our own keyboard player grew as he lived at the bottom of a pint glass. I reclined into my seat as I reclined further into myself and dreamed of creating something lasting, something that did not disappear in age like I was about to. With every fleeting pop tune I made up I began to feel less of what reality felt like to me, I just could not remember.

The lights of Oxfordshire shops flickered off as I had driven past their closing hours on the way back home. Home was where I could feel myself recharge like a candle given the first strike of a match in the evening. Lying close to her back inside of where it felt real to me is what I could wake up the next morning and dance in the kitchen thinking about, or looking at pictures which could give me a physical reminder of a sweet smile (to match my own quiet, sincere one) that had once lit up in front of mine.

Simon sighs as this is the turn he takes to pull up onto my street, undoubtedly this is of no fascination to him as he adjusts his vertical collar.

This is not what my home looks like in photos.

It is nearly January 1989.

My house has lit up in flames.

Unexaggerated flames. Smoke rising to the gables of the attic windows.

Picture me as I lose every notion of what I should do, and run out towards the scene not waiting for the car to come to full stop.

The melting snow had puddled enough to drench me as I ran through the yard closer to the fire, disheveling my black-lined eyes and hair through sweat and through snow.

"ROBERT. OI. ROBERT GIT BACK! FOR ALL THAT IS..." I could hear, not processing Simon's pleas not to risk my life for the sake of objects as he ran to more than likely knock me unconscious.

I run in through the unlocked back door.

The first thing I mentally had checked the location of, the first thing I ran to the remains of was my wallet, my wallet with the pictures.
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kind of a prelude to little fragments of Robert Smith's memories based on songs. mixed with a little bit of truth and a little more of a bit of writer's interpretation. i don't really know what i'm doing