The longer Graham did not contact the more I wondered how much there was some mis-explanation for him not being in touch with me. I'd been positive, he had seen how I had 'landed on my feet' with where I lived, and he had my address and phone number. So where or what was the blockage? It was true that he suggested he might be moving soon and would confirm his new address when he was installed but if knew he was moving then how long should I wait for a message? I knew about how young women ended relationships with males their own age, with either 'It is not you it is me' or 'It is not me it is you', as if either way the relationship was doomed for intractable reasons that resisted further explanation. Was Graham retreating for intractable reasons? If so it was hard to tell...
In the meanwhile I had a lot of albums and tapes and it came to me some time after the three days later meeting with Pastor Lou that that there was an issue there with having that much to play and listen to. The quantity of it made it seem much more like 'want' than 'need' after all I would only ever have one pair of ears and one allotted life and time to play the music. He was gentle and factual with me when I talked about it with him. He was concerned that if 'the spirit of death' had been in me then it might be in the records or in the mind and body of the person that bought them if I sold them. I was quite scared by that line of reasoning. Of late in my head and on the A4 pad I had been exploring an argument that seemed familiar from times with family where they coerced me into wanting what they wanted me to have, which was for their benefit more than mine.
Mother; 'I have got this you (name of item here) because I thought you needed them'.
Me; 'Ummm, thanks but I did not really want (name of item), not like that, anyway.'.
Mother; 'Well if I had asked you before I bought (name of item) then you might have refused it and the refusal would have created a bad atmosphere between us. I couldn't afford that.'.
Me; 'But what if you have created a bad atmosphere between us by not consulting me before the purchase? By deciding that (name of item) was what I needed, and whatever I wanted, including wanting to be asked first, would asking have cost you too much? How much do you want other people to laugh at me for wearing (name of item)?
Mother; 'I went without during the war and I endure post-war rationing for you to have the choices that I have made open to you. It is because of me that you have what you have.'.
Me; '(imitates Tony Hancock) Well Exactly! Did the population of the UK endure rationing so that those who endured rationing could later control their children with some imaginary ration book they kept locked in a cupboard that the child was led to think did not exist? Or was rationing endured so that at some point in the future the mentality of rationing could be erased in the name of a broader freedom of choice? So that people would not feel coerced by government determined ideas about supply and demand? So that families would coerce each other into accepting less?
If you want to ration me via your choices then print me a proper ration book and show it to me as you take away my choices, Be warned; one day-sooner than you think-that book will be past it's use by date.'.
I liked the music I liked because it was more expressive and emotional than I found government regulated television to be, and because it was like good radio, 'the pictures were better'. I suspect that 'the pictures being better' was where the church felt scared on my behalf, and where I mistook the church for being too like my mother. The images the music gave me were certainly more wholesome and enduring than the images of the Gulf War that had been permitted for being shown on television. There The Late Night News became some macabre video game that viewers regularly stumbled into by accident, before being repelled by the presentation.
As a consumer culture, music had it's wide boys and corrupting figures. But there was not the slightest hint of rationing about it. It's expansion was limited mostly by it's own design and business practice. The musical talent and business acumen of the performers in it were guiding factors too. Where the music business relied on sensationalism for promotional purposes it had a problem-how far could censor baiting false controversy be taken before it looked obviously faked? But already there were many fraudulent free church preachers in the world who via their business-savvy means sold rich people a 'health and wealth gospel' via cable and satellite television where the wealth symbolised by the medium itself made the fraud and weak theology they espoused hard to recognise for what they were.
So I had the problem of a surplus of music, I had one pair of ears and a finite time to enjoy the music I had amassed. I no longer needed to rebel as much as I had previously felt the need to when I was conditioned by Mother's no-exit-from-my-memories-of-rationing type arguments. My sense of what was spiritual had to be practical about material things. I soon saw one practical compromise that I could work out for myself. I had a vast number of cassettes with music on them, too many. The church used cassette tapes to record services on for those who were ill or or otherwise unable to attend church services. What if I donated the tapes with recordings on them that I was happy to lose, to the church? Lou accepted the suggestion with the obvious request that the tapes be wiped before being donated.
A lot of the recordings on them were of The Grateful Dead playing live. By the early 1990's their tours of America made them the highest grossing band in the world. But whether a tape came from when they were poor in 1967 or from the late 1980s their musical ideal was to repay a musical debt, a debt their musical fore bearers could not pay off which the band could repay. White blues singer Janis Joplin (1943-1970) buying a tombstone for Bessie Smith (1897-1937) with Bessie's name on it for 'the [back] Empress of The Blues' was an act intended along the same lines.
Not once as I erased the music on surely over fifty C90 cassette tapes did I link the idea of 'repaying a musical debt' with the church idea that had prompted me to act the way I was now doing-a fear of 'the spirit of death', a fear of spreading debt and death contrary to the idea of life. The music had served it's time with me. The tape could be reused. In both, whether it was what was first put on the tape for me to enjoy, or with it's erasure, no debt or reason to fear of death remained.
The vinyl albums were a bigger problem, both figuratively and literally. I had over a hundred and fifty albums and they took up quite a lot of space in my room, and I had no friends of the type who I felt a bond with via the sharing of music with them. In the likes of HMV the sales of CDs were expanding, the sales of vinyl were shrinking. CD versions of a lot of what I had on vinyl were yet to come. My, ahem, 'pre-loved' vinyl albums still felt to me like books-although thousands, if not millions-of copies might be pressed up. For fans it seemed normal to have your own copy seemed personal and important.
There was a limited time frame for me to sell the albums for their maximum value, if I was happy to sell them, . If I thought that whoever bought them could and would choose their own spiritual battles whilst listening to them for themselves.
I would have liked it if Graham were about, and if we had enough time and space for me to share with him what I had gone through in prayer, and what I should do next with the vinyl. Reduce the collection by selling what I had bought in the hope that I would listen to it a lot of times but I had listened to it far less often than I'd hoped to was relatively easy. Selling some more as and when I felt more comfortable with making my own decision about what to discard also worked. The choices were between getting no money from discarding an album or getting some money for it once and the money was whatever the market could bear to pay.
But Graham was somewhere far away and even the people my own age that I'd had as recent church friends who understood the appeal of music, people like Spyder, were absent too.
In the words of The Grateful Dead's 'Ripple'
'There is a road no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone.
And so, as I felt ready I sold more records until I'd got to a rump of about thirty albums. I chose a view of life where The Grateful Dead and other inspiring counter culture musicians like the UK based Roy Harper became less literal and material as guides to me. Their lyrics were more my guide, including a guide to what modesty was. I did not need the physical product, the record or tape. As earworms the lyrics and tunes drifted in and out of my head-and since they came and went so easily they left my head feeling a lot lighter.
A guide to true modestly was not to be ignored. I would need it to agreeably side-step all future obligations to my family as they presented themselves.
To be directed to Chapter Twenty Eight please left click here.
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