I’d made the mistake of assuming we were all alike

I had to get a haircut

Goddamn

I grew up around these people and

They are still the same

Amazed by everything

Smalltalk will not get you beyond the £13 I intend to pay for this shit

The woman behind the counter offered coffee/tea/juice

I saw some optics on the far wall, glasses on a shelf and 
Bottles of gin, vodka, JD

She didn’t offer those

What a bitch

You sit there and stare at your own face

Eyes darting round the room to avoid taking

Too much of yourself in

While outside a drunk couple stagger past the open door

     ‘…do I really look that bad?’ she slurs

He mumbles something back

And she seems more at ease with her appearance

I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or there’s a

Convention in town but at that exact same moment

Across the street a young black girl fell out

Of the door of the off licence

Promptly sprang up off her knees and walked away

The sun shone hard

The evening breeze taking some of the edge off

I take issue with the necessity of it all

Having to call this guy to cut your hair

To fix the bad wiring in the walls

The gearbox on the car

Brake pads, oil, all that shit

2 days previous

I’d called another one

Chris

And there he was in the kitchen

Sideways across the floor and tools all over the place

Talking away as they all do

But this one

Told me about bands he’d seen
The Ramones at Brixton
The Damned and the Pistols, Black Flag and Crass
He told me of

His friend's little art punk band who played gigs for food banks

So instead of tickets the audience had to bring

Bags of food to get in

A swear to god he was a ray of sunshine in an otherwise

Shitty week

I feel a bite on the back of my neck where the clippers catch the skin

It snaps me back in and I realise the guy has been talking this whole time

I have no idea about what

I don’t dislike him

Or them

Or you

I just continue making the mistake of assuming we’re all alike.

Chris Cornell May 17th 2017

Love leads to loss. There is no escaping it. The more closely you hold someone, something, the more pain is felt once it departs. We are instinctual in our love for family, mothers, fathers, brothers, children. But as individuals we create new connections with those beyond our reach - the artists.

We grow with them and they in turn form part of who we become. Imprinting their words, voices, feelings into us and injecting part of their soul into our own. Often this adds weight to how we view the world, ourselves and each other. But it is a weight we are happy to carry. There is meaning and beauty in the depths of the darkness they share.

And vicariously we jump and kick and scream and fight with them, through them, because our lives dictate we cannot fight, we cannot scream. The art allows you to become more of yourself. Your dna is engrained with it and so it turns to a devotion of sorts but one that gives just as much as it takes. And when they are departed it feels as though part of you has also, they are an old friend only you knew, who understood you more than anyone. And the hurt remains as music, as a voice. And you are left with the question of how to turn that back into the beauty of how it all began. 

Maybe I’m being overly dramatic - and all today I’ve felt the need to lessen the importance of all this. They are just songs, and singers of songs. But I can’t play the songs today. I can’t listen to the music yet and hear a voice that meant so much, that won’t sound ever again. Tomorrow I’ll try, I’ll dig out a selection of records and link them one by one as a screaming tribute. But for now, today, there's silence.