When I was younger I used to have a pseudonym/alternative identity/character. I used to call myself Marc Reilly, after Mark Reilly, ex of the Fall and then of the Creepers. Now I think he calls himself ‘Lard’ and is some kind of odd character on British TV/radio, but anyway… Back in those days I would often be Marc Reilly. I have loads of records still with that name written on the inside of the sleeve. It’s kind of funny seeing it now.
I had a whole scene invented. All my friends had different identities and names too. I wrote stupid books about ‘us’, loosely based on the events of our lives through the summers and winters of 1983/84… shit, even just writing that down now brings the moments flooding back. I can actually smell the paper and ink I used to write on, and the hairspray I used to fix the chalk drawings that helped illustrate those ‘books’. They’re long-gone now of course, burnt to a cinder in the dark days of 1985. But that’s a different story altogether.
It was all kind of inspired by Punk of course. Re-invent yourself and all that. Very Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine. And also inspired by Postcard, Orange Juice… making your own scene kind of thing. Very insular. Very teenage and very Pop. Naturally. It was also strangely (or maybe not so strangely – I guess we were all very post-modern and disdainful of genres back in those days) inspired by Simple Minds’ ‘New Gold Dream’ album that had this great chant of ’81, 82, 83, 84’ like a manifesto, this four year plan of great baroque Pop glory or something. Which naturally didn’t really work in the end, but such is the way of baroque manifestos. Well our scene was called ‘summer schemes’ (we were,
I was, obsessed with the idea of summer in those years) and it went ’83, 84, 85, 86’. I had books filled with poems and ‘song lyrics’ around that time and they were dreadful. Strangely I think they somehow missed the bonfire, probably because they were in nice hard backed Daler sketchbooks. I had these imaginary records and bands and all sorts of shit. One of my favourites was These Myths. They sounded like Television Personalities and The Ramones. Of course everything fell apart in 1985 and by ’86 I don’t think there were any of us still talking to each other much at all, but what the hell. The whole dream for me kind of descended, or ascended, into darkness through ’85 with me getting very much into stuff like the Jesus and Mary Chain and Shop Assistants, wearing black all the time, you know the score, being 19 and serious about ‘the culture’, writing fanzines, being cynical…
Looking back now, I realise I invented the Marc Reilly persona because I was fed up with the old me. Bored with the perceptions of who I was. Perceptions of my parents, old friends, myself most of all. I needed some kind of break with my past. I think we all do. Or at least some of us do… or we all do and maybe it’s just in varying degrees. I don’t know. Whatever, I needed to self-mythologize. No-one else was going to do it for me, and I was so weak and pathetic. I really needed strength from somewhere, and I guess it came from my imagination in the end.
Looking back now I also start to wonder about how much of who I am now is made up of that Marc Reilly character. I wonder what I’d be like now if I’d never been through that ‘schizophrenic’ patch. And of course it’s not schizophrenia, not even close, that’s a stupid thing to say really I know, but still… I do wonder what I’d be, where I’d be… I like to think I’d be a lot less interesting. If such a thing is possible.
I realised last night actually how much I miss those times. Those two years when It was all pretty much perfect in all kinds of bullshit horrible imperfect ways. I was out riding after I got back from school, it was around 5 in the evening I guess. The sun was out, I was in shorts and a short sleeved top for the first time this year, and there was something about the feel of the sun and the crispness of the air, the scent in the sky… something special perhaps… anyway, it made me think of when we’d all go out and ride our bikes after school, just pedalling along talking about all kinds of crap. Music mostly, and girls of course. I was singing the Triffids in my head last night and I wished suddenly more than anything to be able to talk to Scott about the Triffids, ‘hey, have you heard this Australian band called the Triffids?’ I’d have said, and he’s have been, like, ‘no, what are they like’ and I’d be all ‘oh they’re great, they sound so big and full of sunlight and shadows and stuff’ and he’d roll his eyes probably. Of course I can’t do that now, haven’t been able to for years because Scott died back in 1989, so… whatever. I kind of just missed having someone to ride and talk crap with. I couldn’t find anyone like that now if I tried of course… because it’s all tied in with the being that age and being in the state of discovering things together, discovering yourselves together. And that never happens again. Not like it did. Which is both a tragedy and a blessing all at once.
I’m going to play more Kinks albums now.
posted by duke harringay at 8:00 PM 