IN A FINE PANIC

Once again here we are – nobody is going to come to the gig, we will suck, I will forget the words, nobody will laugh, we will never have another gig again and I will be forced to wear rags and to scavenge for food at the edge of the city dump.

Right now my subconscious is running around waving its arms (can a mental construct have arms?)Yelling whoop! Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! Or AAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or some other panic induced mouth noise.

The funny thing was I was raised to be stoic. John Wayne movies played all the time at my house, a long time family favorite film is Zulu (and this applies to our extended family – uncles, cousins and the like) the film is about the battle or Rorke’s Drift during the Zulu war of 1879. At Rorke’s Drift some 145 British soldiers held off some 4,000 Zulu warriors, after over 700 British Troops had been killed that morning by a force of 23,000 Zulus at a place called Isandlwana. There is a moment where the Zulu army appears and one young soldier says to the color sergeant “We’re all gonna die, why us eh? Why us?” the color sergeant played by Nigel Green says in a quiet voice “Because we’re here lad, nobody else, just us.” And he walks away.

And there was also a family saying “that’s the ticket that got punched that’s the train you got on.” Do your job, take what you get and deal with it. And face it; it’s not going to get much better anyway. As I get older I realize we are a pretty gloomy people.

Now how that links with me copping a look like Rick from Cheap Trick and singing how “you must embrace the suck” is not something I want to go into suffice to say panic is not an approved emotion.

But that’s what I have. Well we rehearse tonight – which will deal with the forgetting the words, and well get people to go the gig and we have another gig in Florida. Still I am haunted by the image of me in rags scavenging for food on the outskirts of the city dump. But even if I won lotto I suspect that part of me would still be worried about the rags and scavenging for food result.

More later – it’s busy.