Come out with me
From Comment, Words
posted on September 17th, 2012

When we were six, aunts and uncles and friends of our parents would say to us “How you’ve grown.” This happened to so many of us, right? It’s such a timeless, universally repeated phrase, it becomes a linguistic trope that passes into culture. It can be spoken by an archetype rather than a real person.

“My, how you’ve grown.”

Yesterday, several lovely friends who now have young families came to my London performance of Disobedience. For the first time, I was aware of the other meaning of “My, how you’ve grown,” which is a far more bittersweet realisation of an awareness that transpires between adults; that we no longer see each-other often enough. That noticeable growth of a child is a slipping away of time.

I don’t know why but it was so transparent, for the first time. It happened over again, three or four times in the space of an hour, with different people who I adore but don’t see; both family and friends. Reasons, not excuses. We live in the wrong town. We’re all couples and they have kids and we’re all busy. Tacked onto the corkboard of the post-Milne melancholia, this became a bit overwhelming. By which I mean it’s a fucking daft thing to do for your birthday. Don’t feel bad for me though: I drank it away in grand company, with wine and Talisker, once the remains of us was small enough to manage.

It also reminded me (yet again – though I repeatedly forget) that my own gigs are precisely the worst places to catch up with close friends. I don’t know how many times I have mantra’d this to myself, trying to drill it in that I need to separate my live music shows from my social calendar. If I was a plumber, I wouldn’t get someone to come and see me fixing a sink as a method of hanging out with them, yet still I use a gig to hook you to a north London pub crawl.

Which reminds me, I must do another London walk before it gets too cold.

Comments are closed.

© Chris T-T 2008–2013
Tumblr
Last.FM
MySpace
Sound Cloud
Spotify
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed