Freed From Dreams, too

Just heard that the National Trust are releasing a CD of punk classics, well classics if you stick The Toy Doll’s Nellie the Elephant in with the Pistol’s Anarchy in the U.K. Not sure I do. No, of course I do, just me being curmudgeonly.  What goes around comes around. Whatever. Why not re-release the Hound of the Baskervilles by Stately Holmes. Anyway, got me thinking about how, despite what all of us might say, however many medals we might return to the Palace unopened we do, all of us want to be loved. It's a long road, first it's friends, family, then peers before being drawn inexorably towards the bosom of the establishment where, safe in a familial fog we suckle greedily on the teat of conformity.

Everybody wants the respect of their peers, so much more integrity than blind faith or a blank Czech supermodel girlfriend. Being the outsider is a young mugs game, no place for the old or the uninspired. The grumpy teenager begets the angry young man and inside every angry young man is an armchair and a pair of slippers trying to get out. Probably the two armchairs, or maybe a comfy settle with one of those extending leg rests.

As a result YBA's want to be Royal Academicians, punk rockers aspire to being inducted into the Rock and Roll & Roll Hall of Fame and anyone capable of flipping a burger wants their own BBC TV shows with medallions of pork and a winning garnish of gongs. Behind every Guerilla mindset is a chimps appetite for distraction.

Bit of a leap I know but jump with me into the mythical mindset of methodological movie maverick Robert de Niro, once of Mean Streets, Raging Bull and Taxi Driver but now basking, jowly, jovial, family, friendly in downtown Focker-Ville.

Somewhere in SoHo De Niro lies wounded on a cutting room floor; a clutch of hungry young directors are clamouring around him offering water and technical assistance. Bobby takes a swig, grimaces, “Leave me here you guys, you’re young, you’ve got ideas in development, forge ahead, stretch the envelope, save yourselves”. At least Marty stayed true. Whilst Bob took semi retirement in a Winnebago on bricks in the ‘Burbs Marty always made sure he was South of Houston by nightfall.

Don’t do it Marty, stay edgy, stay edgy forever, if not for your self then do it for Johnny Boy. Ok?

Ok.

Last year I saw an advert featuring pop puppet, sorry chart poppet Alexandra Burke selling deodorant, I mean she’s only just begun her career and she’s already sold out. Does she have so little belief in her own talents that she doesn’t think she’ll be able to carve out a career for herself; is the singer of such dance floor fillers as Bad Boys (and the one with the video full of winsome women pretending to be American footballers) not planning on sticking around, or maybe she’s got an autobiography to write and is buying some time. Or does she simply want to be freed, freed from the chains of dreams, free to reclaim her place amongst A Chorus Line of lovelies clamouring for the chance of a touch down. What is her agent's agenda, I think we should be told. Worse than advertising salmon farming in Scotland? Well one could argue that at least Roger and Bob have earned the right to take it easy. Hope I die before I get sold out? Or found out. Turning perspiration into inspiration, Who knew? At least Pete incurred her majesty’s pleasure, going the whole nine yards for a fixed term. 

Oh I don't care, not really, or at least only just enough to write 650 words about it. Whilst I just want to break even Various wants to be VA at the V & A, except he doesn't know it yet. Sooner or later we all want to become National Treasures, like Jim Broadbent or The Simpsons but until then we remain the Crown Jewels of our own fevered egos.