The Poverty of Hope

During the weekend I got involved in an email exchange with one of the ghost readers that frequent this Blog. That exchange almost turned into a question and answer session  and became so relevant to the Blog that it has earned it's place as a post in its own right. It concerns my ideas of Memoires, why I write the posts I do, and what thinking if any goes into the tales I relate. I thank you all for the wonderful comments you left to the last post (we nearly reached 100!!!) and of course I thank Madam X who contributed her time and questions in order to make this post possible.

If  the post misses a bit of tragedy and despair, well I apologize for that and promise that I will make ûp for it in the next entry... even if it means jumping off a building with no rope...

I hope you All enjoy.

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Email from: MadameX
To: Myheroinhead@gmail.com

Hiya Shane,

I’ve been reading your blog silently for months now and it seems (at least to me) that there is something much more going on than just tales of addiction or drug use. It seems that the posts are a part of a puzzle...that together they say more than the initial story. Can you tell me more about that?

Also it seems a reoccurring theme, friendships and what became of these people after your ways parted and each went down a different road to ruin?!

Love and thanks

X

PS: The idea for a new post you mentioned to Y seems it would suit your blog.


Email from: Myheroinhead@gmail.com
Email to: MadameX

Hiya Madame X,

Thanks for you mail.

Everything in my life would suit the blog... I suppose that's why it makes some sense... why it is even believable.
It's not just the ‘Road to Ruin’, that is only the destination. It is the reason for that journey, the tragedy (if it is a tragedy) of it. It seems to me that in this life there are many broken and lost souls, and just as we find companionship life seems to conspire to part us for good.

So, you are right, the blog is not just about addiction.. that is just a common linking theme. I have lived around heroin or drugs and alcohol for so long now that many things which have passed bare some relation to that. So as a theme it works well for me. But the Blog, that is not really about addiction... or it is, but it is equally concerned with many other things. It's also about poverty, but not just poverty of money, more the poverty of hope*... having nothing but yourself to enjoy or destroy, because where I am from, self-destruction is a form of expression. Not in an artistic way (though it can be) but in a rebellious way. Very few have the education or the contacts to express themselves in an accepted fashion and so it is done through vandalism, violence, drugs or self-destruction. People are rebelling but they do not know what that are rebelling against... they are expressing a social problem but are ignorant of what that problem is. So they express themselves, their inner frustrations and angers. They leave their blood on the wall.. spray insults in huge letters at unknown enemies. They self-destruct because they cannot bloom... there is no space to do it.

That is really what the posts try to show. These people are not monsters or mentally ill, they are the manifestation of the problems of where they are from. That is how we must see it. If I was born in Chelsea to a middle or upper income family, the chances are I would never have come into contact with the likes of Simon, or Alan or Lloyd or Wardog. My friends wouldn't have taken the Road to Ruin... they wouldn't have needed to. So it is a statement of certain conditions... and hopefully I am the person from there who kept enough sense and was aware and observant enough to express it in other ways. I can, because for years I expressed it in the same way as them... I used myself to show what society was invisibly doing to me. In a sense I still do. But through art (writing and painting and music), I have found another valid way to express that.

Thanks once again for your mail...

My Thoughts & Wishes, Shane. x

*A title for a  future post: The Poverty of Hope. ;)


Email from: Madame X
Email to: Myheroinhead@gmail.com

Shane,

Yes... I think that "outlawdom" or self-destruction do also have a psychological background or a personal, biographical one. On a more general level it probably only takes different forms depending on the environment you grow up in. Speaking in stereotypes, if you grow up in a Californian mansion with an alcoholic father who regularly beats on you or your mother, your form of escape and self-destruction might be partyhopping, sedatives and anorexia. I think it all might depend on what we see, what we know and what we learn from others.But of course, also from what or what not our money can buy. There might be different forms of expressing a hurt or a hopelessness, and according to that different causes that led to a trauma or a perspectivelessness... I just believe that the feeling of loss and having no vision (be that career, love or whatever) is universal and not restricted to a certain class.
 Again, what is different between "the classes" is the way you express that, and also who you express that to. The Californian girl might tell her stories to her psychiatrist, the London kids write in on the walls . But there are similarities?!

I still like the image of the "road", a road on the fastlane, roadkills, a ruined road that starts as one and then splits... into different roads to ruin?

Email from: Myheroinhead@gmail.com
Email to: MadameX

But the Road to Ruin is an old rock n' roll cliché, and I don't necessarily believe it is the road to ruin. I don't believe that becoming a drug addict and dying early is a road to ruin. Maybe it’s just a road... maybe they're all 'roads to ruin' because they all lead to the same place. What does it matter if one dies at 35, 50 or 90???

 No, loss and having no vision are not universal. Of course that exists in all classes and races, but it is not epidemic. These things come from a lack of opportunity, options, possibility. It has a lot to do with economic situations. There is a reason why kids with nothing enjoy destroying property. There is a reason why so many drunks will lay out in public, dirty and humiliated, advertising themselves to the world. They just don't realise why.

 And I'm not talking about a hurt or a trauma... we all have them. I am talking about when LIFE is the trauma... when it is so big you cannot even see it; you can only express it.

 When I talk of lack of opportunity, I often use my schooling as an example:

 My school was St.Marks. In my class were 30 children. Of those 30 no-one amounted to anything. The best someone became was a school teacher. Only 20% even went into further education.

 Down the road was London Oratory. But most kids left there and went on to university and became Lawyers, doctors, or politicians. 80% went into further education.

 We were born with the same brains, the same scope of memory... so what happened? Why did one set degenerate into violence, drugs and vandalism, whilst the others ended up treating, defending or arresting them! Why did one set start voting at 18 and the others became apolitical (though without even knowing what the word means).

 There is a poverty and a frustration behind what I write about. Yes, it does exist elsewhere, but it is not epidemic. I've met addicts from all backgrounds, from all social classes and of all creeds and colours. But the majority, the same as the majority of kids that wear balaclavas and head out at night to vandalise property, they come from a place of hopelessness and nothing. They are hitting back at the world... they just don't know why.

 Also, if you grow up in that Californian mansion you mentioned, you're escape might be the attic... the piano room... the library... the credit card! Something else that makes the situation less hopeless. If you grow up in a small flat on a rundown council estate, where is the escape? where is
another hope? There's not a library to lose yourself in... there's not a credit card that can compensate for absent or fighting parents. All there is is nothing. How can you escape a room when it is the only room.? Well, you escape it psychologically. And how do you express all this frustration? When you've never read a book in your life... never learnt how to write... have no access or money to painting materials... and didn't even leave school with the vocabulary needed to express it. Well, then it's expressed in different ways... anti-social ways, self-destructive ways. It's a huge scream for attention, but nobody is listening.

 That's a little of what I think... when I'm writing a post for Memoires of a Heroinhead these thoughts go through my head. I do not explain that on the blog (though often in the comment section I do) as that gets very dull to read. I prefer to show the people and explain where they are from and what they do and how they live or die. People can then dwell on that, or just enjoy the post as a story and forget about it. But I believe that if you word things correctly, and give memorable sentences of expression, then that is the biggest protection against your words being forgotten or dismissed. But yes, there is something more than just tales in what I write... there has to be something more because stories are so very boring.

I think that ends it... don’t you? ;)

Shane. X

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So there you have it... a few of the thoughts and considerations that go through my mind when trawling through my past and present searching for a post. The only other criteria that is important is that I be as honest as memory and pride allows me to be. If not all the timelines of events are strictly accurate, emotions and feelings always are, and that's what is important.

 

I hope you're All well... My thanks as ever for reading & prepare yourself for the next post which involves a young death, a crack pipe and a homemade Freddy Krueger glove...

 

Take care and Best Wishes, Shane. X

Once Upon A Time I Was A Juvenile Delinquent

As far as I have memory in my head I have always been a juvenile delinquent. My school years, from 5 – 13, were a history of vandalism, busted noses, twisted arms and broken windows. I spent my days smart-arsing teachers and my nights prising off car badges and defacing bus-stops. I was a tearaway. Still, despite these things I was top boy in class and advanced into the above year. At the age of twelve I won the London Schools Poetry competition*, and less than a year later I was expelled from school and banished for good from the British educational system.

My final day in school was as memorable for my smartness as it was for the bunch of keys that hit me in the temple, knocked me unconscious and split my brow open. Looking back I still think I was unfairly dismissed, but probably it was my just deserves for something else.

It was one of those hot, dusty afternoons where the tarmac burns through the shoes. A bedraggled bunch returned from a lunchtime of football, hopscotch and cigarettes. Our chewed and eaten ties were in our back pockets and our shirts clung miserably to our bodies. All pupils, boys and girls, were three buttons open from the collar. It was in these conditions that our eccentric music teacher Mr Ward Jones decided to test his theory: xylophones are indestructible. To prove this he sat a xylophone in the middle of the music room and challenged each student to break it. “Kick it... punch it... clatter it,” he said, “it cannot be broken.”
One at a time, pupils were called out off the register. Each scruffy body offered up an attempt to break the unbreakable. Kids kicked and tumbled the xylophone. Some clattered and struck the metal keys together. It was rolled, bounced and jumped on, and each time Mr Ward Jones would smugly replace the keys and return to his seat. Watching this procession I couldn’t help thinking that somehow this was designed with me in mind. it was a lesson for all, directed at one. Finally Mr Jones summoned me to the job in hand. I knew what I was going to do, I had it all sussed. I walked confidently up to the xylophone and lifted it up off the floor, high over my head. I turned and faced Mr Jones. he gave a subtle nod and smile which said: “Go ahead, do your worst”’. With that I brought the xylophone crashing down... straight into the piano. For the umpteenth time in my life I was surrounded by carnage, this time playing out to a discordant tune. Yes, the xylophone survived, but the piano wouldn’t be playing Beethoven’s ‘Sonata in C minor’ ever again.

Before the dust from the sackcloth had settled Ward Jones had me. His violence was so thick and so fast that it seemed like he scooped me up and climbed the four stories of stairs to the headmaster's office in one stride. He had the devil in him.

The quiet of the 4th floor was eerie as only empty school corridors can be. The headmaster's office door was closed and locked. Ward Jones crashed me down onto a table, holding me by the shoulders. He stared directly at me and through me. What I saw in that look, in those eyes cannot be described. They were the eyes of a man that was no longer there. His body was acting independently of any brain. I was a tough boy, but that isolation with that man scared the shit outta me. I somehow knew the perverse was once again at my door.

Mr Jones began: “You fucking  little...” I gave a smirk. Not a smart one, I just didn’t know what else to do. Well that smirk was the second from last thing I remember. The last  was seeing Mr Ward Jones unclip the huge bunch of keys that were hanging from his trousers and hurl them. When I came around the keys were laying on the floor next to me. I could sense a half closed damaged eye and I caught the sour taste of blood as it curled into the corner of my mouth. Jones then had me by the arm and was dragging me off, back down the stairs, me scrambling to find my feet. How I escaped his clutch I am not sure, but on hitting the heat outside I was free, running across the concrete school yard and out the gate. My stepfather, an ex-borstal boxing champ, wouldn’t stand for this. Mr Ward Jones would be history.

My stepfather must have seen me coming, for before I even had time to open the door I caught his thump in the side of my head. That was for bloodying my new cheesecloth school shirt, in addition to fighting and disturbing his afternoon peace. And with that punch, with that reaction, he lost a part of me forever. I also realised he wasn’t as hard hitting as he liked to make out.

For the piano incident I was suspended from school, and 28 days later the Board of Governors convened and permanently excluded me. Mr Ward Jones denied everything and got off scot free (though later he would be fired for making indecent remarks to a 13 year old girl). And that was it (save for two months of 'one on one' tutoring), that was the end of my education. I had been abandoned to run loose with the wolves.

What’s strange is that the moment I was expelled I immediately acquired an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. I passed the next 5 years in public libraries and university canteens. This wasn’t a conscious effort to do something about my situation – I wasn’t that smart, it was just a natural thing. Libraries were full of books and I enjoyed reading. After reading I wanted to discuss and I found I could do that in university canteens. I don’t have a complex about my lack of education, in fact I’m proud of what I’ve managed to learn and study of my own back. Nevertheless, there are still many things I missed out on. The biggest was the lack of second hand information coming my way. When you’re within an educational system you don’t only learn what goes in your head, but also what goes in your fellow students heads and then comes out their mouths. Second and third-hand knowledge is coming at you from all sides. I didn’t have this. For me it was a chore. One book seemed to lead to a thousand others. And so that’s what I did, I followed an endless trail of words, blinking each sentence into my memory. I read some books so quickly I missed them.

The second, and more serious consequence of my expulsion from school, was I had too much freedom. Freedom, youth and the White City Estate are a bad mix; it can only lead to mischief. It soon happened that if I wasn’t in a library I was in the back of a police car. Nothing serious, a multitude of petty crimes. The most ridiculous of which was throwing a grapefruit through a neighbour's window.

But this post isn’t about my schoolday antics, it is more about who I was before heroin and the direction I was already heading in. It’s about the wildness, the dingo that has always been in me. I am a very shy, introverted person, but I have a need to impress. Because of the shyness I never took the eyes with a loud mouth, I took the eyes with my actions. I distinguished myself with danger. I was always the one to push on, to take one step further than anyone else. And this behaviour has a huge rapport with my drug use, because the feeling I got from doing heroin was the same feeling I got from destroying pianos and the same feeling I got from having the neighbours watch me being led away in handcuffs. It was for the eyes, always for the eyes. But where delinquency gets teenage eyes, heroin gets adult ones... just not in the way you'd imagine.

Over the years my youthful problems and needs have all mellowed. I’m not so timid anymore, yet I prefer to avoid strange crowds. My need to take the attention has also tamed, but there is and will always be a streak of that in me.  My last fight was at the age of 18, and I no longer vandalize bus-stops or destroy pianos. I do however still throw the occasional grapefruit, but that’s not too bad. I’m getting better every day. Yesterday I was bad, today I am good and tomorrow I may very well be You.

Take care people... keep well & keep heart, Shane.

PS: Here’s my winning poem.

Midnight Revenge

As I walked into the yard
A mummy was a nasty guard
Watching every step I took
Then a spectre popped up to look
Running, running I was scared
“Boo!” a ghost jumped up and blared
And this is what I found
Skeletons were in the ground
Worms and maggots in their hair
Even they started to stare
They jumped on me and took my soul
Threw me in a fresh dug hole
So this is what I done you see
I haunted them instead of me.