the good place

"I'm sick of the masquerade...of not dancing too vigorously in case I sweat into my lacquered curls." - Germaine Greer.

An ode to the Agincourt.

The stamp on my hand reads "This is F**KING URGENT". I get this stamp on my right hand whenever I go there and it stays for far too long. Sunday morning I show up at church with the obscenity still written on my hand, legible if slightly smudged.

I saw my team leader from work at the Ag tonight. He said "So this is why you never work Sundays?" and I said, "no, it's because of church. I won't get out of bed for Tesco but I'll get out of bed for church."

If I'm conscious, that is.

I found a place for the bad place. All that bitterness, that fear, that frustration at who I am and the way I am - I found a place for it. I take it out with me and I leave it in the ether at the Ag, in the air that's hot and humid with the sweat of a lot of people, in the smoke blown from the fans on the stage. I force it out of me, song after song, louder than the last, angrier than the last, more brutal than the last.

Me and Liz agree that the Ag, this kind of music, is like therapy. Other music is fun, sure, maybe more sexy, easier on the ears. But this is our music, music which is 'negative' - meaning that it acknowledges that the Bad Place exists and it embraces it. It invites it round for coffee.

And that's where I leave it when I go, aching and tired, sweat running down my face, in my hair, my legs, my trousers. I look a state but I'm happy. Sleepy. Empty. All gone.

It's OURS, is the thing. The songs they play in there are the songs that have made me who I am, that simple. One Step Closer, Linkin Park and I'm falling in love with Chester Benninton and listening to Hybrid Theory over and over until I know every word and every song back to front.

Wait and Bleed, Slipknot. I've just bought my first Nirvana album and, inspired, I borrow this song off my brother and I love it, because I hate the world and this is the angriest, most intense thing I've ever heard.

Limp Bizkit, My Generation. Yeah, it's shitty nu-metal, but it's shitty nu-metal that changed my musical taste forever. That band made our generation the colour it is. My love of guitars, hip hop, the word 'fuck' and all the myriad ways it can be used started right here.

Papa Roach, Last Resort, and I'm not even dancing, just jumping, whatever you call it, and I've closed my eyes and I cease to care about anything else but the song and the floor and the feeling.

Faithless, Insomnia. This is my song. This is the here and the now. I'm not thirteen, buying hoodies and patches and carving Korn lyrics into my bag, books and arms, I'm seventeen, and I'm better now. Not great, but better. There's this Bad Place that I go to sometimes, but there's this Good Place too, and that's where I do what I do. That's where I have my therapy.

So I stick my arms up in the air, as free as I ever have been and then I go home and try to get some sleep before I haul my aching ass and bones to church, for to say thank you.