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THE FOOLS

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Do you remember all of the things that were bad for us? It’s kind of difficult to remember them without love. Have I, in all my life, ever lived a lifestyle that was good for me? Do you remember when we were teenagers living in Salford, and Bury, and the more downbeat boroughs of Manchester? Do you remember what it is to be an urchin learning to smoke dope and drink beer and find the right music to go with the nighttime streetlights of Hulme and Moss Side when you’re a white student and the eighties are becoming the nineties? The Happy Mondays are telling you what can be possible for fools who shouldn’t stand a chance. How are you supposed to strike the right tone between sentimentality and objectivity? You knew then, and you know now, the richness of those times, being fools doing foolish things. There’s a virtue in knowing so little about the world. You find yourself driven over road architecture built by mysterious beings. You don’t understand how the music finds its way through the seasons to the radio. You don’t know how the metropolis around you could have been built by the disoriented people you encounter all your life. But then, the slightly older young ones in your neighbourhood do seem like exotic, romantic wonders. Maybe a few of them could go on to live dream lives. The options are glory or tragedy, or some kind of disappointment in between. Which one are you going to get? And will it be destiny, or will it be a measure of how much you embraced what came your way? The world of Man is telling you one thing, the world of your visceral, spiritual self another. You’re an apprentice wizard; you have the magic, but you have no idea how it works. The girls you become besotted by are bewildered angels. Everybody is bewildered. Why is that so? They all know so much. They just won’t admit it to each other. Moments of honesty flare as though by accident.

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I’ll let myself be unguarded in this moment because I know we’re sharing something real here.​​​​

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And the moments are speaking to you. They’re singing to you and they’re shouting.

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Look, lad. Look at what I am. Can you see? Can you see what I am? Can you feel what I am? You and I have been partners for a long, long time, and we’re going to carry on together, and we’ll see what we make of each other.​​

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So, smoking dope and drinking beer becomes only love. Your painful weaknesses become only love. The world loves you so much, beckoning you on.

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Look! See what we could be together, you and I. See how beautiful we can be.​​

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Even through the fears you see it. Popular opinion says No - to what you live and breathe every day. Are you going to believe it? Can you believe it? Doubt comes from all directions. What is it that we’re all disagreeing on?

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My life is my life, how can you tell me otherwise?

 

Do you remember?