Everything Else

Red curtains and the smell of body odour mean that 2008 is still beginning for some. Everyone says “happy new year” and lurches around the floor of an old pub with new owners that you’ve almost certainly been to if you live in Dublin and read this blog.

I say it too, to friends, to people I know, to people I’ve never met before. It rolls off the tongue, over and over. On the evening of the 1st of January “happy new year” is like a mantra for anyone still out from the night before. It’s a reason or an excuse. You could probably excuse a bloody killing spree in Ireland by quipping “Ah sure it’s New Year’s!”. Well, provided the judge had drank a few pints himself. “I return a verdict of ‘go on, ya auld bollocks, who are you tellin!” he’d yell, as you hobble out of the courtroom with your bloody butcher’s knife in one hand, a pint in the other, and a leprechaun hat on your demented head.

Back in reality, it doesn’t take long for my own personal mantra “what’s the point?” to butt “happy new year” out of the way.

There’s something ironic about 24 hour revelers, whose social activities are characterised by total disdain for the calendar, for night and day, for schedules and time itself, celebrating a new year. It’s as if time suddenly matters. Time, usually the enemy ignored until suddenly it’s Sunday evening or Monday morning, is now something to be celebrated. So we celebrate time by pissing away a great big stream of it. We barely see the stream flowing quickly away.

It’s sort of bleak. Though for me lately, hedonism seems to go beyond bleakness, beyond moral condemnation. I’m certainly not condemning it. There’s nothing morally wrong about partying or drinking or whatever. In fact, it’s healthy that people have disdain for the daily grind. It’s healthy that people can reject it. Plus everybody seems happy. Nor do I equate partying with having a drug problem either. From the old man having three pints every night to the teenager doing ecstasy, it’s all just escapism, albeit in varying degrees of severity.

But there’s still something I find inherently depressing about being out in this atmosphere. I don’t know what it is exactly. There’s a nagging sense that life is zooming past these people, or past me. I wonder about how people feel when they aren’t out. I wonder about how they’ll feel in a few years. I know that some people will throw away their youth, or have already done so.

Maybe I’m being too serious, maybe everyone is fine and it’s just me. But there’s a dark power in partying that frightens me. A dark power in alcohol, in other drugs. The party and the booze and the drugs seem to conceal everything, all negativity is papered over. Anything can hide. We all can escape. But what are we escaping from? At parties where everyone is young and wealthy and intelligent it’s almost an indictment of the world that they’re also off their face.

Doesn’t it make you think of Ginsberg? “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness”. It sometimes seems like those with the talent to make the world better realise at an early age that they don’t have to bother. It’s surprising how easily intelligence and stupidity co-exist in us like this.

Of course, I don’t think all of these things while I’m out, because I am capable of taking part, sometimes! And I do enjoy screaming random stuff in somebody’s ear or the national pastime of acting the goat. I also have a good excuse: I worked New Year’s Day so I haven’t been out all night. No sir, a finely tuned cog in the money machine here, selling books and paying taxes.

So once I make a mental note to think about all of this in the morning (which is now) I get drunk and I hang out with my friends and goof around. The music is pretty good. Then suddenly it’s late and everyone is gone. I go home after sitting in an apartment for an hour waiting for no reason whatsoever with three people I barely know.

I get a taxi driver who gesticulates madly about the public sector and the private sector, as if discussing Liverpool versus Arsenal, I can’t get a word in edgeways so I let him argue with himself, throwing in an occasional “that’s right”. I wonder how somebody sober can speak so violently. “Mark my words” he says, and I think it’s been a long time since I heard anyone but a fictional gypsy or a lunatic use the phrase.

I get home and go to bed. It’s 4am. I guess that leaves me somewhere in the middle! One last time then: Happy New Year!

1.

Pet Shop Boys play the Some Days Never End erm…festival, at the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham (at least I think it’s there, I’m sure I’ll find out). I’ve never seen the PSBs and as some of you may have gathered I am a pretty big fan. This should be a rather camp Saturday night’s entertainment. I’ll have to curtail my instinct to sing along at the first live act I’ve seen in about 8 years that (a) have lyrics and (b) that have lyrics I know. Booze isn’t going to help in that regard!

2.

Underground Resistance and DEAF present Galaxy 2 Galaxy live@Rí-Rá. This is one of these gigs where half the rush is the fact that you’re in the presence of musicians with a really vivid mythology. Like say, Kraftwerk’s shows. That’s the mystique of electronic music. The difference is these guys are living legends and they’re playing Rí-Rá! I mean come on, last time I was there I think the highlight of the evening was vomiting in the toilets!

3.

PES2008: Released today, this is the football videogame for all formats that mixes deathly serious realism with one or two ridiculous Japanese flourishes. It continues to be a craze, mostly among guys. Check out the bizarre promo video above, with its cod-punk soundtrack, which almost sums up how the average PES player probably feels about the game. The entire game is full of weird music made especially. More on that next week.

There’s probably a ton of other stuff on too. But almost all of it is completely worthless. Seriously.

Have a nice weekend and make sure to take advantage of your last few days of being allowed to drink that extra half a glass of beer while driving.