|
|
|
|
“Song sung blue, weeping like a willow – Song sung blue, weeping on my pillow”, so goes the wonderful tune by Neil Diamond, and like many of the things around me, just listening to the music this morning – took me away to different times and places. I listened and floated away on a cloud of remembrance; of the times when I would unexplainably start crying and with the tears coursing down my cheeks, mumble to my wife, “why is this happening - what is wrong with me? After that would come the embarrassment and despair at being unable to control my emotions and the fear that more control would be lost in the future. Then came the strains of “Are you going to San Francisco?”, to my mind and that bought back visions to me of sitting in a bar one day after a night shift at about midday having just had an affair break up and feeling sorry for myself. Then of course, the guilt came about having an affair in the first place. I find it astounding how our minds have this capacity to remember emotions and situations from the slightest thing at times and at the oddest occasion. I also remember the songs that transport me back to times when I seemed to not have a care in the world, where despite in reality being only 163cm in height, I felt literally 2m tall and bullet-proof. When I knew that nothing could hurt me because I was in absolute control of everything around me and the world was mine to mould. Ah, those were the days, when I used to go down to the speaker’s corner in the Sydney Domain park on a Sunday afternoon and listen to the speakers, and of course, correct them when they were inevitably wrong in their logic (or so it seemed to me). When I often used to take my turn in front of the crowd and try to enlighten them with my brilliance and wisdom, and then pity them when they obviously didn’t have the intelligence to follow my arguments. Amazing what a bit of mania can do when you don’t know you are having it doesn’t it? Oh, how I miss those days and the feeling of boundless energy that I had at the time – I don’t miss what I now know as the negative results of my manic/hypomanic days – but sometimes, just sometimes, I would love to have some of those invincible feelings again.
Instead I will just go back to Neil
Diamond and sing a blue song now and again and remember with fondness the
memories of other times. Graham Brown |
