Last night I was watching Top of the Pops. Yeah, yeah, I know it's rubbish these days. Shunted off to a graveyard Sunday night slot, rendered irrelevant by MTV, and presented on this occasion by that cretin from indie also-rans-turned-Heat magazine faves The Ordinary Boys. But although its content is usually reliably dreadful, I can't help tuning in each week. You see, the show was my earliest musical education, long before John Peel or the NME came into my life. I remember watching with genuine anticipation at the prospect of seeing a performance by the Reynolds Girls or Snap!. Plus, I live in hope of once again witnessing a disaster like those which characterised the TOTP's glory days (Dexys Midnight Runners performing Jackie Wilson Says in front of a giant picture of darts legend Jocky Wilson; All About Eve looking around blankly at throughout their "performance" because a technician failed to switch on their monitors; a drunk Rick Parfitt from the Quo passing out on top of his drummer).
But remember the words of Noel Coward: Never underestimate the potency of cheap music. At the end of this week's show was a pretty good song; you'll know it because it's been at number one for about three million years now. Soon it'll be as irritating as those by Bryan Adams and Wet Wet Wet were during their mammoth encampments at the top of the hit parade (although to be fair, few songs have ever been as irritating as those particular tracks were to begin with). But for the first time last night I paid attention to the lyrics, and had one of those "Hey! That's about me!" moments:
I remember when, I rememberffice
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When I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place
Even your emotions had an echo
And so much space
My brain wasn't exactly firing on all cylinders when I came round from my operation. After getting prodded and poked at for 13 and a half hours, it didn't really feel like doing much. As a consequence, my mental process was curtailed. My concentration span dwindled; my capacity to make associations, engage in abstract thought and hold conversations all tailed off. It became too much effort to read a book, or watch the TV, or chat with my family for any length of time. Responding to any kind of stimulus (a light being switched on, "Would you like milk in your tea?") meant the cogs would grind away at a tortuous rate. Put baldly, I'd become stupid.
Now, at the best of times I'm fairly stupid in certain ways - when confronted with numbers, for instance, or rail timetables. But in others I'm reasonably bright, enough to have earned me a degree (for whatever that's worth). So what I wasn't prepared for was the sheer exhilarating, liberating possibilites of stupidity.
It's hard to describe now in the same way that the continued appeal of the national lottery must be difficult to explain to experts in probability. But being stupid gives you a kind of clarity that would get swamped under the obfuscating distractions of being intelligent. The colour of an orange next to my bed became fascinating against the contrast of the pale hospital wall behind it. Brief hand-written messages in get-well-soon cards became mini-opuses. And the cold, bright panorama of Glasgow outside my window was full of little observations I could just about get my head around. Big yellow crane... bloke walking his dog... looks cold out there. Good job I'm inside. If you were inclined to mysticism you'd say it was kind of Zen, man.
From Tomorrow Never Knows to Eight Miles High, musicians tackling the subject of consciousness have usually been interested in expanding theirs. I preferred having mine retracted. While it's true that my mental state was partly chemical-assisted - the hallucinations I got from my steroids would have commanded a hefty street value outside the hospital - the limitations placed on it defined my post-op experience far more. It's true this had its downsides. It must have been upsetting for my family when conversation wore me out, for instance. But the advantages were more numerous.
And when you’re out there without care
Yeah I was out of touch
But it wasn’t because I didn’t know too much
I just knew too much
Able to concentrate only on the immediate and the ephemeral, the mire of anxieties that cluttered my head in everyday life disappeared. No longer was I worrying if I was going to be late for work, or did I look daft in these clothes, or had I enough money in the bank to see me through to payday, or should I ask that girl for her number. None of it mattered. The only thing I cared about outside of the moment was whether today's dinner was going to be as disgusting as it was yesterday.
This inability to dwell on my situation was, of course, very handy. It was just as well I didn't spend too long thinking about how other people were having to wash me, or the fact that tubes were protruding from my nether regions. But it also amplified the enjoyable in ways you can't appreciate when you're brain is ticking along at full speed.
One day a nurse came into my room, took pity on me, and asked: "Would you like to go for a bath?" "Yes please," I replied, unaware of what was ahead of me. I was wheeled through to a room with a gigantic tub. Next to it was a platform onto which I was laid flat on my back. Someone pressed a button, and I was lifted up, across, and into the hot water. Another switch was flicked and jaccuzi-like jets of water scooshed up from under me. Now, taking a warm bath is great even when your thought process is functioning normally. But without the capacity for distraction, or reflection, or self-consciousness, it becomes better than probably anything I have ever experienced.
Of course, it quickly became frustrating that I struggled to read the paper properly or remember basic information. And I was relieved when, about a week and a half after the operation, my brain started to get over its recent trauma and decided to start working properly again. But I'll admit that , for a brief period, I enjoyed my liberation from the drudgery of thinking.
Does that make me crazy?
Possibly…
headcase
