Exploring the Back Catalogue: HOTD Wrap-Up

If you want to know what the musical theme was about, read the previous instalment. With this present instalment, I’m wrapping up my look at The Head On The Door.

October 27, 2020

What’s that doing here???  That’s not The Cure!  :angel

Today, the microscope is back out and we’re looking at the lyrics for Push.

PUSH

Go, go, go
Push him away
No, no, no
Don’t let him stay

He gets inside to stare at her
The seeping mouth
The mouth that knows
The secret you
Always you
A smile to hide the fear away
Oh, smear this man across the walls
Like strawberries and cream
It’s the only, it’s the only way to be
(It’s the only way to be)

Exactly the same clean room
Exactly the same clean bed

But I’ve stayed away too long this time
And I’ve got too big to fit this time

As a song, does anyone here not like this one?  For once, here’s a Cure song where I like the studio version just as much as the live renditions – and I love the long instrumental intro, particularly on the studio version.  Along with Sinking, this is my equal favourite track off The Head On The Door.

The lyrics seemed to me on first impression to be relationship advice – possibly given to one’s partner, in a fit of self-examination.  “Ditch him!”  (/”Ditch me!”)  (…or at least read him the riot act, and stick him in the doghouse!)  …now, feel free to psychoanalyse me on the basis of this Rorschach test!   :winking_tongue

Robert Smith has allegedly said that the song was inspired by a train journey home.  (What else was famously conceived on a train?  Harry Potter, of course.)  Someone who’s seen Live In Orange reported online that the information was conveyed that the writer had travelled on the train in a dress.  This particular fan is transsexual and he could read the song as being about transsexuality, in a way that was particularly meaningful for him.

On that same page you can again read a crowd each putting in their own ideas.  Another person likes to read this song with the man as a personification of depression, “push him away” – and he says it reminds him of Doing The Unstuck.  Then there’s a person who says that the song fits growing up, and growing into yourself – and again, I can see how that would work.  Yet another take is that it’s “do what you want” – whether travelling on the train in a dress, or eating ice-cream etc – although to me, we’re getting onto thinner ice with that particular interpretation – all the previous ideas had more points of congruency with the lyrics.  There’s more on that page, some of it interesting, some of it not well supported.

However, it is clear that whatever the intended meaning(s) of this song, it’s actually quite a flexible fit for a range of situations, and as a result of that, invites people to identify with it in their own particular ways.  It’s like this picture:

What do you see?  But once you see both, you can’t unsee either.  Now multiply that effect, because there’s more than two possibilities that fit these lyrics in a way that could make sense to someone for good reasons.  There’s actually something to be said for doing that deliberately sometimes – although of course, at other times it’s an accidental side-effect of parallels in various life situations.

And sometimes it’s like this:

Most people will immediately see this as a staircase leading from the bottom right to the top left.  But, you can also see it as an upside-down staircase – the drawing works equally well for both cases, but many never see the upside-down version, which can take a little brain-twist to perceive.  Try swapping the foreground and background mentally, or just turn the drawing upside down (or stand on your head), then put it (or your head) on its side until you can switch from one possibility to the other with ease.

Isn’t that fun… :)

In closing, here’s something cute we discovered online a while back looking for live versions of Push:lol:

October 30, 2020

THE BABY SCREAMS

Heaven, give me a sign
Waiting for the sun to shine
Pleasure fills up my dreams
And I love it, like a baby screams

It’s so useless, how can you be proud?
When you’re sinking into the ground
Into the ground, fills up my dreams
And I love it, like a baby screams

Couldn’t ask for more, you said
Take it all and strike me, strike me, strike me dead
Strike me, strike me dead

Waiting again, waiting like I waited before
Waiting again, waiting here for nothing at all
Heaven fills up my dreams
And I love it, like a baby screams

Couldn’t ask for more, you said
Couldn’t ever let it end
Take it all, take it all
Then strike me, strike me, strike me, strike me
Strike me dead
Strike me, strike me dead
Strike me, strike me dead

Strike me, strike me, strike me dead

Heaven
Heaven
Heaven
Heaven

It’s an upbeat, querulous sort of tune, but I think this is an ode to frustration, depression, ennui, anything but joie de vivre.

I love it, like a baby screams suggests to me the narrator doesn’t love it at all.  You could really go to town on this and write a whole other poem or song just describing how odious you’re finding something, using that sort of construction:

I love it, like a festering pustule
I love it, like a decomposing elephant
I love it, like a conspiracy theorist
I love it, like an American election
I love it, like an ingrown nose hair
I love it, like a bulbous emerald-green booger
I love it, like flaccid tinned spaghetti

Gawd, this is cathartic.  :smth023  It’s just the thing for winding down after a day of frustrating, joy-destroying, soul-sucking tax paperwork – you know, a day dedicated to a sort of living death, where you have to give up the dozens of actually useful, creative, happy things you could have done, to do one of the most useless examples of bureaucratic hoop-jumping in the known universe.  I don’t mind paying tax, but I do mind all the convoluted, mind-numbing, totally arbitrary mazes invented by the tax people that you are forced to attempt to comprehend in the process of filling in your tax paperwork.

This really sums it up so well:

But come to think of it, I may have just found a legitimate use for this Cure song as well – on endless repeat, while doing tax paperwork…

November 3, 2020

CLOSE TO ME

I’ve waited hours for this
I’ve made myself so sick
I wish I’d stayed asleep today
I never thought this day would end
I never thought tonight could ever be
This close to me

Just try to see in the dark
Just try to make it work
To feel the fear before you’re here
I make the shapes come much too close
I pull my eyes out, hold my breath and wait
Until I sha-ha-ha-hake

But if I had your faith
Then I could make it safe and clean
Oh, if only I was sure
That my head on the door was a dream

I’ve waited hours for this
I’ve made myself so sick
I wish I’d stayed asleep today
I never thought this day would end
I never thought tonight could ever be
This close to me

But if I had your faith
Then I could make it safe and clean
Oh, if only I was sure
That my head on the door was a dream

Imagine for a moment that Robert Smith wasn’t singing these words in this song, but instead just going “la-la-la-la” – what would you picture, from the music?  What could you make this a soundtrack for?

I imagine that there’s dozens of different ideas different people would have here – a lot of them would probably be happy scenes, but some of them not.  Me personally, I see a litter of kittens tumbling over each other, pouncing on tails, chasing each other, jumping all over the furniture, swinging off the curtains, hissing, jumping out from behind doorways, and generally creating cute, mischievous mayhem.  I can also see a jittery kid doing cartwheels and trying to avoid stepping on cracks in the pavement – it’s a jittery sort of tune, as well as an upbeat one.

But now I’m going down the Pensieve to when I was 14, and first started hearing this song.  Classmates around me were beginning to be bug-eyed over each other.  As the baby of the class, a year younger than my peers, I put on an anthropology hat and did a lot of observing.  I saw nothing I aspired to, in the romantic practice course others were entering.  Just a lot of giggling and innuendo, garishly bruised necks (it was a thing for a while, and cynical me still thinks it’s basically a calling card, like a dog urinating on a lamp post), girls angsting, obnoxious boys leering openly, shy boys hiding around corners, female classmates asking me to rate various male backsides out of 10 (on what criteria exactly? and for what purposes?) while I boggled at the question (I’m not interested in people’s backsides, I’m interested in their ideas).

Close To Me was a good soundtrack to that, back then.  The title lent itself to the theme, although on close examination the lyrics are sufficiently ambiguous to not necessarily be about that.  And the song sort of reinforced for me what I saw of my peers’ romantic experimentation:  It seemed like it was stressful, wrought, decidedly un-fun, not the kind of experience I wanted to volunteer for – I’d stick to reading encyclopaedias, Thesauruses, dictionaries and the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy to have a jolly old time, thank you very much – and lose myself in the alternative universes of literature, poetry and music.  It seemed a much more productive and low-stress option.

In many ways I think that 14-year-old was right, and if she’d been able to stick to her guns, she’d have had an easier time of it; but alas, we’re all subject to some really mind-bending biochemistry courtesy of our DNA (and courtesy of childhood trauma, as well, for those who’ve experienced that).  To this day, I think you could use Close To Me as an effective warning for starry-eyed, hormonally-hijacked adolescents and adults:  Think before you go through that door.  You may end up disappointed.

But you know, that’s just me, I grew up in emotional chaos and really didn’t want more of the same.  Of course I got it anyway, probably less so than if I’d not been wary and hadn’t fought it – but at least my story ended up with – well, it would be a happy ending if I died today, but I hope it’s a happy middle, and that I can enjoy that for another couple of decades, and have it be a happy ending as well, but we can’t take anything like that for granted.

Let’s turn now from what the song personally made me reflect on, to what its writer said about it, which is that it’s about the “disappointment of dreams made real” and a “sense of impending doom” returning from childhood (see here).  Both of these come through very effectively, and both of them are applicable – to all sorts of situations, inviting you in to process your own stuff – did you know you can buy a full-price Cure CD for less than it costs to have an hour of psychotherapy?  :winking_tongue

I’m just having a think if any of my dreams coming true disappointed me.  The major ones, no.  But maybe by the time that happened, my expectations were more realistic than what young people’s tend to be.  Having said that, I’ve been very lucky to have done a lot of things that were personally meaningful to me, and that’s still how it is.  I don’t look back at any of the professional work I did in my life with regret – it was worth it, and of course there’s always bad patches, and purple patches.  I don’t regret what we’re doing now, living off-grid in a self-fandangled house and looking after an ecosystem.  I don’t regret whom I married, he’s still my favourite person and I’m appreciating him more, rather than less, as time goes by; and we’re both still growing and learning as people.

I once saw a sign above a colleague’s desk:  “IF ALL ELSE FAILS, LOWER YOUR EXPECTATIONS.”  That made me laugh, and sometimes it’s true.  I think I’ve tended to place my highest expectations on my own self, rather than on what was going to be dished up to me, or particular experiences – and I’m also pretty good at gratitude.  All of those traits can become a trap too, of course – there’s a lot of juggling in life.

Regardless of that, my biggest gripe isn’t being disappointed with experiences, but not being able to fit as much into 24 hours as I’d ideally like to.  :lol:

By the way, if anyone knows what the reference to “my/the head on the door” is about, please let me know.***  I’ve read a theory in the link above that you can get to by clicking the highlighted line in the song text, but somehow I can’t buy that one – it seems way too far-fetched and unsupported, to me – it feels like the tail is wagging the dog.  What do you think?

I’m happy to come back to this or anything else at anytime if anyone wants to jump in, but apart from that, I’m going to zoom through the next couple of tracks soon and then return to KMKMKM, which I want to look at in more detail and haven’t yet.  :cool

***PS:  Found something that cleared up the mystery:

“At the last minute I sang these words that I had left over. I didn’t think there was anything musically that worked with the words. The words were actually about this sense of impending doom that I used to get. I had chicken pox when I was really young and it started there. I used to get these horrible, nightmarish visions of this head that used to hover in the chink of light that would come when the bedroom lights were turned off and the door was just ajar. The shaft of light that came from the hallway used to illuminate this patch of wallpaper and it would come to life and prophesy doom to me through the night whenever I put my eyes in that general direction. And it came back to me when I was writing The Head On the Door album. I was running myself into the ground a little bit and I started to suffer. I suddenly also started to get the same hallucinations, which was very odd.

That song was essentially about those two things, but at the last minute I tried singing them over this jaunty bassline and drum pattern. It just clicked.”

from https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-cure/close-to-me



November 5, 2020

A NIGHT LIKE THIS

Say goodbye on a night like this
If it’s the last thing we ever do
You never looked as lost as this
Sometimes it doesn’t even look like you
It goes dark
It goes darker still
Please stay
But I watch you like I’m made of stone
As you walk away

I’m coming to find you if it takes me all night
A witch hunt for another girl
For always and ever is always for you
Your trust
The most gorgeously stupid thing I ever cut in the world

Say hello on a day like today
Say it every time you move
The way that you look at me now
Makes me wish I was you
It goes deep
It goes deeper still
This touch
And the smile and the shake of your head
And the smile and the shake of your head

I’m coming to find you if it takes me all night
Can’t stand here like this anymore
For always and ever is always for you
I want it to be perfect like before

Oh ho ho, I want to change it all
Oh ho ho, I want to change

I’m coming to find you if it takes me all night
Can’t stand here like this anymore
For always and ever is always for you
I want it to be perfect like before

Oh ho ho, I want to change it all
Oh ho ho, I want to change
Oh ho ho, I want to change it all
Oh ho ho, I want to change

Musically this is a very nice song, and I think that’s a great bit of saxophone on it too – as mentioned previously – but right now, I’m finishing up my “getting-to-know” explorations of The Head On The Door by specifically looking at the words to the songs.

Looking at words is a fraught thing sometimes.  Like, when you get an insurance policy, and you’ve lived a bit.  You no longer go, “Oh, what a nice organisation, all the things they’ve thought of that could go wrong for me, in the event of which they will have my back, for this very reasonable fee.”  Oh no.  When you’ve seen a few things, you end up reading all the large-print stuff suspiciously, looking for the loopholes and the equivocating, for the weasel words and the ambiguities, the stuff that’s not there, and the tiny tiny fine print that can hold all sorts of unpleasant surprises for the unwary.  You try to read between the lines as much as you read actual words, and you mutter to yourself, “OK, where’s the catch?”

Similarly, after a while on this planet mixing with the crowd, you can’t help but look at songs about romantic relationships the same way – if you’re female anyway.  The doe-eyed stage of looking at songs like this lasts until you’re around 16, and then you (hopefully) start to say to yourself, “Lofty proclamations – whether from insurance companies, or advertisers, or courting males, or repenting males, make me smell a rat!  Where is this dead rat hidden, exactly?  And just how big is this rat, and what is its state of decay?”

It’s sort of sad, because there are probably a few ethical insurance companies run by people who have actually reached Stage Six of Kohlberg’s moral development model, and likewise, there are people out there who wouldn’t sell their own grandmother to make a buck, and males who actually don’t think with their reproductive equipment and who want to be decent to any prospective partner, or established partner.  I’m sorry, by the way, about these remarks being a bit gendered, but I can only speak from my own experience in this world, and from vicarious experience through others – I don’t feel qualified to speak for males, although I’m married to one and frequently consult him about his own experience of things.  (However, he’s one of that rare breed who thinks with his brain, and cares tremendously about being decent. ♥)

Anyway, people are strange critters, often irrational and inconsistent, fundamentally self-interested, can fall very short of their intentions and proclaimed principles, etc etc.  Think for a moment about all of the things you wouldn’t need if every person was always fair and decent:  Locks and keys, security screens, insurance policies for theft or accidental damage, restraining orders, policemen, passwords, spam filters, car alarms, immobilisers, security cameras, agony aunts, psychotherapy, lawyers, fracking (just thought I’d throw that in there), etc.  (Brett particularly wants me to add “forum moderators” to that list!  :winking_tongue)

So a person can get a bit jaded with pop songs for that reason, as well (and for many other reasons :angel), and this is one reason I related that thing about a radio station nicknamed KY-Jelly-FM on another thread recently.

So, anyway, I have a reflex of looking for loopholes etc when reading stuff about this topic.  A Night Like This doesn’t present immediate problems to me lyrically like In-Between Days did – it reads like “boy and girl have disagreement, girl walks away temporarily or permanently, boy has a think and then goes in pursuit and is talking about changing, not just things but by implication himself (/I want to change)” and that’s all well and good (so long as it’s not just words).

But now we’re back to context, and who’s saying it, and the relationship history – as we always have to be, if we’re going to be rigorous in thinking about this stuff.  This could therefore be quite sweet, and I’m sure we can all relate to the scenario to some extent (if you’re not sheep, you’re going to have conflict, and you’re going to have to learn to deal with conflict).  But, you can also put your “reading-insurance-policy” hat on here, and think about who you’d say, “Have a nice life!” to, in response to those same words.  Because actions speak louder than words, etc.

I’ve gotta say, “For always and ever is always for you” makes me smell a rat, because it’s the kind of thing a Don Juan type boyfriend who thinks he’s God’s gift to women will typically say to you when he’s trying to get back in your good graces, you know, “You’re the most special of them all, the others don’t mean anything, blah blah blah” (with or without, “…and I’ve seen the error of my ways”).  So in the words of George Thorogood’s female protagonist, “Don’t feed me no lines and keep your hands to yourself.”   :1f634::P

There is a trust issue in this song, as the narrator refers to having offended his partner’s trust – which then makes it seem illogical to me that he would say, “I want it to be perfect like before.”  If trust has somehow been wounded, the situation isn’t “perfect” – but perhaps the reference is to the way it was before that trust was wounded.  On the other hand, in the case of a Don Juan type boyfriend, of course, “I want it to be perfect like before” could simply mean, “Damn, she found out about that, I liked it better when she was clueless, maybe I can sweet-talk her back to where I want her!”

I’ve gone out with people like that, and friends of mine have gone out with people like that, and as I’ve said in previous posts, I can’t encounter any text about romantic relationships without that reflex engagement of the experientially acquired BS sensor.  I very much recommend cultivating a good BS sensor to any young innocent not-yet-cynical person about to set foot in the arena of romantic relationships – the sooner you learn to detect the BS, the sooner you won’t have to be in it up to your chin, and the sooner you can find yourself a decent person who cares about you as much as they care about themselves and how much cake they get to eat.  ♥

It’s good to practise on pop songs, a rich seam of that kind of BS, before you go out in the real world and hear all kinds of stuff from people who are getting in your face (and perhaps other places).  It’s as sensible as practising your throwing in your backyard, before you get on the cricket pitch – it will stand you in good stead.   :smth023

Now if only we didn’t have to be so cynical.  And if only we didn’t need locks and keys, etc etc.  :1f62d:

In summing up:  The organic fertiliser content of the lyrics to this particular Cure song is entirely context-dependent.  There may be none at all, and it may indeed be a fine tune on encountering conflict with a beloved and being determined to resolve it (because the relationship is deemed worth it), and being determined to own one’s own crap in the process.  Or, the very same words could be said by someone with ulterior motives that have nothing to do with genuinely wanting to be fair.  In real life, it’s important to keep that distinction in mind.

As always, when I’m looking at words on a page I am responding to text, and to narratives – I’m not making surreptitious theories about the private life of the writer – and we’ve already talked about the difference between writer vs narrator before.  So, hopefully nobody will get high blood pressure about this particular post.  Sometimes it can be difficult to write this way on a music fan forum, because there tends to be a greater preoccupation with the artists, than there is when you’re in a book club and discussing books, or in a poetry appreciation group – but to me it’s the same principles, when I write. :)

An interesting snippet I caught while looking for background to this song was that it has an evolutionary relationship with another Cure song called Plastic Passion (that was one I really didn’t like, but now I’m going to have to listen again).

Screw is next on the list – and I’m looking forward to looking at the lyrics of that one, it’s quirky and it has actually grown on me!  :cool

November 9, 2020

…I must get a move on… Wish arrived last Friday and we’ve already had a listen-through.   :smth023   And guess what turned up in the mailbox yesterday?  The self-titled album.  It’s still in its wrapper… I have this thing about finishing something before beginning too many other things, but it’s preposterous, the idea of looking at the lyrics to every Cure song on an album this way, and it’s unnecessary… so I’ve decided that after finishing the sequential look at lyrics from The Head On The Door, I’m not going to do it like that ever again – I’m just going to pick out things I’m really wanting to think about and write about, rather than making this rod for my own back…

So let’s see if we can’t get this finished in one post.

SCREW

When you screw up your eyes
When you screw up your face
When you throw out your arms
And keep changing your shape

T-turn, turn the taste in your mouth
T-turn, turn the taste on your tongue
The film on your eyes
Of the way I’ve become

What do I do when you screw up your eyes?
What do I do when you screw up your face?
What do I do when you throw out your arms
Fall on the floor and keep changing your shape?

J-j-jump, jump right into your mouth?
J-j-jump, jump around on your tongue?
The film on your eyes
Of the way I’ve become
Makes me sick at the way that I try anything in the world
To impress that I’m doing this only for you

This only for you
Only for you

Again, it’s been read many different ways, but I can imagine it well as a relationship (romantic, family, friend, even audience, it would all make sense) comment – I love the lines, The film on your eyes/Of the way I’ve become – which makes me think of the phenomenon of typecasting, of putting people in boxes and padlocking those boxes – it can actually be really difficult to grow beyond where you currently are if people keep trying to push you back in a box they made for you.  This is one reason a lot of young adults find that going somewhere completely different geographically, to live and work, away from their family and prior social network, can be so incredibly liberating, because then all the people you meet don’t have all these preconceived ideas of who you should be, and you’ve got this lovely fresh canvas.  It’s actually so much easier to grow and change the way you want to when you have oxygen and freedom to do it.

I think that’s especially true for limitations – so much easier to get past your own areas of struggle when you don’t have people around you who think of you as limited in particular ways and who say, “That’s not you!” when you’re trying something more useful, or just something different.  And excuse me, it is you, when you’re applying your brains and efforts to replace a particular autopilot with a more considered approach, in line with your own ideas of what you’re trying to grow into.  You’re not a computer with an unalterable set of programmes, you’re a computer with a set of programmes and the ability to reprogramme your own code, so you can actually evolve.

One of my favourite authors, Jeanette Winterson, often talks about how you should see yourself like a book that you can write.  Well, exactly.  Being a person isn’t about being stuck in some mould, it’s about continuing to break out of any moulds you discover in yourself, and letting your shape evolve more freely.

That’s just me thinking out loud; now let’s look at the words for Sinking, the last track on the album.

SINKING

I am slowing down
As the years go by
I am sinking

So I trick myself
Like everybody else

The secrets I hide
That twist me inside
And make me weaker

So I trick myself
Like everybody else
So I trick myself
Like everybody else

I crouch in fear and wait
I’ll never feel again
If only I could, if only I could
If only I could remember
Anything at all

This song is commonly read as a comment on the “negative effects of getting older” – and I can see how you can read it that way, but there are other ways to look at these lyrics, too.  Before I do that, though, I’ve got to challenge this silly youth culture idea that progressing through your life span is cumulative loss – that’s such utter BS, even on a purely physical level (which is not the be-all and end-all of who you are either, by the way – it’s primarily a container).  Remember all the angsting we’re culturally programmed to do turning 30, 40 etc?  Well, personally I was angsting when turning 18, at 21, at 25, and 30 – OMG, I was getting so ancient – and then I discovered that I was actually still getting better, even physically – strength and endurance continued to improve right up to about age 40 for me, and I also think I looked better in my 30s than in my 20s, and I think that’s true for a lot of people, especially if they get enough sleep and exercise and have healthy eating patterns.

So by the time I turned 40, that milestone didn’t bother me – I was happy, healthy, productive, creative, and married to a guy who has a healthy attitude to the life span, as well as being an all-round lovely husband.  Now in my late 40s, I think it’s preposterous to ever angst about your age when you’ve not even reached your peak yet – but of course, it’s what our culture conditions us to do, until we learn it’s BS.

Obviously we should know we are mortal, that’s really important – but we shouldn’t waste our limited time in a persistent funeral mode when the funeral hasn’t even happened yet, let alone the life peak (which is actually a series of peaks, more like a ridge walk than a single mountain) – there is so much to celebrate, and to learn, and to do.

If you’ve not seen a ridge walk before, it looks like this:

…It’s not just going up a single mountain and back down, but actually going ridge to ridge between a chain of mountains/hills, so you stay “up” for a long time and get great views, just like in Lord Of The Rings

Getting back to the lyrics – the way I look at those is as a portrait of what happens when we’re held back, scared, compromised somehow – and that happens to all of us, at some point or other – and if we’re unlucky and can’t find a way out of that, it can describe our entire existence.  The years go by indeed, but that’s not the central problem – and we should be careful not to confuse correlation with causation.  Just because a particular thing, or several things, are perhaps getting worse with the passage of time, doesn’t mean the passage of time is what’s responsible for that – and I would think, rarely ever solely responsible.

If you look at ageing, for example, it is inevitable that eventually you’re going to reach a fatal level of decrepitude and shuffle off this mortal coil, but you do actually have so much influence on how that pans out for you.  If you don’t use something, you lose it – whether it’s muscles, bone, your brain, your creativity, post-reproductive age sex, fitness, pretty much any skill or virtue, etc.  Many of the things that I thought, when I was a young person, were inevitably lost with the passage of time, are actually primarily and prematurely lost through lack of use, and lack of care (by self and others).  Take fitness, that’s chiefly about regular challenging exercise – and though I’d say my own potential physical fitness peaked sometime between 30 and 40, and I’m a bit lower down in that now than I was, in my late 40s all of that is still higher than the average contemporary 25-year-old’s – just as my bone density worked out at around one standard deviation better than the average 18-25-year-old’s in a recent “you’re-nearing-half-a-century” scan.

This is because the general population is way too inactive, not just physically either, but also mentally, creatively, etc.  That’s not meant to be a criticism – there’s so many structural reasons for that, in the way we’re dysfunctionally running our societies – it’s just pointing out that we can decide to change the way we do things, to be better stewards of our own selves and each other.

Furthermore, the passage of time doesn’t just take – it also gives.  You might lose your ultra-pristine youthful skin, and your hair colour might come out of a bottle, and you may have to fight gravity harder, and bits of you get more creaky – but we’ve been conditioned to pay too much attention to mere wrapping paper instead of considering what’s inside.  You also get – more experience, potentially more happiness, potentially more confidence and security and skills and wisdom.  Your circle of real friends can enlarge with time, you potentially get better at relationships and see yourself more accurately and become more comfortable in your own skin.  You don’t have to stagnate.

I hope we’re all learning this as time goes on.  Isn’t it funny how we can be so tragic about stuff when we’re younger, and then laugh at ourselves in hindsight… and isn’t it liberating.  ♥

♦ ♥ ♦

That concludes the look at The Head On The Door. On the original Exploring forum thread I went on to Wish next, completely forgetting that I’d not finished with KMKMKM yet. On my blog, I am going to amend this starting the next episode, before continuing the “reprints”. I will also be posting an updated version of Exploring Join The Dots in instalments on this blog, as the two go together.

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