The Magic 27
Tuesday, 24 March 2009 20:28![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apollaI'm twenty-seven years old tomorrow. In twelve hours, actually, if you go by birth time. It's not a big deal for most people but...
Twenty-seven... do you know how many important people in my world died at twenty-seven? Hendrix, man. That Joplin girl, although she's never been my thing. Brian 'The Bastard' Jones. Kurt. Robert 'Devil at the Crossroads' Johnson. There are more - wiki for 27 Club.
And then there is the man it always comes back to. The adored Jim.
I haven't spoken about him here for awhile, although maybe I have and it just doesn't feel like it. It was ten years ago or thereabouts that I really discovered what it was he meant to me and would come to mean to me, and I'm about to outlive the weak-willed bastard. I have loved him for such a long old time that I only remember how it is not to love him in theory. I know there was a time that I didn't love him, but I don't feel it.
I don't want to outlive Jim, I really don't... but to achieve even a sliver of what he did, I will have to. I'm not on the same special fasttrack as him. To outlive my great hero, to surpass him even only chronologically, feels so wrong. I can argue of course, that as he'd be sixty-five if he'd bothered to live, I still haven't caught up. I'm STILL playing catch-up, still! I still feel this ridiculous tugging towards that undeserving old bastard... and reaching 27 hasn't changed that.
*
I'm actually healthier now than ever before. I keep relatively fit by going to the work gym (sometimes i even manage to go twice a week!) and I don't eat even a fraction of the rubbish I used to. Crisps are gone. Most chocolate is gone. Cookies during work remain a vice, because Sainsbury's cookies are such manna from heaven. I don't drink Coke anymore, diet or otherwise, though my dependence on tonic water is worrying it's nothing in comparison to the bad, bad old days.
I don't get much more sleep than I used to, but at least now I think "Ah, half twelve, I should think about sleep" rather than "Ah, half three." Maybe I'm just on my way to the middle like everyone else, I don't know.
I don't have to battle the demon drink like I might once have done, although I'm drinking Marsala right now. I've fought and partly-won against my own lesser demons. I don't pretend to have won completely, or forever. Maybe listening to Jimmy right now is enough to send me back to the depths, or to the bottom of a bottle.
I'm not really much different to the person I was two, five, ten years ago. But that person has fought the right battles enough times to have just a little control over those lesser demons, just a little. I'm still the Unhappy Girl from Strange Days, but I know why I am and I increasingly choose it.
Ten years ago I was a rock music obsessive who watched way too many movies. My dreams are still more or less the same as they were then, but maybe at least with a couple of roots in reality. I'm the same person. I don't change.
*
Anyway, I won't outlive Jim Morrison until 20 Oct 2009. I won't have to really worry until then, right? I still hope that when I die, he'll be the one to come collect me, and I won't know whether he's from heaven or from hell. Except that it can't be heaven without him and the others...
Twenty-seven... do you know how many important people in my world died at twenty-seven? Hendrix, man. That Joplin girl, although she's never been my thing. Brian 'The Bastard' Jones. Kurt. Robert 'Devil at the Crossroads' Johnson. There are more - wiki for 27 Club.
And then there is the man it always comes back to. The adored Jim.
I haven't spoken about him here for awhile, although maybe I have and it just doesn't feel like it. It was ten years ago or thereabouts that I really discovered what it was he meant to me and would come to mean to me, and I'm about to outlive the weak-willed bastard. I have loved him for such a long old time that I only remember how it is not to love him in theory. I know there was a time that I didn't love him, but I don't feel it.
I don't want to outlive Jim, I really don't... but to achieve even a sliver of what he did, I will have to. I'm not on the same special fasttrack as him. To outlive my great hero, to surpass him even only chronologically, feels so wrong. I can argue of course, that as he'd be sixty-five if he'd bothered to live, I still haven't caught up. I'm STILL playing catch-up, still! I still feel this ridiculous tugging towards that undeserving old bastard... and reaching 27 hasn't changed that.
*
I'm actually healthier now than ever before. I keep relatively fit by going to the work gym (sometimes i even manage to go twice a week!) and I don't eat even a fraction of the rubbish I used to. Crisps are gone. Most chocolate is gone. Cookies during work remain a vice, because Sainsbury's cookies are such manna from heaven. I don't drink Coke anymore, diet or otherwise, though my dependence on tonic water is worrying it's nothing in comparison to the bad, bad old days.
I don't get much more sleep than I used to, but at least now I think "Ah, half twelve, I should think about sleep" rather than "Ah, half three." Maybe I'm just on my way to the middle like everyone else, I don't know.
I don't have to battle the demon drink like I might once have done, although I'm drinking Marsala right now. I've fought and partly-won against my own lesser demons. I don't pretend to have won completely, or forever. Maybe listening to Jimmy right now is enough to send me back to the depths, or to the bottom of a bottle.
I'm not really much different to the person I was two, five, ten years ago. But that person has fought the right battles enough times to have just a little control over those lesser demons, just a little. I'm still the Unhappy Girl from Strange Days, but I know why I am and I increasingly choose it.
Ten years ago I was a rock music obsessive who watched way too many movies. My dreams are still more or less the same as they were then, but maybe at least with a couple of roots in reality. I'm the same person. I don't change.
*
Anyway, I won't outlive Jim Morrison until 20 Oct 2009. I won't have to really worry until then, right? I still hope that when I die, he'll be the one to come collect me, and I won't know whether he's from heaven or from hell. Except that it can't be heaven without him and the others...
