I Got a da Shrug.

I have several old pictures of me. At sixteen with four friends in suits after exams and me stripped to the waist with shirt flying in the breeze. At twenty-two in a chair with guitar looking all moody like Brian Ferry. At twenty-seven sitting on a toilet seat being shaved by the head of department at art school. This is not a history I remember. Others, an eager to please six year old in primary school, graduate with parents, family holidays etc, I do. It seems I have a history I admit to and another secret one I have but don’t recognise. I wonder if it’s the same with Fred West the serial killer, “Yes that’s me and my mum, and this one’s when I got my GCSEs, and… I don’t remember this one of me decapitating a cat in a vice.” I mean if I had realised I was a not bad looking brooding eccentric stoner I really could have been Brian Ferry, or failing that the Big Lebowski. And now thanks to V even Lori, who I don’t know from Eve and lives in America, knows me better than I know myself. I guess that’s why I hate people who say, ‘I’m not going to change, this is just the way I am.’ No it’s not, it’s just the way you think you are, just your habitualised persona. I hate them because I’m just the same except I want to be Brian Ferry. Actually no I don’t want to be Brian Ferry but I do want to explore other me’s, attempt to play other roles a little. Maybe if I take up Italian, not the language, just the gestures.