This week, I want to share a line that has been stuck with me for fourteen years. For over a year, The Verve's Northern Soul album felt like the soundtrack to my life. The words and music completely captured the way I felt, living in a small apartment on St. Mark's Place in New York City, my body filled with substances and my mind filled with make-believe. There are many, many lines in that album that I could pick out, but there is one in particular that my mind always returns to. It comes from the song "Life's An Ocean" and it goes like this:
-Imagine the future, woke up with a scream
I was buying some feelings from a vending machine-
Richard Ashcroft
What a horrifying, yet believable image even in the mid '90s. It is even more believable today in a world where so many emotions are controlled by prescription. In a more metaphorical sense, we can download applications designed for momentary enjoyment and our serotonin levels are constantly jumping with each new posted comment or text that comes into our world. We are sort of living that future now and forever marching forward.
As with the previous two lines, this one was integral to the development of one of the main characters in my new novel. He views the world through the same lens as one who might write that line. Another bit of trivia, the lines that follow these in the song make up the quote in the beginning of my novel Perfect World.
-There's something inside of me
Crying out for something else
And if someone hears this scream
Put it in a letter to me-
Richard Ashcroft
As I said, this album played a huge part in my life in the years where I was really finding out who I was artistically. If you don't own it, I highly recommend you do. It is still one of ten favorite albums of all time.
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