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Man: (walking about in a strop, to the audience) She fucking hates me. Anyone else and she’d be fucking his brains out. For a really long time. She’s probably taking care of herself right now, thinking about some asshole in the gym. Someone who isn’t insecure and whiny. One of those dicks who is all self-assured and confident. Who can effortlessly get away with using the word ‘fella’. Can talk about football convincingly. Find and use a stopcock.
He sits at his computer with his coffee cup.
Opens up a program, lights a cigarette, and starts typing.
Man: (speaking as he types) My love, You’re in bed masturbating over one of your exes or your boss or some other well-built, handsome cunt as I write this. I know you are. And so I have to punish you from the other room, using only my mind.
Sips coffee.
I know they’re everything that I’m not. In my head I’ve imbued them all with a magical, effortless reality of ‘massive cock and total genius’. I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. I am so furiously angry at you. So angry I am shaking. The adrenaline is flowing. My breathing is exploding. I am high from too much or too little oxygen, I don’t know which one. I am right and you are wrong. I know what you are really thinking about and who and what you really want, and it cannot, will never, be me. Thank you for making it so clear to me. Now, once again, my world somehow fits. Order is restored and butterflies can flap away with impunity. Once again, anything that has threatened to make me less of a victim, a little bit happy, content, human, has been disregarded and dealt with. And it’s not even ten past four. This is on you, you heartless, cruel bitch.
The man positions the computer screen just so. He pulls open the kitchen drawer, removes a knife and slits his throat.
End
That scene, that Brechtian fucking masterpiece – except for the last sentence because I’m too much of a fraud to follow through – was my morning head today. It plays out in a thousand similar ways each and every day and involves most people I come into contact with. It is how my head works, has worked, will probably work forever. Usually I manage to keep it to myself more successfully. Sometimes it comes out sideways. Always, it is there. And that is why I can’t help but feel like I’m a mentally ill loser.
A quick caveat before you read any further: this book is likely to trigger you hugely if you’ve experienced sexual abuse, self-harm, psychiatric institutionalisation, getting high or suicidal ideation (the oddly charming medical term for past or present obsession with wanting to die by your own hand). I know this kind of warning is usually a cynical, salacious way of getting you to read on, and to be fair, there’s a part of me that put it there for precisely that reason. But don’t read this and then carve your arms up, spin out thinking about what happened to you when you were a kid, self-medicate, beat your wife/dog/your own face and then blame me. If you are one of those people then you’ve no doubt put responsibility for doing all of those things on the shoulders of other people your whole fucking life, so please stop it and don’t foist your pathological self-hatred onto me. I have, from time to time, done the same thing myself and it is as misguided as it is pathetic.
The better part of me doesn’t even want you to read this book. It wants anonymity, solitude, humility, space and privacy. But that better part is a tiny fraction of the whole, and the majority vote is for you to buy it, read it, react to it, talk about it, love me, forgive me, gain something special from it.
And, again, this book will talk, in places, about classical music. If you have concerns about that, then just do one thing before either throwing this book away or placing it back on the shelf. Buy, steal or stream these three albums: Beethoven Symphonies Nos 3 and 7 (you can buy all nine of his symphonies played by the London Symphony Orchestra on iTunes for £5.99); Bach Goldberg Variations (played on the piano by Glenn Gould and ideally the 1981 studio recording, on iTunes for under a fiver); Rachmaninov Piano Concertos Nos 2 and 3 (Andrei Gavrilov playing piano, £6.99). Worst case, you’ve paid for them, hate them all and are out of pocket the price of a takeout. Call me an asshole on Twitter and move on. Best case, you’ve opened a door to something that will baffle, delight, thrill and shock you for the rest of your life.
During my concerts I talk about the pieces I’m playing, why I’ve chosen them, what they mean to me, the context they were written in. And in that vein I’m going to offer a soundtrack to this book. In much the same way as fancy restaurants will suggest wines to accompany each course, there will be pieces of music to accompany each chapter. You can access them online at http://bit.do/instrumental – they’re free, carefully chosen and important. I hope you like them.
TRACK ONE
Bach, ‘Goldberg Variations’, Aria
Glenn Gould, Piano
In 1741 some rich count (sic) was battling sickness and insomnia. As one did in those days, he employed a musician to live in his house and play the harpsichord to him while he was up at night wrestling with his demons. It was the Baroque equivalent of talk radio.
The musician’s name was Goldberg and the count would take him to see J.S. Bach for lessons. At one of these, the count mentioned he’d like Goldberg to have some new pieces to play to him in the hope of cheering him up a little at three in the morning. Xanax was yet to be invented.
As a result, Bach composed one of the most enduring and powerful pieces of keyboard music ever to be written, which became known as the ‘Goldberg Variations’; an aria followed by thirty variations and ending, full circle, with a repeat of the opening aria. The concept of theme and variations is similar to a book of short stories based on a single unifying subject – an opening story describing one specific theme with each following story in the collection somehow related to that theme.
As a pianist, they are the most frustrating, difficult, overwhelming, transcendent, treacherous, timeless pieces of music. As a listener they do things to me that only top-grade pharmaceuticals can achieve. They are a master-class in Wonder, and contain within them everything you could ever want to know.
In 1955, a young, brilliant, iconoclastic Canadian pianist called Glenn Gould became one of the first pianists to play and record them on a piano rather than a harpsichord. He chose to record them for his first album, to the horror of the record label executives who had wanted something more mainstream. It became one of the biggest-selling classical albums of all time, and to this day his recording remains the benchmark all other pianists aspire to reach. They all fall short.
I’M SITTING IN MY FLAT in Maida Vale. The dodgy part near the Harrow Road where kids are yelled at and alcohol and crack is Tropicana and cornflakes. I lost my lovely home in the posh part (Randolph Avenue, W9, natch) when my marriage ended – it was 2,000 square feet with a new Steinway grand piano, a big garden, four loos (shut up), two floors and the obligatory Smeg fridge.
To be fair, it also had bloodstains on the carpet, angry screams in the walls and the immovable, Febreze-resistant stench of ennui. My place now is small but perfectly formed, with only one john, no garden, a dodgy Japanese upright piano and the infinitely more pleasant smell of hope and possible redemption.
Among assorted directors, producers, crew, Channel 4 execs and whatnot, I’m here with my girlfriend Hattie, my mum Georgina, manager Denis and best friend Matthew. These four people have been here from the beginning, my mum literally, the others cosmically, or at least going back a few years.
These guys are the backbone. They’re my Everything. With the notable and heartbreaking absence of my son, they are the guiding, shining forces in my life that represent the strongest possible motive for staying alive (staying alive) during dark times.
We’re in my living room, pizza boxes strewn on the floor, about to watch my first TV show on Channel 4, James Rhodes: Notes from the Inside. It is a big moment for