Street Spirit (Fade Out)

This song was the start and the end for me. I found in it a summation of the waste and emptiness that afflicted much of my life up to the point that I first heard it. A long-hard struggle to try to establish independence and purpose only to find that the struggle had become all-encompassing and blinded me to the direction my life was taking. The ‘purpose’ I reached was someone elses ideal not mine.

Realization of my position took time, and eventually the abandonment of almost everything that had seemed important to that point.

Since then, I’ve tried not to compromise on my view of society – I no longer tolerate bigotry and prejudice. I work with teenagers and find that I constantly have to try explain to them the motivation of others. They are judged as wild, uncontrolled and ill-disciplined. I generally find the opposite, thought they often seek to fulfil the expectations of them expressed in the media. But it is now a form of conformity that tells teenagers to drink too much or to act recklessly, not the other way round. It was supposed to be non-conformist in the 1960s, but somewhere along the way it changed.

My experience is that people are different in many ways but also have much in common with each other. Treat them as individuals and they usually respond positively. I hate the divisions bought by labels, nationalism and wealth.