Madness is a luxury I can’t afford

Madness is a luxury I can’t afford. There’s always the possibility that I’m absolutely fucking insane, I su-ppose. But how would I know? If I was that crazy, I’d be the last to know – wouldn’t I? Sometimes it’s the little things.

Take a glass, for instance. A whiskey glass. If I have whiskey in it, I don’t want anything else going in there. You know what I mean? I can’t have stuff sticking to the inside of the glass. Pieces of orange – out of fresh orange juice. If it isn’t washed properly the pieces of orange stick to the inside of the glass and then they are gonna come off and float in the whiskey. Contaminate it. It’s like visiting someone who is dirty. Why would you do that? Why would you want bits of orange in your whiskey? It just isn’t right. Takes away all the pleasure. That’s why I only want whiskey in my whiskey glass. It stands to reason. Surely you don’t have to be crazy to see that. Do you?

I drove home singing songs in the car tonight. I came the wrong way. Took a wrong turn in the dark. It was ok – it just took a little longer. I was singing to Creedence. They were playing on the CD. I was in that place where you’re kind of not there. Do you know what I mean? Like you’re floating between being there and not being there. It’s like everything slows down and you have total concentration without really being in the car. Like your unconscious is driving you home.

I was there tonight. It was dark and there wasn’t much else on the road, just a few dazzling bright lights now and then. I didn’t break any speed limits. Not by much anyway – not so I’d get picked up or get a ticket or anything. You can skim through a speed trap just over the limit – ten per cent – and they won’t touch you. I was ten per centing all the way back.

I feel loose out on the road. It’s like a flying dream. Do you ever have those? Is that crazy? Well, it is when you’re up there, I can tell you. Fucking insane. What do your dreams tell you about yourself? We forget most of them so that we can live with ourselves. If you remembered them all in every detail you’d flip. It’s like there’s stuff in there you don’t really want to know.

Do you think you really know yourself? You’re kidding aren’t you? You don’t know shit. That monkey in your head knows you. Knows you inside out. Throws it all back at you in your dreams. Then you forget them. As soon as you wake up. If you had to carry all that shit around with you, you’d be off a bridge or under a train. That’s deep water, man. You can’t go there and think you’ll survive. When I’m driving in the dark, I’m flying alongside my dreams. I can never touch them, but I am just the other side of the paper wall. Feeding off them.

If you go crazy – officially, I mean – you’ve already cashed in your chips. They won’t let you out on your own. You’re a marked man. You’ve suddenly got less than you were born with. You’ve gotta stay out of that consulting room. Everyone’s crazy. The trick is to keep it to yourself. Don’t tell no one. Especially the crazy gang: the psychiatrists and psychologists. They’re more fucking crazy than anyone. That’s why they spend all their lives working with crazies. Hello? You calling me crazy?

The straights are more nuts than anyone. They’re the ones who flip and batter their wives to death. Or chop up their parents or poison their husbands. It’s the straights you’ve really got to watch. They live a pretence for so long, burning up all that energy on a false life until they realise what they’ve done and BOOM! the partner gets both barrels of the clay-pigeon gun. And no one ever expected it. Not even them.

Madness is a luxury I can’t afford. Too fucking right.