Inspirations and Influences (1984)

 (Bound for Glory Continued)

Now in his hotel room in a small building at the far end of Sauchiehall Street, Gary was settling in.

He had bought a ten packet of Benson and Hedges, a notebook and pen, and a small bottle of Bells Whisky. He didn’t really like blended whisky especially after last night’s debacle, and today’s hangover, but was prepared to give it another try, not too much though, he didn’t want to make a bad impression on the staff in the hotel, that was something his folks has instilled into him over the years.

He would have a smoke, a small nip of the whisky and scribble down whatever came to his mind, ‘stream of consciousness’ writing it was called. He knew all about this, he was living the dream, j’habite la reve, he said to the empty room, in his bad schoolboy French. He was Kerouac in the Beat Hotel, in Paris, Bob Dylan (or Dylan Thomas) in the Chelsea Hotel in New York. His mind was ablaze with thoughts of present, past and fiction. Now that he was away from home, he could burn a little brighter now. He was writing his life story so far, the tale of an average twenty-one-year-old Scots guy of the 1980’s, he would be the next big thing, This would be his entrance to the fabled ‘big wide world’ Dad had always spoken about. He could be a poet or author and still retain his job, maintain a ‘normal ‘life, that would be fun he thought.

He was just starting out, but he needed to live a bit, he had always behaved, done what he was told, toed the line, what folk expected him to do, maybe now was the time to make some changes, twenty-one and at the cusp of brilliance!

Maybe a bit of rebellion was what was needed, wasn’t that what young people were supposed to do?

With this thought and the encroachment of fatigue, he switched off the light and fell asleep, 1am and all was well with the world, except for the noise of drunks shouting and falling by outside on the street.

He awoke to the peal of church bells summoning the faithful on Sunday morning.

He lay on the bed and thought about the day ahead, what he would spend his birthday money on. He had £30 which would get him a few LPs or cassettes: The Doors, Dylan, Woody Guthrie maybe. The first two were dead certs, and he liked the idea of Woody Guthrie standing up for the rights of himself and others, like Gary wished he could do at work. He wasn’t entirely sold in Guthrie’s music, it was maybe too acoustically based, but it would no doubt grow on him, he had been an influence on Dylan, so that couldn’t be a bad thing.

He really  liked the Doors and had a couple of cassettes of their stuff, he liked ‘The Crystal Ship’ best of all, it always reminded him of Justine , a girl in the office who he quite liked, she was  best described as the ‘Office Goth’ , had a predilection for wearing black all the time, and was often told off by the bosses on account of her manner of dress in the workplace.

She liked that song, and liked a lot of the Goth and Post Punk music of the day bands like the Sisters of Mercy, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Joy Division.

A lot of this music which sounded like or was influenced by the Doors, Iggy Pop or David Bowie, or so Gary thought.

Gary and Justine had exchanged few words in the office, but they always seemed to converse on nights out when drinking. They had a relatively good rapport outside work but in work they both avoided one another and took on the ‘typical civil servant’ role, sleepwalking their way through the menial tasks they were allocated.

Maybe he would pluck the courage up to ask her out one day, maybe she could be his cohort in arms rebelling against the world. Maybe….

He washed and got ready for the day ahead, his breakfast was a full English breakfast which he thought bizarre as this was Glasgow, but he was hungry, so it did its job.

Gary recalled that Mum and Dad called Sunday ‘the day of rest’ because that was the day God rested once he had created the world. until recently he had attended church and as he had been brought up in this tradition.

He had thought himself to be a Christian, but recently he had felt that this was no longer for him, much to his folks’ dismay.

How could you be a rebel and be religious?

His family were Christians and nominally so was he, but he had drifted as they had said. He wondered if he would go back sometime, some of his heroes had an affinity with religion, Kerouac was a Catholic who converted to Buddhism, and Dylan had briefly converted to Christianity in the 1970’s, so it couldn’t all be bad.

For the moment, he was going to walk the ‘Road of Excess’ in his own small way, which evidently, would lead to the ‘Palace of Wisdom’ so said William Blake, wherever this fabled palace was.

Gary didn’t really get what Blake was writing about, maybe he would borrow his books from the library again and go through them in greater depth like he had done when studying for his Higher English.

Patti Smith was a big fan of William Blake, he liked Patti Smith, she was kind of like a female equivalent of Bob Dylan, a real poet and musician like him. She looked good for an older woman, she wasn’t quite as old as Gary’s Mum, but looked good on it.

He meandered down Sauchiehall Street gazing up at the high buildings, this really was a place of character, you could really envisage the Glasgow of olden times, in the last century or the one before. He walked past pubs with names like Zanzibar, Shenanigans and The Griffin, this was some place, a historical place, a mystical place, the fabled ‘No Mean City’ of the Razor Kings of yesteryear.

He pondered this as he switched on his Walkman to play the Doors and to thoughts of Justine.

Maybe he could buy her a present, a souvenir, perhaps a cassette of someone like Iggy Pop or the Sisters of Mercy ‘First Last and Always’, she would surely like that, but would be have the courage to give her it?

Time would tell , as ever.