Those Were Days Of Roses...

To begin, I'd like to assure those who came out that I had a really great time tonight (5/7/10) and the tone of my blog post does not reflect my opinion of said night out :).

I've never been one to think of myself as being one of the young guns, but I have become one of the last of my high-school class to reach the suspiciously inauspicious age of 20. The numbers themselves, seem unnerving, there hasn't been a number "2" in my age since I was twelve, and it's here to stay for a whole decade. I can't do anything that I couldn't do previously within the eyes of the law, but I am no longer a teenager, no longer a recently departed high-schooler, and now a plain-and-simple university student, pretending that the whole world is at my feet when my every academic decision pigeonholes me further into a niche which I am yet to decipher.

Also, tonight I celebrated this supposedly momentous occasion (a week late, I must add) by hitting up the now-infamous Lloyd's Bar/Oceana double whammy. I saw infamous as the combo has been used countless times in the past, largely during the reckless Year 13 which saw us all comfortably getting along with one another, forming cliques and groups, making Facebook events and relaying mass text messages. After that year ended, and summer began with the departure of several of us to foreign lands, still short-sighted to the fact that there was no constant to which to return to any more. School's out for summer; school's out forever.

Uni brings new friends, new experiences, new mindsets. The shift from dinner cooked by mum every evening, being picked up from the tennis courts or the rather small car park and going to Llandaff for chips and sweet-n'-sour sauce, to university halls, student nights and the Blackboard learning system means that what we once thought of as paramount becomes a mere afterthought, and the structures once so solid and secure become dust in the wake of this new world. We take everything we had in school and we compact, we distinguish, we discard. The friends we remain with are the ones who we keep forever (in theory, knowing full well that theory never pans out exactly as we'd hypothesised), and the ones we begin to ignore are mere acquaintances along the way; perhaps useful one day for business contacts, scrounging upon celebrity, or even just filling up seats and the wedding.

What do we do with our old friends? The ones we love, but hardly ever see; with whom we instantly fall back into comfortable rhythms and rapport, but who we no longer have on our lists of recently texted contacts. We catch up. Forever, and ever catching up; no longer a proper part of one another's lives we resign ourselves to making a dogged but ultimately futile attempt to stay absolutely up to date with the goings on of each other's lives, but are not allowed to become a part of their tapestry of life ever again. Always observing the craftsmanship and the details, but never volunteering an idea for the next chapter.

On a similar subject, here's a bit of Tom Waits, with Martha from the Closing Time album of '73; a song about catching up. It's beautiful, and when I think of what I've told y'all about tonight, it's a little heartbreaking.

Operator, number, please: it's been so many years
Will she remember my old voice while I fight the tears?
Hello, hello there, is this Martha? This is old Tom Frost,
And I am calling long distance, don't worry 'bout the cost.
'Cause it's been forty years or more, now Martha please recall,
Meet me out for coffee, where we'll talk about it all.

And those were the days of roses, poetry and proses
And Martha all I had was you and all you had was me.
There was no tomorrows, we'd packed away our sorrows
And we saved them for a rainy day.

That's What Friends Are For...

I don't know how good a friend I am; obviously my level of friendship varies from person to person, and I don't profess to be equally wonderful/obnoxious to everyone I meet. Nonetheless, it's still reasonable to say that everyone approaches the art of making friends in different ways. Mine is a more passive, blend-in-with-the-crowd method, others adopt a firm and coloured personality that endears them to some, and shuns others. My method has, as its main bonus, the ability to make friends with almost anyone I meet. My circles of friends have varied vastly, and I imagine I'll meet ever more diverse people as the years roll on.

The flaw in my method comes with the second, far more important part; keeping friends. Between the beginning of my education and now, I've been to eight different schools (KCL included), which I feel has altered my perception of what a friend is. A childhood friend for most is someone you've known for a while, grown up together, experienced all the changes of life together, and you can share that; it's natural, it's what you do. When outsider Nash comes in, you bring him into your circle and go about your lives; but the void in background means that, ultimately, you'll always be better friends with those you've known for years. You're apt to share your secrets, your worries, all the minutiae of strong casual relationships, and save Nash for the immediate and the now, the parties and the homework worries.

Coming to King's, on the other hand, has put a different spin on things. I can't rely on my previous framework, since no-one knows each other here (save for some occasional pairs or threes from the same high school). A chance to start afresh, with the shared experience of university at your doorstep. Still, slowly but surely, it's happening again. You hear conversations about events you've missed, in-jokes you don't understand, plans you weren't privy to. You hear whispered secrets and hushed voices, things you aren't supposed to hear; are people talking about themselves? About you? How did this happen? Are you predisposed to make fast friends, but shallow friends? A flaw that can only be attributed to yourself, as everyone else seems to be getting along just fine.

After all, what's a friend? For the average guy or gal in uni, what does a friend mean to you? Is it a sounding board to bounce back the thoughts churning in your mildly insecure head? Is it a willing sidekick to your nights of debauchery and drunken mayhem, as you paint the town red in an effort to have a story to tell in the morning, complete with photos for the Book and lipstick on the sheets? Is it a repository for your deepest feelings, darkest secrets?

Somehow, I've presented my image of a friend as a guy who comes along, jokes a bit, drinks a bit, and fades into the background like a comforting mass in the ether. It'd be easy to say it takes two to make a friendship work (indeed, this is probably the most comforting thing I could imagine for my situation), but I'm just afraid that I'm the one who isn't putting the effort in.


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Now playing: The Rolling Stones - Beast Of Burden
via FoxyTunes

Stuck In A Moment...

'Tis my blog, right? Means I can talk at myself, about myself at will without recourse, correct? Class. OK, so, if some people cope with whatever troubles them through artistic endeavours or violent episodes, I'll cope with a post on this dusty old thing.

Hope all reading had a happy Christmas, and an agreeable New Year's do (somehow managed to blind myself in my left eye on NYW morning, meaning my own celebrations were sober, monoscopic and alone). The holiday has been an eye-opening one, for saddening reasons. I'm (hell, we all are) drifting away from a state that I was completely at ease with, into a set of circumstances that I don't fully know or understand. I don't know what to do about it, it's entirely out of my hands, and the groundwork necessary to maintain a status quo was necessary years ago.

I miss school an awful lot, and though uni is wonderful (and the cast of characters that I've met are an uncommonly excellent bunch of people), there was something about school that meant that I didn't have to worry about whether my relationships with my friends were being maintained. I'm not a massively social person, but I selfishly require a constant knowledge that people are there when I care to look. A poor state of mind, and I need to change it, but I've run out of time. There's friendships that are carrying on, thriving in the online cloud despite the foundation of constant contact we used to be afforded. But I can't do that, try as I might. And it doesn't stop me from missing people; it'd be a lot easier if it did.

Tried texting some people today, but occasionally the number I have is no longer valid. Nails in the coffin, I guess.

That Which Annoys: Part I

This series will be a collection of things that tick me off. These are the kinds of lists that lose you friends, make you enemies and generally decimate any chance you have of appearing impartial and open-minded. Because, like me, everyone has their breaking point. Mine just manifests in their own ways.

First on my list is this: Profile pictures with multiple people in them.

This is largely a Facebook-ism (where the whole profile picture thing is more crucial than ever: you're far more likely to make a new friend online with a friendly photo, as opposed to the distended anus of your drunken sex-face). If someone called "Ashley", or "Frankie" or any myriad of unfamiliar non-Western names then adds me with a profile picture displaying eight people, I don't know whether my new best pal is that strange man on the left, or the breathtaking girl on the right (prior knowledge would undoubtedly change my initial contact: "Hey there" for the former, "Heeeeey there" for the latter. As you can see, I'm a pick-up master)

The real-life equivalent of this would be eight people coming along, and introducing themselves to you in chorus with the line "Hi, one of us is [insert name here]; be my friend?". Surely there's cause for unbridled alarm?

Admittedly worse is the photo of said new friend and said new friend's significant other necking it off right there on your screen, everytime you want to talk to them. It's some sort of third wheel simulation, where nothing you do or say passes by without the judgemental appraisal of the kissing couple. Geddaroom, says Nash, vehemently (vehemence is my natural state of being when it's 8.30 and I'm already on the blog).

[I will add though, that even though the relationship status indicator on Facebook is known to be deceptive and often simply disappears instead of fessing up to the truth that said Facebooker has been dumped to high tide, the disappearance of the snogging profile picture always heralds hard times in a relationship. Life's a beehatch, eh? Should've just kept that charming smile from way back when as your Face-for-the-book and been done with it, but noooo...]