Tuesday 11 January 2011

That was the curious incident...

"When I've eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how mad it might seem, must be the truth"
- Sherlock Holmes

I've become increasingly obbsessed with Sherlock Holmes in the last year. It's always been a part of my life, my Mum is a huge fan of detective stories and tv shows, with Jack the Ripper and Victorian London. I grew up around those things and was curious enough to pay attention to them, but when the Robert Downy Jnr/Jude Law film out a year ago it sparked something off, and then the BBC modern take 'Sherlock' came out, and then I discovered House and fell completely in love and read up all the critques, and some of them talked about hte 'Sherlockisms' in the show, like the fact Dr Watson has a limp and walks with a stick, the same as House, and Holmes is an opium/cocaine addict and House is always on the Vicodin... I see House as a 'detective' show that just happens to be in a hospital and racing against time trying to save people from death rather than looking at the clues once it's already happened.

One thing about me that you have to understand, or accept even if you can't understand, is that I am passionate above and beyond a sensible level, deeply emotionally attached and dependent, obbsessive/compulsive and at times quite nastily possesive, when it comes to 'things'. I say 'things' because it sounds slightly better than 'stuff', and I'm not entirely sure what the real noun would be. When I fall in love with a 'thing' (tv show, film, fictional character, band, book) it's like a chemical reaction that I simply can't control. It's actually quite obscene. The 'thing' became a sort of lifeline, something that is there forever as a friend, it doesn't judge me, know me, it doesn't think at all so it will be there, resilliently, forever. My favourite bands, books, characters, films, aren't just material objects or pieces of culture, they are ME, the biggest part of my indentity, they inspire me to live when nothing else does, they comfort me when nothing else does. I genuinely don't care how 'emo' this is going to sound, because believe me I know that you can hear the black eyeliner dripping off it...

I would, hand on heart, serious honesty not be alive, right now, if it wasn't for 'things' and the intense relationship I have with them. I would have gone under years ago if it wasn't for wanting the nexy Harry Potter to come out, or the next lot of Placebo gigs... Even now, at twenty three, at a time when I really should have grown out of it and moved on, I am still falling passionately into things, finding new 'fandoms', immersing myself in them, blocking out everything else out, or reducing it to insignificance.

I have been told countless of times, usually by my parents , that I go too far. Usually it's something about paying a stupid amount of money to see the same band or person play the same set in five different cities. I have tried, and failed, to explain to them exactly what these 'things' mean to me. How they are not just 'favourites' but 'lifelines', ties that bind me to life and, a lot of the time, fill me with an intense happiness that this is what the world can be like.

I like people, I really do, and I try my best but I know deep down that I am not a very easy person to like back. I distance myself, become shy and insecure, sometimes even self-sobatage pleasent times with people because I want to be in control, because deep down I feel like it's al one big fucking joke and they are just binding their time waiting for the chance to humiliate me in front of everyone. I have friends but I constantly struggle with the idea of friendship, to believe that I won't be eventually rejected, or humiliated, or otherwise shat on. I don't see why they want to be my friend, or that they're stringing me along, laughing behind my back, that every day and meeting is just another step up to a hanging rope... Obviously, I don't go around babbling like that, when I'm with people I try my best, communicate, sometimes it does feel effortless and easy but afterwards 'la petite mort' decends and I end up sitting with a bunch of insecurities and questions and generel confusment.

'Things' aren't like that. They're there when you wake up. They're there when you come back. They're there in the middle of the night. They're just... there and I don't even have to think about it, or get the horibble niggling anxiety. You just pick up a book or shove in a DVD and it works everytime without fail (unless you experiance technical difficulties... <_<)

But, anyway, the point of this entry was meant to be about going to the Sherlock Holmes museam and the happiness of geekdom, but I got a bit distracted...

1 comment:

  1. Great quote to start the article :)

    So how was your visit to the Holmes museum..

    ReplyDelete