This isn't the column I originally intended to give Rick and Sam for Happy House #9; I had the guts of a fairly substantial column about media manipulation, sources of information etc. written but I'm going to hold off that one until next issue.

It's 5:47am and I'm wide awake, not on a bender - I'm halfway through a peppermint tea and there's a veggie burger on its way, which is about as wild as its getting this morning. Anyway, the reason I'm awake and writing this early in the morning is because I've been upset for the last few hours. I was talking to the eldest of my three kid sisters on the phone earlier and it got to me quite a bit. I should really fill you in on the rest of my family to give this all a bit of a shape. For the most part they're pretty cool people and I love them.

The family is my three sisters my Da my Ma and me. My Ma's been ill for a good while now, she's been in and out of doctor's offices and hospital like the proverbial yo-yo for months now; for blood tests, check ups, a fairly serious operation, more blood tests, to see specialists, to have her medicine changed, and to have even more blood tests.
At one stage, months ago, her Doctor told her that if things weren't sorted out she had no more than a couple, three at most, years to live. She's only 46 and she's been told that she could, and probably will, bleed to death before she hits fifty unless things improve. I'm not trying to be dramatic with any of this, I'm just telling it the way it's been happening. On top of that there's been other shit going on with two of my sisters that for the most part has been quite serious and quite crap. So this has been going on for a long fucking time, with my youngest sister (she's 6) having been sick on and off since she's been 3 months old, it was even touch and go with her a couple of times.

So my sister rings and we're talking about my Ma and stuff (which is sort of unusual - recently the situation is just a depressing fact of life that we've all become accustomed to) and it was a crap conversation because things had gotten worse. Things have been getting steadily worse for a few weeks in a row and its fucking soul destroying. I remember back to when it all began in earnest and I remember being a pain in the arse to be around, snappy and grumpy and crap. Then after a lot of ups and downs it all leveled out, or rather how I felt about it leveled out. I think it's a pretty common thing to adopt to stressful situations by numbing a bit for a while.

Then tonight happened, and for a couple of seconds I was hit by how crap it all is for my family at the moment. It's the difference between knowing something in your head and really feeling it, and it struck me sharply and suddenly how my Ma might not be around in a couple of years and how devastating that is for her and how devastating it will be for all of us and it literally stunned me. So I left the phone off the hook and became totally overwhelmed by the feelings that have been there for months, and now, six hours later I'm still reeling. At one stage the intercom buzzer was going nuts and I just couldn't face answering it, I felt incapacitated. Chances are it was my flat mate, a fact which only dawned on me a few hours ago, and I feel crap 'cause he probably had to get a taxi back to his Ma's house, which is shit.

See, I've been doing my best not to let this interfere with things but its gotten in the way of a lot of stuff - friendships, work, zine, even mundane activities like replying to letters or cycling.
Taking joy from life is getting harder and harder, partly because of the lack of concrete information as to whether someone I love is going to get better or not. Insanely enough, music is a powerful force at the minute for me, especially the more intense, heavier stuff - His Hero is Gone, Kiss It Goodbye, Logical Nonsense etc. all rumbling bass and fuck you, full on vocals are all providing cathartic ways to vent some anger, even if its just cycling along that bit faster, gritting my teeth and growling along to my flat mates walkman (I really need to get some headphones together for my own).

So with all of this, Gearhead Nation is late by about a month, I haven't answered letters in around two months, this column is about a week late, and things have gotten away from me a wee bit in general but I'm starting to reel it all back in slowly but surely. Part of what's allowing me to do that is by putting it into a perspective of sorts which when I apply the same perspective to this punk thang it shows it for what it has become for the most part.

This punk and DIY thing has been a big deal to me for a long time and truth be told it still is, so I'm loathed to look at it in a completely heartless objective way, but that's the way I'm looking at it lately and for the most part the output of the vast majority of punk and DIY enterprises is irrelevant, vacuous, ill-conceived, self-important drivel. (Don't mistake this for a bad mood talking - this part of the article is being two days later on a crisp and beautiful Autumn morning just before I have a shower and go visit my girlfriend, so I'm in great form.) Its great to be able to take energy and instant gratification from what bands like I mentioned earlier do, but other people take the same gratification from a Wet Wet Wet song or a Maria Carey song - the process is the same and the result is the same, much as people who listen to punk/Hardcore etc like to see "our" music and bands as more important.
The level where it's different is that at other times the content of a band like His Hero Is Gone, what they have to say, is obviously substantial, and how they go about it fits with their ideas about what they want to communicate. Although the same could still be said of the Wets and Miss Carey. So what am I getting at? There are important things going on in life, around you and around me and we all need to escape those things every so often and we all use different methods to do that. One of the crappiest things about society these days is that the amount of time people spend trying to escape reality far surpasses the amount of time they spend in the reality of the world at large. We all create our own little empires and realities where we can relax, and that's kind of what the punk/hardcore thing is for the most part - a self important, tiny empire, with its leaders and its followers, and its important ones and it's insignificant one's.

Every time I pick up a zine or put on a band that has nothing to say about anything real (and now 99% of bands are not populated by real people with important things to say, in fact 98% don't even have interesting things to say) I am struck by the waste of energy and time that is in terms of having any kind of real impact on anyone in terms of the real world. I'm not saying that every zine and record should be a lengthy polemic concerning the world's ills and every singer should turn into Bono, every writer into some crusading journalist but lets be fucking straight about things here. Look around at the punk/Hardcore world and compare the amount of escapist material to the amount of reality based stuff. A wise man (and there aren't too many of them about) once said that every institution should have to justify its existence and if it can't it should quietly go lie down in a corner somewhere and die.

My ma's really sick, so are a lot of people - some with families, some with no-one else around them who even speaks their language let alone cares. Some don't have places to sleep, some don't have their own minds operating fully, some are only kids who fit into one or more of the above groups. And if I want to find out about any of these groups or what can be done to help, or whether they want my help, who they are, what they feel - anything at all about them. Can I find out about them easily enough in the mainstream press? No. Would I even bother to look in most fanzines - no. Ah, but if I want to know where track three off the latest album by "The Descendents" recorded and how much beer they drank and what kind of car they just bought I am literally spoiled for choice among the number of zines who will cater for my thirst. Do your music zine or your songs about your car or getting drunk if you want - just keep in mind how important what you're doing and how relevant what you're doing really is.
Or isn't.