Infected

I’ve got too much energy to switch off my mind
But not enough, to get myself organised

Since starting work I feel as if a virus has invaded my body, assaulting truth, arresting any searching, freezing my assets, corroding my values.

Twenty years ago, a friend recommended I listen to the recently released “Infected” album (we had vinyl in those days you see) and I duly bought it. The The is of course, Matt Johnson, one of the most brutal and insightful lyricists in pop. His later release “Mind Bomb”, a little more commercial, was an almost prophetic glimpse into the landscape of today.

Half a lifetime has passed since I was erm, infected by Infected.

A few months of work and already I am short of the focus to peer above the parapet, or under the rocks. Stay in the middle. Stay safe. Turn on the telly. Browse for meaningless shit. Forget about life. Read the Metro, the same headline superimposed over every tube rider’s face, the same stories releasing fear, drip-drip-drip - into our unfeeling veins, day by unnoticed day.

When I heard Infected half a lifetime ago, it possessed me, infected me, took me over, carried me on a crest of an unstoppable tsunami of emotions previously forbidden and out of reach. Now, twenty years later, I understand it, because I have lived it. (At one point, I too felt as if I’d tossed my dog-eared bible overboard, along with my soul)

Now I am in that rat-race tunnel again. Sure, I can enjoy my job and fit in and do the work and absorb the company credo and add value and be a team player and run the meetings and champion the programmes. And sure I can pay the bills and watch the shows that everyone watches and talk about a life that exists in somebody’s chequebook. What happened to the truth? Was it too real?

My hard-drive and my mind are cluttered with a million unfinished strands of thought, barely started, barely thought of. Dissipation, dissipation, dissipation - going back to an earlier The The line “My mind has been polluted and my energy diluted”

Have I fashioned my life into a The The album? Or did I just follow the template? Did I ever really have the choice?

Which album will I quote if I get to 60? Don’t tell me, let me guess - Dusk?