Aug. 2022; Maybe Tomorrow

One thing that’s incredibly hard to explain to younger people, is how things personally change for you as you get older. Not just the physical stuff, like wrinkles, hair loss, and pendulous testicles, but the mental stuff. Your opinions change. Your likes and dislikes change. Your judgement on certain topics changes. When I look back at the person I was when I was 17, 20 years old, I’m pretty much unrecognisable. I still wear all black and listen to crushingly heavy music from time to time, but the insides are all different. The mental stuff. I used to have a firm stance against religion and the unsavoury elements of the church and organised faith, but now I’m far more mellow, perhaps somewhat enlightened. One of my early childhood hates was being dragged around antique shops by my Nan, but now I absolutely adore old stuff. Thankfully, and as far as I’m aware, I’ve never experienced the “midlife crisis” that hits so many others, especially men, like a ton of bricks. Which is definitely a thing to be grateful for, I cannot afford a Porsche or the maintenance of a twenty-something year old girlfriend. But I’m definitely aware that time is passing. And fast.

Just a few days ago I read an article about the “regular happenings” of the decades of our lives. Generic stuff, like “teens, first relationship, first heartbreak,” and “twenties, first car, serious career,” all that fluff. And as I’m reading this, it painfully dawns on me that I’ve done so little “regular” things that a person usually does. I’ve never been married, or even engaged. Never bought a house (stupidly.) Never really had a career, as such. I’ve done a lot of other stuff that definitely wasn’t on the list, but as for the list of “normal people” stuff, I’m pretty much abnormal. And after pondering this for some time, I now find myself looking at others lives, wondering about how their paths have taken them to where they are now, musing over their possible achievements and regrets, successes and failures. I’ve recollected some of the more memorable people I’ve encountered over the years, and reflected on them for some time. I used to know a girl in Shenzhen who was married 3 times by the time she was 27. I also know a British guy, now living in Cambodia, who became a father at 68. One person that comes to mind way more often than others, is a very close friend of mine named Damon.

We were both motorcycle guys, both musicians, and at that time, both absolute hell raisers, him more so than I. One time we were out drinking, and he pulled a loaded revolver pistol out from his leather jacket and started waving it around in broad daylight. And damn, we used to drink. A lot. And unforgivably now in retrospect, we used to race motorcycles when we were drunk. The most idiotic we got was on a Sunday afternoon. We’d been drinking for hours in the pub beer garden, and he challenged me to a race. Actually, he jumped on his bike, revved it up and screamed “Come on you f****ng pu**y!” and sped off. How could I resist such a taunt. And we raced to the next town, which was 53 kilometres away, and we reached there in exactly 9 minutes, with probably 8 beers inside each of us. Beyond stupid. And just a few weeks after that, he was killed on his motorcycle, aged 24. He’d been drinking, speeding, and it finally caught up with him. The real kicker was that his older brother, that he worshipped, had died on a motorcycle just a few years earlier, and that really flicked a switch inside of him. He’d changed. There was a huge biker funeral, around 80 motorcycles in procession to the crematorium. And at the ceremony, his heartbroken mother made me sit right next to her at the very front of the hall. She knew me pretty well, and knew how close Damon and I were. She was holding my hand and sobbing uncontrollably, and during the ceremony she grabbed my face and angrily said to me “Now you watch this. You watch. This was my son. And if you don’t wake up, you’ll be next.” This poor, devastated lady, who had lost two sons in the same, avoidable way, was absolutely broken. She was in pieces. Such sobering words hit me hard, and my drunk motorcycle days were over. I often think of Damon, and his dear mother. He left this world all too early, while I’m sure his mother wished she had, too.

For the past month I’ve been here, outside Shanghai, and the place I’m staying is undeniably “rural.” Mile after mile of farmland, crop fields, fruit orchards, and really not much else. It’s deafeningly quiet most of the time. And there seems to be almost nobody around here younger than 60. Many days here I’m the youngest person I’ll encounter, and that’s saying something. Gangs of old aged pensioners sit around from dawn till dusk, talking, collecting recyclables, staring into nothingness. On the few times we’ve interacted, they all seem cautiously friendly. When I think about their lives, living so close to one of the worlds most glamorous and spectacular cities, and yet I can’t imagine them actually going there often. They seem to be perfectly at ease with their simple lives, wearing their welly boots and old clothing, in their run down brick houses with a dog tied up outside. I wonder how they reflect on days past. I wonder if they feel fulfilled or regretful. What did they have planned for their life. Was this their dream existence, or was their path already laid out for them. How old were they when they were married. Where are there children now. Where is their husband or wife now. How many years do they have left on this earth.

One thing that no secret is that I love to be out taking photos of old buildings, the run down avenues and alleyways they stand on, and the inhabitants of these colourless streets. There’s been many times that the people there will be so mystified of my interest, and say to me “Why are you taking photos of here, this is not beautiful, it’s old and ugly.” Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and to me, these old areas truly are beautiful. They have so much soul, so much character. I couldn’t care less about skyscrapers and shiny offices, roof top pools of exorbitantly overpriced luxury hotels with their swanky cocktail bars. The times I find myself in such surroundings I feel both incredibly uncomfortable, and incredibly bored. Soulless buildings full of soulless people. The old streets, the urban villages, these are real people. They’ve lived, they’ve worked hard, and I’m sure their lives have been peppered with both small victories and huge setbacks. The iconic New York photographer Bruce Gilden says “It’s not street photography unless you can smell the streets and feel the dirt.” I like that. I like to be out there, smelling the food being cooked and the cigarette smoke, feeling the sweat on my back and the dirt on my skin, hearing the shoutings over card games and the raucous conversations over endless bottles of Tsingtao. You can keep your cigar and whisky bars, keep your fine dining restaurants. I’ll just pull up a plastic chair right here and pop open a cold beer. This is where I’m comfortable.

Just a couple of days ago I took a lovely walk around the Meng Hua area of Shanghai (which delightfully translates to “Dreaming Flowers.”) It’s relatively close to be considered “downtown,” and an unfortunately familiar sight was spray painted all over the doors of the dishevelled and charmingly unkempt houses. “Due for demolition.” I was told that this area has 9,300 families living there, and 9000 of them have already agreed to clear out, take the money and run, so that the whole area can be pulled down and “redeveloped.” One lady said there’s around a month to go before it’s all boarded up, and the bulldozers and wrecking balls come in. I’ve noticed it happen all over Shenzhen too, and it truly saddens me. Some of the most delightful and picturesque buildings, torn to the ground because someone in an office decided that they are an eyesore, and that the land is more valuable than the lives and memories of the people living there. These urban villages are a lot more than just places to work and survive. They are generations of feelings, experiences, births and deaths, families, weddings, laughter and tears. If their streets could talk, just imagine the stories they could tell. But nope, time for “redevelopment.” Time for empty, shiny monsters of steel and glass. I mean, I get it. Many could argue the people there will move on to new places, hopefully to a higher standard of living. But in my mind, all that’s happening is that we’re losing the last small snippets of cultural identification in our cities. “Move on, working class people. We need to build an office block here.”

Time passes. Things change, for better or for worse. The days turn into years all too quickly. I can remember the striking of midnight for the millennium, I remember my 30th birthday like it was just a few years ago, but it sure wasn’t. In the years that have passed, I’ve experienced a lot of things, but what have I actually achieved? Not so much. I’ve never “made a plan.” I’ve never set goals or life targets. I’ve pretty much flown by the seat of my pants since I left school, and somehow it’s taken me to the other side of the world. But now I realize, I need a plan. I need a goal. I can’t just lay on the sofa drinking wine and  scratching my arse for the next 30 years. I can’t keep procrastinating and watching the grass grow. It’s time to take stock and figure this game of life out a bit. What’s next. Where. How. I need to commit to something. Grow some roots. Can’t keep on like this forever. If you don’t commit to something, you commit to nothing. I’ve been very strongly committed to nothing. Maybe I need my own ramshackle house on an old colourless street somewhere. Maybe I need a total change of scenery. Maybe I need to make my own list. Or maybe I’ll do it tomorrow.

There’s a voice, that keeps on calling me.

Down the road, that’s where I’ll always be.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll wanna settle down.

Until tomorrow, I’ll just keep movin’ on.