"She said: 'Meet me at the gates at 8
Leave now don't be late'
She said one day walk away 'cause I was always late
Thought things were okay
Didn't' care though anyway
Say 'Sorry babe, had to meet a mate', tempting our fate
We first met through a shared view, she loved me and I did too
It's now 7:50, getting ready, better be nifty
Do my hair quickly - step out, it's cloudy
Mate bells me to borrow money, I got two Henry's and a dealer to pay
Call up on geezers to rid these green trees of my reeking jeans
Got a 'You think I care?'-air, out-glaring geezers' stares
I'm here and I'm there
Couldn't see past the end of my beer
What was getting near all the silence after the cheers
I didn't know that it was over
'Till it was too late
But if I ever needed you
Would you be there?
She said: 'Meet me at the gates, don't be late"
But pretty soon the day came for change
And I was glad she never walked away
So I'm choosing what to wear, doing my hair with an hour to spare
When my life went pear, she'd been there with a thick stare
Big wheel climbed to the top, geezer stares bounced off
Standing at the top of this huge mountain, smiling and shouting, spring flowers sprouting
Not one inch of doubt in my mind as I reached the gates
Came 'round the corner at a rate
Risked her love, but I was gonna set things straight
Never again am I gonna be late
Never again am I gonna be late
Never again am I gonna be late
I didn't know that it was over
'Till it was too late
But if I ever needed you
Would you be there?
I said: 'Meet me at the gates
Leave now, don't be late'
I waited for a while listening to her voicemail, mind set sail
Then the facts turned me pale
Wind, rain and hail
My fears unveiled for my fair female
She'd walked away, too little too late
I step up the pace, walk past the gates, rain runs over my face
Spirit falls from grace
I purchase a hazy escape at the alcohol place in the Chase
Sat down, got a fat frown
Weeping and drowning my senses
For this love game's expensive
I walk in a trance
Got a wounded soldier's stance
And the everyday geezers' stares throw me off balance
Now nothing holds significance
And nothing holds relevance
'Cause the only thing I can see is her elegance
I didn't know that it was over
'Till it was too late
But if I ever needed you
Would you be there?"
The Streets.
I.
There's a certain horror in coming to know one's own patterns too well. Not necessarily because those patterns themselves have truly become known, but for the plain fact that what one believes to be a mere case of "pattern recognition" is all too likely to be a case instead of pattern manifestation.
And so comes The Unpostable, that which cannot be posted, written, made public. That which, by personal conviction, must be kept private at all cost.
II.
In recognising the pattern, I repeat the words of Mike Skinner cited above: It's too late.
I have found myself returning to this song for the better part of six years. With time, I've come to realise - or "recognise" - that there's a pattern to this listening.
It's too late, I said. But when's the "it"? That's the matter of the pattern. And the reality is that so soon as I come to listen to the song, I can confidently spell my own end out. It's Too Late marks the beginning of a downfall which, on the one hand, I can very reasonably predict. I listen to It's Too Late exactly because it is a song which, when it is Too Late, resonates all too deeply.
But this, too, I know: That it is hardly Too Late simply because I have heard the song. The song is not some causally omnipotent entity which forces my hand. Rather, the ritual of listening to Mike Skinner's story of self-destruction by negligence is essentially a self-fulfilling prophecy. The ritualised listening which takes places becomes exactly that self-destructive act of negligence which brings Mike Skinner himself down in the song.
III.
With time, self-destructive behaviour can become ritualised simple for its self-destructive consequences. Such is the nature of genuine self-destruction.
There's a certain Kierkegaardian element to this pattern of self-destruction, of course, and one which is also expressed in Skinner's 'poetry' (if we'll allow ourselves to call it that).
In the face of repeated warnings, Skinner's story tells of self-destruction by what amounts to a form of spiritual impotence. Faced with a desire for change conceived exclusively in mentalistic terms, Skinner becomes unable to actually Act. It is this inability to Act in a way different to his past which clashes with his spiritual impotence and leads to despair. Much as any other genuinely self-destructive person, Skinner appears here both impotent and entirely self-absorbed. This, too, is part of the nature of genuine self-destructive people. Self-destruction is in a sense a kind of preliminary suicide. Rather than facing the full abyss one believes to lie around the corner, one instead self-destructs by freezing, unaware that the earth beneath and the world around one has not stopped moving. Self-destruction becomes a pitiable state of affairs, and it certainly enjoys the pity of he who self-destructed in the first place. Self-destruction becomes the mourning of a loss that never took place because confrontation with the loss itself was too unbearable to face.
The necessity of the inwardness of self-destructive people stems from the fact that anything else would require an acceptance of chance and change. In the overtly inward, it becomes possible to freeze the world, the world having been reduced to oneself. To pull oneself out of such a state is, to use a classic example, as absurd as attempting to tug oneself out of a swamp by pulling one's own hair. Absolute and self-destructiveness thus relies on the negation of the Other, insofar as the Other might actually be able to reach down and help the self-destructive person out of the swamp that they themselves have chosen to jump into. The swamp is the choice of us self-destructives. In it, we can be physically frozen, unable to move, comfortably forgetting that it is by our own doing that we ended there. And at some rate, the slow sinking seems preferable to the horrible abyss which may well have been just around the corner.
IV.
Is it too late?.. I'm looking forward to finding out. For now, we wait.