The arms of the undiscovered

At school, what you listened to cut you out of the clay. It connected to how you dressed, how your hair was, the whole deal. After years of changing out of school uniform into scruffs, or out of scruffs into bests, wearing clothes you’d chosen was such a freedom. It was like changing out of another life, trying your potential self on. It allowed me to separate myself from who I felt I was, to give me chance to become a different me.

It was a passport to other people, a language that allowed you to connect, a sort of permission to hang out together. Without it I have no idea how I might have made those initial connections - maybe by being slightly better at shoplifting jazz mags and sweets and then sharing them around more.

There were shops you went for clothes and shops you most definitely didn’t. The world of smalltown southwest England was tiny: jumble sales and army/navy surplus stores were where - if your hair was high and you listened to the right music - you’d find most of what you were after. Camden Market was an occasional long coach trip to another world. An independent shop sprang up in Exeter where you could rely on finding something perfect; we’d go there every week in search of that item of clothing that would complete your transformation from ruffled pigeon to swan. A day later you realised you were still a pigeon, but one in a mohair jumper at least. Those few places were it. You would never shop for clothes on the High Street: you can’t like PiL and shop in M&S, that’s like supporting Utd and City.

Now, there is nowhere and everywhere. Neither the middle aged man nor his teenage daughter has anywhere they can call home when it comes to clothes, with everywhere as likely or not to throw up something that adequately pleases the daughter or disguises the father.

I find it is the same with music now.

My daughter frequently plays me Harry Styles or something else teenage me might’ve considered deeply ‘High Street’ and she introduces me to many gems.

I was listening to this earlier and thinking that while most of us know I’m A Believer, Daydream Believer and maybe Last Train to Clarksville of The Monkees’ music, the rest is lost in a sea of TV cartoon capers.

This beautiful thing - so different to their cheery ‘tripping the strip in someone else’s sports car on the way to Laurel Canyon’ schtick* - is like that pair of mustard coloured suede Doc Martens I saw in the window on the High Street, surrounded by shoes and boots ‘other people’ would wear - so worth the dash in and out of somewhere so unexpectedly rewarding.

Me and Magdalena
We're driving south through Monterey
As the sun is slowly sinking
Into a distant ocean wave

And I don't know if I've ever loved any other
Half as much as I do in this light she's under

Tell me Magdalena
What do you see in the depths of your night?
Do you see a long lost father?
Does he hold you with the hands you remember as a child?

But know everything lost will be recovered
When you drift into the arms of the undiscovered
And I don't know if I've ever loved any other
Half as much as I do in this light she's under

Me and Magdalena
Always leaving early and sleeping late
Secluded in the canyon
Lost within a turn of fate

But know everything lost will be recovered
When you drift into the arms of the undiscovered
And I don't know if I've ever loved any other
Half as much as I do in this light she's under

Me & Magdalena lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.

*and yet still someone is west-coast driving south