Tuesday the second of March 2021. Early.
When you live long enough you can wake up early one morning and see all of it as best as your mind recalls. It’s all there really. It just didn’t have the relevance it can have later on. All that experience. I could tell you tales of people attacking me in jobs and all manner of situations. Of being lied about in a polytechnic. About being too overwhelmed and unable to communicate that I knew full well what was going on around me, but stood there looking like I had no idea. So the other people involved could achieve their goals of calling you stupid. Because that was what they wanted to do at the time.
But them later on, everyone changes. The scenario’s alter. The cruel become the considerate. The attackers become the kind and loving. Give it long enough and others won’t know what to do in the face of their abusive behaviours. All this and I remain a shallow, pointless figure unless people discover my work here. Then you realise I could never relate myself.
This may seem strange from a man who performs in front of audiences and seems so vocal but I think it’s true. Remember I never achieved my full potential in terms of what I can understand and communicate given the right conditions. That is okay though because that’s as far as I can and could practically go in life. That’s all you get.
Many I read complain about how they could have achieved and had more in life, had others not stopped them or mainly due to perceived mental disability. I am very suspicious about when people describe at length how a mental disorder, usually described very eloquently, prevents them from being a winner. An achiever. Someone without certain issues. At what point does the lack of an ability become a disorder and disability?
One definition I have found is that when a state of affairs in your body affects your daily life non stop, you have a disorder/disability. But what about just plain not being good at stuff? It’s all definitions. Which are relative. That is what is so suspicious about the world I have found myself in for years.
Any absence of attention to my book, show and advocacy is just as well in some respects. There is nowadays, always someone making a perfectly good job of what I am trying to do. So I don’t have to worry. I can handle as much or as little attention to myself as I get. But if you go back to the initial point, you see that I have never been someone meant to relate themselves to the world. I was always meant to lead a really private life. An internal one.
This is the paradox of being Paul Wady. I get attention wherever I go and it’s not always a good idea in my case. I try to avoid this believe it or not. Yes, check the site and all the stuff I am up to. Yet still I plead innocence. Maybe I am up too early, not making sense?
The offline world affords secrecy. The online world reveals what you want to reveal and on the side, more than I think people realise they are giving away.
I consider myself very lucky now. My current scenario is such that I have time to reflect on a great deal. One thing that becomes apparent is that in my dealing with others I have always tried to be straightforward. But I was always limited by being what I was, as opposed to what I wanted to be. So life was this struggle to align the two. Reduce ambitions whilst increasing my ability to achieve them. What can you actually do in life that is productive and influences others positively? What about ones ‘art’ is worth bothering with by the most people?
Let me share a fragmented memory. There used to be a place called the Holloway Road Arcade. All this was, was a series of shops in an avenue like building. I noticed another abandoned example in my home town of Liverpool. A deserted, empty menagerie of big glass windows, curving away from the one I was looking through. An empty walkway, covered over by a transparent ceiling that illuminated it all with daylight. Things had happened there. Then it was empty. Stylish metal window and door frames. Clean, empty walkway. A world gone by. People used to work in these shops, standing there, assisting, stocking and waiting to go home. Trying to keep up the chin and the heart.
I recall in the early 80’s finding a world there that had faded. Traces of old generations lives. I wanted to leave and go to London. Now you feel drawn back to that world. Grime on the walls, soot from fires long extinguished that kept people warm. The arcades. The one on the Holloway Road was demolished in the 1990’s. Another in Ilford left behind a walk way that went over the train tracks but now, leads to the street and a new housing development. We had no idea what had been there until our friend, the former planning permission main man there, explained to us an almighty structure had existed there. An arcade.
You got this sense that the bridge/corridor of glass really meant something and led somewhere. Then you were out on the pavement going…oh. Funny that. Why did they build it? Because like in my mind, there were empires there once. But they disappeared. They were never meant to last. They just looked like they were.
People’s entire lives are the same. You go on social media and you would think this all meant something. Well no. I am afraid the Buddhist reality is that everything and everyone is transitory. That’s life. Best not have ideas about you lasting forever, or the world around you.
I will go back to sleep now. I will revisit the versions of things my brain gives me. Endlessly repeating information as if it were the present. Forever processing the trauma of recall. The loops in my autistic nature that repeat feelings over and over. Experiences that keep kicking, stroking, kissing and attacking. That is how I am made. I can wish all I like that I was different. But how much effort do I go to, to change? Aha….