A Little Something

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One. Two. Three. Tell me more.

“Other people weep, but I just need a little some­thing to make me sleep” is what the wear­i­est of voices mur­murs from inside a caco­phony of noise­less sounds. I play his words again and again, in the des­per­ate hope that they will des­troy the foot­steps dan­cing their end­less obli­vion sequence inside my skull. Christ, i’m cold.

It’s always four o’clock in the morn­ing some­where, I tell myself, as the spool that isn’t a spool flut­ters back to the start with a reas­sur­ing mech­an­ical action and begins unwind­ing once again. It takes me with it as it does. Unwind­ing, lulling me deeper into com­fort­ing repe­ti­tion. I need repe­ti­tion, a hun­dred times over and more. Repeat. Sing my melody, my man­tra. God, I’m cold.

“When I was young
I was taught a little song.
I only ever sing it
When things are going hor­ribly wrong.”

In the nightmare(s), that is. A song. I can’t tell you what it is, because it’s in a for­eign tongue. I learned it by heart from a muffled cas­sette recorder, hid­den under the warm wool­len bed­clothes of my child­hood, such as it was, whilst listen­ing to the world col­lapsing out­side. I was safe there, because I had my song. My song and no one else’s. And no one else. I didn’t under­stand a word of it. All I had was the shape of it on my lips. The phon­et­ics are still com­fort­ing, all these years later.

When I first heard this new music some­time in the autumn (it had to be the autumn, of course) of 1994, it clicked. Instantly. Though it was strange and alien, and though it appeared with a know­ing stare and a world weary sigh, brought to life under the wil­fully obtuse and inap­pro­pri­ate moniker of Disco Inferno, I got it. I under­stood. Fire­works exploded. It set alarm bells ringing, which i then real­ised were just the alarm bells from the build­ings in this teem­ing met­ro­polis. That was apt, some­how. Some­body had taken the sounds I heard in my head, had heard in my head for years — melody and dis­son­ance, sweet­ness and con­fu­sion, crash­ing and burn­ing in equal soar­ing meas­ure — and thrown them together in a glor­i­ous tech­ni­col­our junk­shop. The world was col­lapsing again, inside and out, but this time it was a noise I wanted to hear. This was a form of destruc­tion that made per­fect, poetic sense. Fall­ing apart made sense, espe­cially if it put me back together again after­wards. New. Almost. Almost new.

“I need two soft arms to hold me tight
From the demons that haunt me in the middle of the night.
Beau­ti­ful grass and a bottle of light,
i can’t get to sleep in the dark.”

Demons. Dance with them in the pale moon­light, but not will­ingly. Never will­ingly. Forced steps and forced move­ments. I drown out their caco­phony with this caco­phony of my own choos­ing. I am offered a ray of hope as i shiver my way to the cold hard morn­ing of real­ity. Play, play, play again. i wish there wasn’t this faint stick­i­ness of sweat on my brow, the odour of fear stifling my pores. I want every last tell­tale sign gone. Please. I just need a little some­thing to make me sleep. If I get a little some­thing, i can sleep.

Three minutes dead. But not dead. Bleary, shiv­er­ing, but still alive. Wak­ing up, though I didn’t sleep even a wink.