Better

Throughout the course of Tuesday, I pondered how I wanted to address this.

Do I give a personal account of my 6am wake-up call of radio presenters expressing condolences? Do I write something in the same vein as virtually ever other decent-minded person on the planet, reiterating statements of how such calamity ultimately ends up bringing people together? Do I address a blunt tirade of insults, sarcasm and derision to the now-dead perpetrator to shift the focus back onto them in an attempt at making a mockery of them and whatever fucked up thing it is they stand (stood) for?

Ultimately, I decided against all three. Nobody wants to see an over-elaborate diary entry from some self-important sap living 30 miles or so away from Manchester. There’s nothing I could really add to the national conversation that hasn’t already been said by countless others, and I whole-heartedly echo many of those sentiments. And, to be honest, I kind of live by a policy of not giving addition thought to the people who commit mass murder in the name of what they think is right, simply because they then become famous by media influence proxy, essentially becoming martyrs for the cause and “inspiring” future generations of dickheads.

So, instead, I’ll try something else: We’re upset. We’re concerned. We feel emotion, compassion and empathy. And that’s good. That makes us better. So much better than the kind of lone boulder that plops into a lake and forces so many others to endure ripples the size of tidal waves. The kind of solitary match that burns down a forest.

Ultimately, the lake returns to calmness and the people readjust to normal life. New trees are planted and time rejuvenates the barren landscape. Meanwhile, the boulder sinks, the match is reduced to ash and we display exactly how much attention those aspects deserve by very quickly forgetting all about them.

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Back in the heady days of 2013, I typed up some words about the band HAIM winning the BBC’s hallowed (if a little hollowed) Sound Of… award for the year ahead. I don’t really remember what I wrote about it, to be honest – it was really just a piece of guff for a university-based Creative Writing workshop to show I understood the concept of putting words in order and to attempt to win peer approval by talking about current music, yo.

I imagine, however, that I commented (possibly in a critical fashion) that the award has had a tendency to favour artists that would go on to fall into relative obscurity, rather than predict the pop powerhouses of tomorrow. Anyway, through that bit of guff, I started listening to HAIM, and relative obscurity or no, I still quite like what they do. Case in point, this new stuff.

HAIM – Want You Back