Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london
on dying vs living:
With Bowie’s departure and Lemmy before him and Rob the Throb and Amy before them it really feels that the breed of wild hell raisers is dying out. The ones that are left have either got old and/or cleaned up their act (slash, keith richards, pete doherty) and are probably alive as a result. I tried to rack my brain trying to come up with any living artists still out there who are still having that sexdrugs&rocknroll existence and couldn’t think of one person. Not one. In fact the only name that sprang to mind, and it pains me to say it, was Justin friggin Bieber which just shows you there’s no-one left.
Back in the day, they didn’t quite know how bad substances like alcohol & cigarettes were for you so there was a certain amount of blissful ignorance attached to certain lifestyle choices. Nowadays there is so much reported in the news about links to cancer and the effect these drugs have on you is there any wonder that people are picking health over hedonism?
and yet as the quote goes: “you should never give up a vice for a couple more years in an OAP home”. I have been in these establishments. I have watched people deteriorate in old age. There is nothing good at that end…so why preserve yourself for something that unpleasant?
They say that heavy consumption of alcohol and cigarettes will individually take 10 years off your life but they take the 10 at the end. The worst 10. The 10 when everything falls apart. So who wants to stick around for that? If they took 10 in the middle it might be a different matter. They also say living too sedentary a life will knock 10 years off so what you would rather do? Be out having fun or sat at home watching box sets?
Charles Bukowski said:
A little drastic possibly and I am not suggesting that getting constantly loaded on your choice of poison is the answer to a happy and fulfilled time here on earth. And let’s be honest, if any of the dead hellraisers mentioned had lead a healthier lifestyle they would undoubtedly be alive today…but what kind of life would they have had? What would they have done?
As Mae West so eloquently put: You only live once but if you do it right, once is enough.
There is currently a debilitating amount of available information declaring how bad things are for you and how they will shorten your life but surely its about quality not quantity? What is longevity without living? And as we will never know in advance what it is that will ultimately finish us off what is the point of altering our behaviour for what is nothing more than a giant question mark? (way bigger than this one).
What we do know for absolutely sure is that we will all die at some point. Does it really matter what from? Truth is, you can really do what you like as long as you are prepared to suffer the consequences. Play your life however you want to, just make sure you play it your way.
The philosopher Martin Heidegger was once asked what people might do to lead better lives. He replied that we should “all spend more time in graveyards”. His work proposed that only by confronting and accepting the fact that we are going to die that we can start to live. (source: the week. didn’t want you to think I was trying to make out I had actually read Heidegger)
I’m not really advocating saying fuck it and abandoning all your healthy choices. Your body requires looking after. It is the only one you have. If you fuck it up completely you aren’t going to have a barrel of laughs but if you have too tight a rein on yourself you might empty your existence of all the joys life has to offer. Life is all about balance. Too many ‘no’s and not enough ‘yes’s and what are you left with? All work and no play makes people stressed and that also kills apparently.
As far as I can see, there is only one thing worse than dying, and that is not living.
We are here for such a fleeting amount of time you gotta squeeze as much as you possibly can out of it. In Louis CK’s stand-up routine he does this bit bout how when you get to middle age everyone starts asking..what’s going to happen after I die? What’s going to happen after I die? He says, I tell you what’s going to happen after you die…lots of things are going to happen..they just won’t involve you.
(p.s if you are having a dry jan this is in no way meant as a derailment. Good luck with all that as they say…)
