An analog life

Still partying like it's 1999

2008-07-03

Emo again

One of the cities I've been hoping to get to before leaving this green isle is Manchester. One of the places I'd have hoped to visit in Manchester is Ian Curtis's grave in Macclesfield, to fulfill a pilgrimage first envisioned during my angsty adolescence. Unfortunately, as I've discovered from The Panic Manual, someone just bloody stole his gravestone! How unbelievably twerpy.
We watched Control a few months ago, based on the book his wife wrote (a really interesting read - I'd lend it to you but it's in Canada). What hit me most was at the very end, after Curtis has hung himself, the words flash up saying that he was 23 years old. Only 23. I first got into Joy Division as a teenager, so he always seemed to have been quite a bit older; then I hadn't thought about him much for a few years. But seeing those words when I am at the comparatively august age of 32 it hit me like a tonne of bricks - he was just so young. So young to write such life-weary, resigned lyrics like those in 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'. If only he had somehow managed to keep on keepin' on a bit longer ... he felt completely overwhelmed and I'm not making light of that, but things sometimes seem less urgent and less dramatic and less black-and-white when you get a bit older.
(This age-induced wisdom has not, however, prevented me from enjoying Gossip Girl.)