The Realms of Verity

Well I was born in 1979, in West Yorkshire, quite frankly, the best place in the world, (read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte if you don’t believe me). I attended Hipperholme & Lightcliffe High School for seven years of my life. Seven years which were undoubtedly the best years of my life. Come on sixth form at H-L-H-S was such a buzz. There I met one of the most inspiring people in my life, and we don’t come across many of those!! Mr.Bailey, my English literature teacher. All I can say is that he was a great teacher, person, being.

I grew up in the 90’s, I mean the teenage years are the most formative years in ones life, it’s when you actually start forming opinions and giving a damn about what’s going on around you. The 90’s were definitely an amalgamation of everything that had taken place in previous years. The early 90’s were an extension of the 80’s, which saw me embarrassingly bopping to ‘Vanilla Ice’ and trying to act like some cool -gangster - don’t- mess- with- me- type. (I’m cringing already). Then we had those eye numbing shell suits, now I was definitely some hip-hop dood. Purple and yellow stripes were all the rage, while leg warmers were being kept for a renaissance (which is beginning, have you seen this week’s issue of The Sunday Times Style magazine?)

The mid 90’s were a cool time for all those cool people, when ‘Oasis’ emerged telling us how shit life was, but there was still hope. But guess what, at that point in my life, I was a snotty 15 year old, dismissing all non-classical music as noise. What was I thinking of, I could have been part of the teenage angst movement, and joined the herd that supported the acid smile t-shirts of ‘Nirvana’. Yep, Nirvana was also a huge hit at H-L-H-S, but I was too busy admiring the voice of ‘Sara Brightman’. Then there’s the late 90’s; life’s repetitive cycle delivering our daily dose of deja vu, in the form of the ‘Spice Girls’ and ‘Steps’.

The year that I turned 17, was my first milestone, (not because I was learning to drive, because I wasn’t), but because in the summer holidays, I went to Asia and saw this world that I didn’t realise existed, well not for real anyway. I thought the media altered the pictures on the t.v. screen. There was poverty, there was poetry, there was sheer beauty but there was also a wasteland. I have to say, this trip really shook me and I grew up. I really started to feel and realise things that I didn’t know I was supposed to. I felt like I could no longer be a kid, how can you be when you see starving people but then you also see centuries old mosques and history suspended in time. I saw this whole new culture that was inevitably a part of me, but something that I had not really lived before not in its real essence anyway. Anyway when I came back, to cut the story short, my poetry was heaps better, I mean I had matured now, and my tastes were altering, which as a result led me to the Smashing Pumpkins. Yes this is the part that you have all been waiting for. How did I turn into this broad minded, knowledge seeking, and ideologically propelled person that I am? Please continue…

Sitting in the library, on the table next to me, were a group of lower sixth form students reading the NME and raving about some band called the Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins and Placebo to name but a few. Well these novice names sounded really interesting because I needed a working title for my play and I wanted something original. This is how I was first introduced to my favourite band of all time, The Smashing Pumpkins. I heard ‘tonight, tonight’ on MTV when it still played real music, and I was hooked. It was only then that I realised that alternative music was actually the most honest and poetic form of music around, something that I had been looking for; trying to relate to my entire life.

Well now I’m 23 and in my final year of my English literature and English language degree, writing and fighting for integrity in this plastic pseudo world that we live in. So do everybody a favour and tell people to come and visit this site.