ALREADY YESTERDAY

some things are personal with the church, they sit in the studio writing songs and steve has some words he writes and they record it and send it out into the universe and some where some place far away i heard it, you heard it, and our experience and neural networks process it and make sense of it and our subjective experience is created and then memories are formed and somewhere in the mix with the church something else happens, i don't know exactly what but it's always something to do with the words. 

while i listened to already yesterday over and over, the line, 'avalon over the water' leaped out and wrapped itself around my heart in some kind of embrace, i happened to be reading, 'the mists of avalon' at the time, going through that english flirtation with the idea of avalon and king aurther, i'd read quite a bit especially the lovely books by t. h. white, the once and future king. 

i was working as a social worker in a a place in london called edgware, and i'd finish work by going next door in my black punk suit and tie and order a mineral water. 'the beehive' was a classic bikers bar, it was raided often, sometimes i got hauled in the back of a van with the bikers and taken to the station, over the course of years i got to know every biker in the pub and they all seemed to really like me, despite the fact i never drunk beer or took speed, i just smoked weed and had a mineral water with a slice of lemon.

tank was a massive biker chick with tattoos all over her arms, and her arms were the size of tree trunks. she was fucking huge and very unsexy but she was actually really nice at heart and would always make a space for me at the bar where she sat with her timid public servant husband who was akin to a field mouse, as i guess you would be, married to a woman called tank.

one day i was in there talking to tank and a new barmaid asked me what i wanted to drink, 'a mineral water, lemon no ice,' i said. when i looked up she was there, peroxide hair, penetrating eyes, kinda dark tanned skin and super exquisite smile. i was immediately lost for words, how do you find a way in with girls, i was no casanova, women were and still are a great mystery but here i was caught in this eternal gaze, that one hears in myth and romantic legends. we were both transfixed.
i was stuck for a good line so i asked where she was from and she said, 'avalon' and then the sound of rushing blood to my head and my heart was beating in that ploog rhythm and i said, 'across the water.'

i launched into a massive conversation about 'the church' and that song and i must have struck gold cos we ended up dating and eventually getting married and i came out here to australia and made a home in avalon. my beautiful son was born in avalon and it's always held me in it's spell as it is such a lovely place but i often refer to it as babylon now, since the yuppies moved in and it's become super trendy and chic to be seen hanging around cafes, a new kind of commercialism swept in about five years ago and killed the magic a little, although at night when i stand up on the headland and look at the full moon rising out of the ocean over the water it's quite a magical place despite the yuppies and their black lexus four wheel drives.
anyways, already yesterday holds a significant bit of romance for me, as that look we shared was my son calling his mother and i together, and already yesterday, with it's line, 'avalon across the water' was the gravity that seemed to magnetically attract us all together in that moment i remember with such clarity as if it was already yesterday.
what the hell was steve singing about? 
a moment of freedom i think, freedom from time, freedom from the primal element our brains react with. i don't know, i guess it's a wild stab in the dark but when i listen to the song these days i feel like jumping in my car and driving up the highway somewhere far away, somewhere i have never been before, somewhere where i don't have to look back.