mikeylord

[mikeylord]

Ready to cause trouble again. 📷 - @apertunes https://www.instagram.com/assirensfall/p/Bubcqh-AygU/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=yasqk0292jfq

[mikeylord]

Five Storeys//No Endings

He dangled his legs over the edge. A gentle breeze tonight, but nothing to be concerned about. It just made everything colder. He perched carefully with His hands gripping the sandblasted railing surrounding the top floor of the multi-storey. His body rocked with the breeze, sloshing around the supermarket booze working its way through His insides. ‘They look happy. They look happy and I look like whiskey. Cheap whiskey.’ He slurred to himself as He watched a pack of twenty-somethings stumble through the street below, out on a what can only be described as your-standard-hen-do. The yellow streetlights glowed golden-brown in the winter night, sparkling on the passing party’s smoke-ring halos. It was easier like this. Easier to satisfy the hourly urge to check out. Hell, dangling yourself off the edge of a five-storey building would be enough to sign most people into some kind of hospital. For Him, this was a coping mechanism. Occasionally dancing on the edge of the void satiated the smacking lips of oblivion for a little longer. The adrenaline kick was a bit alright, too. He pondered the concept of survival. A word used by SAS soldiers lost in the desert, about-turned mountain climbers and starving children in the third world. It shouldn’t even be in the dictionary where he’s from. He’s from a society designed for it’s inhabitants to thrive; relatively speaking, not just ‘survive’. Yet here He is. Checking every button and switch each morning, making sure everything still works, finding it harder with each sunrise to keep the lights switched on. He held a silent vigil for his dulling desensitisation as the girls’ laughter echoed a few streets away - a flicker of envy shooting down his spine. What He wouldn’t have given to have been sitting next to someone. Anyone at all.

[mikeylord]

The past is little more than a fuzzy memory, but there is a blinding light on this moment. This one. Right now. Not two seconds ago. Not at the start of this sentence. Right now. This moment is everything, and we can’t see it. ‘Now’ will never go away; it bleeds into the past with the determination of an endless, clotless open artery. What do you do with it? How do you play an instrument you have never held before? How do you speak a language you haven’t heard? Time presents new, now. Momentum waits for no-one. Forget what cannot be controlled, own what is you. Be everything you are as tastelessly as possible. Because you are all there is. You are timeless.

[mikeylord]

Recently started taking meds for ADHD, and I’m getting aaaaalllllll them fun side effects again. It’s like being hungover as shit and pumped full of cocaine at the same time. Exhausted and excited gurn fest. Oh yeah. This is the good life.

[mikeylord]

10/11

I’m conscious that I only use this blog when I’m sad, and I’m always hesitant to spew negativity into the world, but I need somewhere less public than my other social media to get things off my chest, so I guess this is just mikey-is-sad.com.

I’m currently making my way up the M1, after a great few days in London with BBC Introducing. Before that, I was on a Sirens tour, and before that tour I worked on two other tours with other bands. I’ve not really been ‘at home’ for over a month now.

This is weird.

Recently I’ve realised, at some point over the last 12 months I lost the ability to cry. When I wasn’t looking it just jumped out of the car window and floated off alone into a grassy verge only ever to be disturbed again by the wind-wake of passing cars.

It’s very odd to feel like crying will help me feel better, but then at the moment of it, my body seizes up and panic sets in. Every time. My mind just won’t allow it to happen. My heartbeat spikes, my hands and feet get cold, the nausea kicks in, I can’t keep my vision focussed, but my eyes are as dry as sand.

I have to pull into a lay-by or a services if it’s well timed, and just ride it out. It’s definitely not caused by driving, but it seems to only happen when I am driving. I think it’s cause I have the chance to ‘think’ on longer drives. This is only showing signs of getting worse.

The tours were great. The crowds were better than ever, I had a bunch of amazing conversations, got to play some incredible shows and my voice held out too. The bands I worked with on the prior tours were lovely and we’re still in touch. All positive. Just this new issue is concerning me. Never thought I’d miss being able to just cry something out of my system. Weird. Bit scary. Not stoked.

[mikeylord]

Tonight hurts.

[mikeylord]

24/6/2018

A year since your last sunlight. 

[mikeylord]

To you. - 23/6/2018

To you.

I have taken recently to letting the cats sleep in the bed again. After a few months of sternly kicking them out of the room to spend their nights yowling on the landing, I caved and broke the habit in the last couple of weeks. I awoke this morning to witness a rare display of their very occasional teamwork. It seems only when there is a common goal - ‘get Mikey to wake up so we can eat,’ or ‘let’s scream at the door until he lets us inside’ - that the two sisters tolerate each other. For a few moments, their whining was actually in harmony. It’s a nice sound, if you can forgive the sound of a cat trying its best to blow its own voice box.

It’s nice to know they are there. It’s also nice, sometimes, to not sleep alone. After months of living on their own with the occasional human visitor depositing Whiskas pouches into their bowls, they genuinely seem to value company, now that they live with me again. They follow me around the house constantly and I have to make sure they are locked inside if I walk to the shop, or they will surely stalk me all the way to the Spar.

The cats have been a constant. They’ve been there, along with a very select number of humans without whom I do not know how I would have survived the last year. A year. On Monday, it’ll be six months, to the day, since Christmas. How mad is that? 365 fucking days. It only seems yesterday that I was thanks-but-no-thanks-ing countless ‘if you need to talk’s and ‘I’m here for you’s that a manic and wounded me saw as insincere. It seems 10 seconds ago I was collapsing on a Nottingham pavement; the awful news that you were gone burning its way into my skull like a slow-travelling hollow-point. It’s incredible how events and situations such as this seem to whittle down your support group. Not in a negative way. It has merely shined a new light onto me, and a number of those that were - at one point - close and supportive have backed away from being in that light. I guess it’s a hard thing for some people to wrap their head around. That’s okay. I sometimes wish they were still around. Most of the time I’m glad they aren’t. I know who my real friends are, now, and I love them all to pieces.

I knew this weekend was coming. I’ve been dreading it for a while. Your time gone can now no longer be measured in days, weeks, months - but years. A year of firsts. From the first night without you to your first birthday since. I sometimes feel undeserving of this sadness. One of the hardest things so far was recently learning that you’d been gone for longer than you were ever in my life. That statement, to me, belittles the time that we had together. In the scheme of things, I hadn’t known you five minutes before I started moving in. I stayed one night and, essentially, never left. I found a home with you. They say ‘when you know, you know’. I’d always thought that that was bullshit. It isn’t. I just knew. There was my life up to the moment we met, and then there was my life after that. I felt like we could take on the world together. You changed me for the better. You showed me how to truly, fearlessly, be me. I’ll never not be grateful for that. We never had to ‘work’ at things. We clicked and it was automatic. Co-pilots. Designed for each other.

You know, sometimes, I can tell that you’re there. I can just sense it. Maybe it’s clairvoyance, maybe it’s just a sense of love lingering in the air, and maybe it’s just the wind. But sometimes I just know. You’ll be with us today, too. Today is yours and we’re filling it with cocktails, glitter and excellent company. Happy birthday, darlin’. I will love you always and I miss you terribly (and so do the cats). M. X

[mikeylord]

Create To Live - 12/5/18

It isn’t actually a year since the day we got engaged. It’s two days earlier, as I write. 363 days. But, I’m operating on the premise that this will take me longer to construct than my scribblings have in the past, because I know how difficult the next few nights may be. I asked her to marry me in Rome on the 11th of May. We told everyone on the 12th because that’s when we got the ring. It’s a maelstrom of dates, so we had agreed to remember it as the 12th for the ease of all.  I was so excited to ask her, and honestly I hadn’t fully made my mind up to do it. I knew that if I was going to propose, it would be in Rome. Making that trip happen was a total nightmare, not worth going into here, but suffice to say my organisation skills as a traveller left a lot to be desired. It had to be in that city. I didn’t even have a ring. I dragged her around Italian jewellers afterwards until we found one. There were so many factors to it happening, but I just stopped. I looked at her face as she gazed up at the fountain, the blinding yellow sun beating down on her gorgeous hair. She was content. I knew, as I always had, that this was it for me. I loved her. And then I was on one knee. 

I’ve written thousands of words since what happened, happened. I’ve not shared them anywhere, really. It’s been more about letting off het-up steam that just needed to escape. I’ve always found solace in creating, and writing is the fastest way to achieve that wonderful, albeit temporary, euphoria.  That’s my go-to. My quick fix. My version of a bucket of ice cream and a rom-com on telly. The new self-destructive night out. Self-saving 2.0. I write. Everyone has their own quick-fix. For some people it’s exercise, for others it’s a day off work with Netflix. For me, I just have to make something. It’s often simply easier to let my fingers dance on a laptop keyboard for an hour or so than it is for me to write a song, a story, or draw. If I’m absent the ability or the energy to make something, to express in whatever way - that’s when the vultures creep in. I see them out of the corner of my eye; perched on my headboard, waiting with an insatiable bloodlust in those pearl black eyes. The moment you let them in, they have already won. Everything is temporary. She used to say that. I used to tell her ‘the sun will come up soon’. We were both right. This time it isn’t right, though. The sun won’t be rising. That’s the thing about grief. It doesn’t get better. It won’t be fixed. I said to someone very dear to me the other day that ‘it will never be okay’. It felt twisted to say that to someone in the context of trying to comfort them, but the thing is - it won’t be. No matter how strong my support circle may be. That doesn’t mean my forecast is bleak, though. It just means what happened is something to come to terms with and learn to accept. I will never be ‘okay’ with it. It will never be fine.  In the past, I’ve described it as being like tinnitus. The feeling never goes away, but it isn’t always at the forefront of your attention. It’s always there, like a scratch on the lens. The world carries on, but your view is distorted. At first, the ‘tinnitus’ was anger. Not with her, but with the world for dealing her such a bad hand, and with myself for not being able to save her. My blood boiled at the mere mention of the names of all the people that hurt her.  The anger soon became compounded with loneliness. I still fumble my way into every new morning with my eyes still closed, reaching out to her side of the bed to find a cold pillow. On the successful mornings, I’ll then stumble out of bed to survive another 24 hours. The tinnitus soon became a cocktail of rage, isolation, depression, mania and recklessness. It didn’t take long for me to start finding solace in chemicals, in drastic decisions and in saying things I regret. I heard voices that weren’t there, I found rationality in senseless thoughts and theories and I drank myself into a hole I’m still digging myself back out of. I’ve not shared these things with anyone, up to now. They have had enough to worry about when it comes to me.  The life force I have found in writing and building and keeping busy has been heaven-sent. This has been one of the busiest years of my life, and that is no accident. I have ensured that every day under my control has consisted of enough activity to keep my mind from dwelling on darkness for too long.  It’s not just keeping busy, though. It’s the therapeutic notion of turning the negative energy into something productive. I took a leaf from her book and began to make lists. Even as simple as this: -coffee -make the bed -wash -feed the cats -university work -emails -social media Something as basic and effortless as that is, at points, the best I can hope for from a day of just living. Small victories. It sounds pathetic, but having a list to follow, a ransom note for sanity from the night before gets me through it all. On the better days, I’m able to do more. Focus on building something that actually excites me. Whether it is writing, like this, or it’s making art, music, plans, researching a new passion or hobby. I’m somehow able to turn all that negative ‘tinnitus’ energy into the cement that holds together my new life without a co-pilot. I’ve always held the mantra of ‘busy days keep the demons away’, and as true as that is, it isn’t particularly healthy. The activity needs to be positive and it needs to be productive. That’s what I’ve learned, recently. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve needlessly cleaned my kitchen and there aren’t words for how many times I have re-ordered all of my books on their shelves. What counts is what I create. In what we create, we live forever. That’s where she is and it’s where we’ll always be able to find her. In what she created.  There’s a place for us. M. x

[mikeylord]

I find it really hard to talk to people about the things on my mind. It’s not a trust thing, or a self-preservation thing. I’m not sure what it is. I don’t want to, really. I need to learn how to do it. I talk about her all the time. Never about me.  It seems impossible to offload onto male friends, in particular. I have F who is a fucking angel and if it weren’t for her I definitely wouldn’t have survived the last 6 months - but she’s struggling as much as I am, in her own way. I think we have a silent agreement to not discuss negatives unless(/until) things get dangerous, for both our sanity’s sakes.  I can’t possibly complain. I could make a phonecall and I know there are people half a country away that would drop everything and drive through the night just to see me through to morning. But what do you say? So hard to break the ‘I’m handling this really well and definitely don’t want to not wake up in the morning’ mystique. I just don’t want to.  ‘You can’t take your own advice.’  She was so right.  Getting things out on stage is the best feeling ever. We played the last two shows of the year this week and I walked off that stage in Manchester feeling fucking destroyed but also kind of liberated. I’d screamed and shouted and danced and sang my heart out. It’s disgusting but I’ve thrown up at some point during every show we’ve played during the last month. Not because I’m ill, but because I’m just unleashing myself, with no thought for consequence. I went upstairs and passed out in an empty hot tub in our dressing room (normally the VIP area of a nightclub). Woke up and couldn’t wait to get back out there. Christmas is going to be hard. 

[mikeylord]

I envision a darkened room. It’s rotting and old. No one has been in here for years. The walls and ceiling are lined with dark brown planks of wood, shoddily nailed together. It’s like an old shed, I suppose. On one wall, to my left, is a window. Outside is pitch darkness, relieved by the dim glow of a splatter of stars. Must be night time. I have no idea if it’s the sea out there or the countryside. I feel like it’s the sea. Feels like no one has been here for some time. At my feet are cracked and splintered floorboards, riddled with mould and damp. There is a constant ‘creak’ sound. The sound doesn’t seem to get worse or more intense, which suggests the place is relatively safe and stable for now. It will certainly fracture soon, though. Ahead, in the centre of the room, is a pit. The floorboards have been torn up revealing a roughly four-square-foot hole. I carefully edge towards it, to look inside. The closer I get, the more tenuous my balance on the ever worsening floor becomes. I can see the top few rungs of a rusty iron ladder, leading down into nothing. I take a step closer and lose my balance. I almost fall in. ‘Jump.’ A voice from nowhere. ‘You’ll end up falling anyway. Just jump.’ It’s the most reasonable tone of voice. So friendly. Not comforting, just trustworthy. Like a doctor with bad news. I respect the voice. I don’t really like it. The curiosity is becoming overwhelming. The ladder looks far too weak to hold any real weight. It certainly hasn’t been climbed in a number of years. It could perhaps be descended, if I was careful. Plus, up here doesn’t seem too good - maybe down there is a little more secure? I take one more step towards the ladder and a floorboard gives way. I’m falling. My hands are bouncing off each rung of the ladder, like a stick against a railing. The rust is slicing my palms. It hurts but I keep both hands there ahead of me, in a blind hope that the next rung is the one I manage to grip. I land on my back. It’s dark and damp down here. I’m sitting in at least a few inches of static water. It’s cold. I’m still alone. I was probably better off up there, really.

[mikeylord]

A thousand candles.

I lit up a thousand candles so you can see your way through an afterlife that I’m trying my hardest to believe in. I miss the little things, like breathing in sync when we were trying to get to sleep, and knowing you were there for the 5AM toddler-wake-up-call. I haven’t seen him since. I’ve been thumbing through every page of every single book I know you read trying to get a look behind your cold face, trying to get to the same place you were at in your head. I found some torn up coasters - victims of your nervous nights. I drove out on to the moors and looked up at the sky. Screamed into the dark; ‘you call yourself a saviour. what did she ever do to you? fuck you for giving and taking away. fuck you for making this last another day.’

I can’t help but think I could have done more. I can’t help but wish it had been me. 

[mikeylord]

Getting real sick of pity.

[mikeylord]

Love On TV

She strokes Her hair back over Her shoulder with one hand, as She reaches awkwardly with the other to turn off the light in the car, abruptly plummeting the two of them into darkness. As She waits for her eyes to readjust, she looks at Him in the drivers seat. She can see the flashing orange of the security light outside reflecting off of His teeth and the whites of His eyes as He smiles back at her. ‘Normal couples park up on night-drives and stare at the stars. I think it’s some kind of love-on-TV thing that people copy. Know what I mean?’ She muttered, gazing impatiently up at an empty black sky. Normally, cluttered with constellations. Tonight, completely drowned by the floodlights over the short-stay car park at the airport. He chuckles and reaches down to lower his seat. The moment he puts his hands behind his head, he bolts back up again. ‘Here comes another one.’ The sound deafening, it soars overhead. So close they could see the passengers through the oval windows. She wondered if they could see the car. She wondered where they were all going; why they were going there.    He cheers.  ‘There it is. There’s the money shot. Lets keep going.’  ‘Where?’ She asks.  ‘Anywhere but home. Fuck love on TV.’ 

[mikeylord]

5/9/2017 I wake up tired and I go to bed awake. The apparent answer might appear to be that I should adhere to my own body clock and sleep later at night and in the morning. I am absent a body clock. The three-am windowsill nicotine hits are both a spring of sanity and a well of self-hatred brought on by any kind of chemical reliance. I’ve been there before and I’m so scared of that old fight.  The last refuge of the insomniac is superiority over the sleeping world. I don’t have superiority. I may be lacking in physical exhaustion, but you can only busy yourself until your mind puffs and peters out - then you’re left in an old office chair looking at the sky and silently praying for unconsciousness.  I often spend this time thinking of past people and regardless of my relationship with them now, positive or negative, how they were critical stepping stones on the arduous stumble to where I am right now. I’m grateful for that. As hard as that is. I’m grateful for it.  I wonder what they’re doing. I wonder if they think of me like I think of them; alone in the dark and without space or energy for anything other.  ‘Other’.  There it is. I’ve lost all interest in routine. I need something ‘other’. But right now, what else is there? I’m living with my parents until I find somewhere new, so unfortunately I must behave myself.  Between the starlit smokes and the late night drives, the ancient loves and quiet addictions, I’m beginning to feel like I’ve done everything you can do at three AM.  So I just sit here. Watching you fold the stars.

[mikeylord]

Loud Silence

2/9/2017 - Early hours.

My best friend looks at me from the passenger seat. I can feel his indecision on whether or not to speak reverberating between his concerned gaze and the side of my ‘driving’ face.

'I want this to kill me.’

My words still hanging in the air, seemingly unaffected by the thumping sound of the wind forcing its way through the open windows as I control over a ton of metal and plastic moving at seventy miles per hour.

He shouts over the wind.

'I know you do. But you can’t let it. I’ll be furious.’

I know he doesn’t really know what to say. I wouldn’t if I were him. I don’t even know what I want to hear, really.

We resign ourselves back to the failed potential of a conversation and focus on our respective cigarettes. I concentrate on the ebb and flow of the streetlights’ orange glow reflecting off my forearm as we pass underneath, flying down the fast lane on a drive without purpose or direction.

He asks about something I did. A walk. An event I attended. I can’t even remember. My perception of time is so warped. She could have been dead five minutes; it could have been five years.

I smile and nod. He knows I don’t have the foggiest idea what he’s talking about and back to the loud silence we go.

[mikeylord]

I would do anything for another minute with you it’s not getting easier.