Paul Weller changed my life with his visions of social utopia If so, it’s not too late to rethink your choice and invest in musicians instead. Who forged your direction in life? Your parents? School? Your peers? Maybe it was a religious calling, or even a political party. No teacher, no institution, no writer (OK, maybe some writers, actually) has had the same impact upon me as rock stars. My moral compass has been set almost entirely by pop stars. Everything good in my life has been recommended to me by my musical heroes. Noel Gallagher famously sang that listeners of Oasis should not put their life in the hands of a rock’n’roll band. The songs can share the burden.” For the next few weeks, Kingdom of Rust accompanied me everywhere, pointing my gaze towards the horizon in a way that cognitive therapy never quite managed. “Ah, sorry to hear that,” he replied, “but we’ve all been there. Soon after, I interviewed Doves’ chief songwriter Jimi Goodwin and straightaway told him my theory about his new songs. “My God, it takes an ocean of trust in the kingdom of rust,” ran the chorus of the title track. In my heightened state of emotional emergency, I quickly imagined that it was a concept album about the end of a long-term relationship. Midway through my second month of living in my friend’s spare room in Shepherd’s Bush, I was given Kingdom of Rust by Doves to review. But music can illuminate the way forward. Therapy helps lift the weight from your chest, which is useful in times of crisis. What was I learning there, in those meetings, that I hadn’t heard a thousand times already listening to Pain in My Heart by Otis Redding, Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division, or You Can Leave, But it’s Going to Cost You by Marvin Gaye? I hadn’t spent my entire teens in my bedroom with the door closed playing records, to not have those hard-won insights to fall back upon in times of romantic trouble. Then I paid my £60 and arranged to return the following week.Įventually, I stopped making those arrangements to return. We decided my ex-wife wasn’t a bad person either. Although delivering my opinion about what had happened out loud without shouting was an enjoyable relief, I can’t say I truly learned much. I sat in a small room with a kindly old lady who was not my mother, but who may as well have been, as we discussed love and sex as best we could. W hen my marriage dissolved a decade ago, I went to a cognitive therapist to see if I could make sense of it.
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