star
The same people. The same people buy my records and talk about them in loud voices at parties. I'm still the quiet one, but these days it's noticed. Strangers come up to me on the street and say:
'I saw you wherever. You were so quiet. What was wrong?'
'Just the usual.' I say to the pavement and maybe they want an autograph. It's awkward for them to ask and for me to offer. I look at my watch and make like I have to go somewhere urgently. They smile and look understanding, the pressures of success, as I scurry across the road to get away from them.
I'm used to it now, strangers wanting to know me, know everything about me, questions in the supermarket about the new album and I find they know more about it than I do. Lines quoted back at me, things I don't remember saying. At first it was strange, exciting even, but now it's just the way things are. You get used to anything.
So I'm sitting in the corner at some party and there's the usual bullshit big-talk going on, self-aggrandising A & R pricks talking too loudly. I don't know who let them into the room. I look around to see who else is here, the band, of course, the support, an old friend of mine hopelessly impressed because she'd never had a backstage pass before, some B-list celebrities looking for street cred - from me - and of course all the made-up girls wearing almost nothing and staring straight into my eyes all night. The music changes, a pair of decks set up and everyone has to speak that notch louder to be heard. Liquid's poured from one place to another, toxins inhaled. Somebody asks me if I want to do a couple of lines and I say, 'no thankyou,' slump deeper inside myself. I know everyone in the room is looking at me. Even when they're talking to someone else I'm in the corner of their eyes, my every move monitored, my every mood seized upon. I am the reason we're here. I sip my drink, play with a stray hair on my jeans. I know that all I have to do is open my mouth and the whole room would stop and listen.
It depresses me more than anything.
