When I was exactly 12 months younger than I am today, and was doing my utmost to shelter myself from the commercialised beats of "Irreplaceable" and "Hey There Delilah"* in a bid to retreat to Facebook and fleeting affairs with homework - these times really are a'changing, aren't they? (You may now pass "GO" and collect your sarcasm") - I had an epiphany. An epiphany of the 21st century, it seems, because the way in which people tend to define epiphany varies from the downright religious to the downright... atheist. However, my personal epiphany came upon discovering that the first line of "I Don't Like Mondays" was as follows:
"The silicon chip inside her head/ gets switched to overload"
as opposed to what I had previously thought was:
"Instead of gettin' chips in Cider Head/ (She) gets switched to overload".
Until this very moment I had spent eons wondering whereabouts on this troublesome Earth Cider Head was located, and why the chips there were promoted as something superior to the common chip. I also pondered whether this nameless female protagonist had been adamant about getting chips at Cider Head, or if her desires to venture to such a little-known place were tangible or alternatively, a solution to not getting switched to overload. These questions consumed me for hours on end, usurping every square inch of my soul until I myself wanted to get chips from Cider Head, just to see what all the commotion was about.
So, what was my reaction when I discovered the real lyrics, you might ask? Well, I will admit I was a little disappointed; it was sort of one of those moments where you read the end of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy purely to find out the meaning of life, ascertain the fact that it's a number as opposed to a reason and then wonder why the fuck it's a number rather than something clichéd like "to love and to learn" or something just plain weird like "Thor Taylor". (I personally have never done this myself, but when I was dutifully informed that the meaning of my life was the product of six and seven I reacted this way) I then had a transitive moment where I cursed Bob Geldof's lyrical wankery and went off on my merry way, perfectly aware that I'd spent a good part of my adolescence contemplating erroneously rather than doing something productive, like saving baby whales with AIDS.
My point of all this lies within the fact that we are all capable of creating individual worlds for ourselves. Our collective world is quite the enormous place, so we feel a need to individualise it and create sanctums where we can believe that Geldof laments about deep fried potatoes cut in rectangular shapes and the meaning of life is a young prodigious Frenchman. And when we discover that part of this existence is not so, it can be somewhat pitying. In the past 12 hours, I've realised this and while it's been nothing short of comparable to an amusement park ride based on Fat Bastard's digestive system, I know I have to accept everything, stop dwelling on the past and making the present what I want it to be, even if it means forgoing what I had never wanted to forgo. I'll be in my non-individualised, communal world for a short while until I'll be able to make it personal again. And you know what, I can't wait to see how I can personalise it, with the people I'll meet, the places I go and the grades I receive.
Oh yeah, and I'll still have you know that I'm still slightly ticked off. Don't get me started on that one, ha.
*Had to Wikipedia the Top 100 Songs of 2007.
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