writing | Numb
I'm ever so lost, I cant find my way. Remembering a winters walk and listening to Dummy by Portishead.
Nostalgia can be a dangerous thing. It can drag you back in time. Each step a journey into the inner recesses of your mind, to a place where it feels like you're trespassing, making the experience more uncomfortable. The feelings swirl around and mix into a tight ball of anxiety like a full load in the washing machine.
Pacing over the remnants of a memory, shadows draw long across an urban landscape. Back then, streets perhaps seemed harsher, but now their teeth are filed down, the fields you once played now built up with homes, a countryside never to return.
For sure, some things are best left buried in the ground but sometimes it's nice to look back through your mind's eye at memories that remain intact. Memories that have a certain romance to them. Clinging to them is perhaps our way of trying to relive a youth we’ll never get back as time passes ever more quickly.
I seem to recall the sky was dark purple, like a bruise. Grey clouds hung heavy, their payload ready to dust the landscape with more snow. It was a still night, quiet, the only noise from the odd passing bus churning through the slush. Back in the early 90s, there wasn't so much traffic on the roads, and not as many people trying to get to their destination as quickly as possible in this weather. That or no one wanted to venture out at all.
Snow had fallen on and off for a week, turning everything white and now casting a strange illumination. The fields were blanketed thick, tree tops weighted with snow that had gathered in the nooks and crannies, the lake across the road from our house was frozen but cracked around the edges to stop kids from venturing onto it.
It was late, or early, depending on how you look at these things but I’d spent the evening in my bedroom drinking cheap wine and hanging out the window puffing quickly on cigarettes, trying to exhale out and direct it away from the open space of my window.
I was 18 or 19 at this time, still living at home with my mum and two brothers, and needed to get out, stretch my legs, maybe sober up a little and wander. The four walls of my bedroom were warm and safe but I had stubbornly inflicted this jail cell on myself.
A few weeks earlier I had argued with two of my mates on a night out and drunkenly walked off. All this over me not wanting to spend my hard-earned wages on a couple of cheap hot dogs for them, telling them to get a fucking job. What an absolute dickhead thing to say.
We hadn't spoken since, this being the time before the internet and mobiles, and so it was harder to catch up and say sorry. The longer I left this isolation the harder it felt to pick up the phone, apologise and go for a pint to shoot the shit. I kept telling myself that they needed to get in touch with me for it to be better.
I had gotten a full-time job and was trying to earn some money while they were still living the old life, the one I wanted to cling to but also wanted to escape from, saving money to travel was my goal. But resentment festered like a bad spot and burst its ugly contents in a one-sided row over fucking hot dogs.
Having spent the last few weeks working days and then spending weekends at home alone I was considering my life choices (as they say) drinking cheap wine while listening to records, reading and playing a lot of Nintendo.
Yeah, I needed to get out, to soak myself in melancholy for a while. So I shoved on a few warm layers and a thick coat, grabbed my cigarettes and walkman and shouted to my mum “Don’t wait up” as I walked out the door. She was already in bed and probably fast asleep.
As I walked out into the night, the snow crunched underfoot and gathered in bits around my boots, forming crusts. Although there was no wind, the cold was biting and my breath was a fog of white as I inhaled from a cigarette and let out a lung full of whatever chemical shit I was smoking.
After 10 minutes of walking, I was rethinking my eagerness and replacing it with stupidity. But I didn't want to go back home, so I kept walking. I wrapped the headphones around my head and pressed play.
Portishead had released their debut album, Dummy, earlier in the year and it was the perfect soundtrack for this cold winter and my late-night excursion. The sound on the album is distinct, from the opening track of Mysterons through to the last, Glory Box, each song is a sublime masterpiece.
The album was produced by the band themselves, Beth Gibbons, Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley and as well as traditional instruments they used cimbaloms and theremins. The samples and loops came not just from other records but also from their original music, recorded onto vinyl and manipulated as needed.
The first track, Mysterons, is science fiction and the second, Sour Times, is spooky. The listless beats, record scratching, guitars and organ complement and play off Beth Gibbons's sad and bluesy vocals.
A song like Strangers starts and then stops a few moments into the song as Beth sings solo, before the beat kicks off again bolder and more pronounced, as if hammering home a subtle point. The first time you hear that break you’re floored as it comes in, but with every subsequent listen you know it is coming and you count the silence. It’s pure hip-hop production as the song is looped with samples and guitars.
There are clear jazz and soul influences on a song like It Could Be Sweet and I dare you not to fall in love with Beth's vocals as she gently croons through, vocals dripping with honey.
What can you say about Numb? Eerie, cinematic in its scale, the snap of the snare and tight crisp high-hat, the organ chiming away and bass adding some….well bass. Beth's vocals are jazz infused with something other-worldly as she sings “I’m ever so lost, I can't find my way”
You get to Roads and you can feel the blues. The lyrics are about loneliness, isolation, finding your road and travelling on it. The music is like it's been pulled from a ’70s soundtrack, the wah-wah of the guitar, the light touch of the organ and Beth breaking your heart and sending chills down your spine.
Pedestal snaps you out of the blues and brings you back before Biscuit’s lyrics about being trapped by your feelings and never wanting to get hurt, sting like a fucker.
The final song, Glory Box, is perhaps the perfect way to close the album in all its noir-stained essence. The gentle brush of the drum, the guitar licks, the simple base looping and of course Beth. She oozes sexuality and toughness, honesty to the lyrics, someone sick of playing games, and the complications of love.
It changes gears near the end and breaks for a moment as Beth sings “It's time to move on” before the song trails off as if there is more to it but we aren't going to hear it.
I don’t know why I vividly recall this moment in time, this point in my history, or why I reflect on it as I sometimes do. I imagine the time is imprinted on me, a perfect storm of feeling lost, the cold winter, the time in my life moving from a moody young adult into something else, the songs framing the moment perfectly.