The Agony and the ecstasy!

11 days 19 hours 4 mins

Once again I find myself waiting for the next stage of releasing the Jenga Society album to kick off. The timeframe for making the Nov 1st release is relying on the artwork being passed, and a proof agreed by me. It is only at that point, the delivery time of 10 to 12 working days clicks in, which at this point would clearly have me miss my target date. I have stated in the order, when I need the discs by, which has not been contested so I assume all is still ok.

Agony

I once found myself, as a young man, in a relationship which, although in many ways was brilliant, was soured by the tendency of my partner, from time to time, to bring out the worst aspects of me.
It takes two, it is true, but the influence of alcohol could make her very argumentative after a visit to a pub or party. During these incidents she managed to kick off the augmentative element of my personality and then we would go at it like you wouldn’t believe.

It really riled me up, stirring lots emotions including self-loathing. After we had finished, I often wondered how I had let myself get so angry over so very little, I seemed to be drawn by some emotional vortex, into conflict each time. It wasn’t once, or twice but on many occasions and I felt it had become a ‘feature’ of our relationship.
During these episodes, I could feel a really unpleasant part of me welling up, it was ugly and it worried me. I was fathered by a man who thrived on conflict and had made my mum’s life a misery (with arguments not violence, I need to point out). Realising that, I had to ask myself if I was perpetrating the continuation of this type of verbal cruelty from one generation to the next.

On more than one occasion, I could feel uncomfortably near to expressing my frustration and rage physically, so I decided that I had to get out of that relationship before I did something I would regret for the rest of my life.

I am relieved to say, that after we parted, I have not had a repeat of those aggressive impulses in any of my other relationships down through the years. I do not want to lay the blame entirely on her; we were just not good for one another. We kicked each other off.

I walked away feeling guilt, I walked away without really trying to resolve things, I walked away repulsed by myself and I was confused as to what to do with those feelings.

So I wrote a semi-autobiographical song called Agony, it helped me come to terms with things. Within the song, I put the protagonist further into the bouts of conflict than I had gone, and imprisoned him within his own inability to cope with his emotions.

Please take a listen...