The Epiphany

This building is falling apart like my heart. Roof caving in from the raving that’s been paving the hallways & stair cases. It’s not just one of those phases, the ones that your memory erases. Like tracksuits and different coloured shoe laces. Hanging out in shit places with the same old faces. Under the tree when it’s raining, linking your girl and she won’t stop complaining. She would of preferred to stay in with Eastenders & a Chinese or something.

It was a good year, eight beers for a fiver, a school day skiver, last man standing on the all nighter, a lover not a fighter. Pass round the joint & the lighter. Fit girl walks past and we point but I like her. MySpace, Facebook, or Skype her.

This building is rotting away like a blood clot locked in the brain. Begin with the 2010 games. Don’t feel the same but the jokes still remain. 8 beers now cost £6.50 get dressed quickly. Milk thistle is my saviour for today, don’t condone this behaviour turn away the MDMA. Swap the Reefa for Fifa you can do your thing I’m not guna beef ya. Order a cab because the pub is well too far for us to walk again. It’s freezing outside & I get no protection in this cardigan. Finish off your dominoes, you have pizza all over your face. On your chin on your nose, you’re a disgrace to the human race. I’m not hanging around with you tonight you make us look disabled, you’re like a division two player hanging around with a premier league player who’s top of the table, I feel like a horse hanging around in a donkeys stable, stop acting like a Wembley market t-shirt on the same rack as a top class label. This is SKY HD going on a night out with Cable.

How can this girl I.D me when I look old enough to be her father. And I’d rather be her father because I’d lock her in her room and starve her. Her figure is blocking the spirits and I like to browse before I purchase. Jack Daniels please and snappy before my dinner starts to regurgitate. My eyes are telling she’s what you’d see if Rik Whaller & Michelle McManus merge their weight. How long do I have to wait? It’s taking you 10 minutes to turn around, someone get this girl some roller skates.

The pool table looks attractive in here, especially as it’s free. I’m no Ronnie but with a few drinks inside of me I’m trick shoting like John Virgo on the BBC. Lose a bit of money in the fruity machine don’t know how to play it but I thought I’d just get lucky.

Moving onto a club it’s well cheap for taxis in this seaside town. All of us each only have to pay a pound. Free to get in because my mate knows the geezer he’s sound. Bit dead in here & the music is too loud. Dub step ain’t quite my thing so after a few hours I duck out.

At a bar on my own, the drinks are in full flow and they don’t even require you to have dough. The barmaid in here is pretty talkative, the kind of girl that you ought to give some attention to. She does wonder why I’m on my own, but keeps feeding me double JD & cokes. She asks me if I smoke, I accompany her on her fag break and take a few tokes. This bar is full of blokes. Trying to sing out loud to Katy Perry, I look at them & laugh then glance down at my blackberry. I just cannot believe what I see, I stare at it for a while and find it hard to breathe. I walk out of the bar and start walking down the street.

I look down at my phone and second glance this picture I can see. She is unbelievably beautiful & on my nights out she should not be kind of with me. I shouldn’t be thinking about her when I’m chatting up a barmaid, and I shouldn’t prefer to text her than get laid.
I just want to go back to my mates, but I can’t remember his address because it changed from the last time I stayed. The barmaid said I can come back to her place and sleep. But the look on her face says she’d prefer to do anything but sleep. She say’s she has drink at hers & sweets. So I wait for her to finish work and we get into a cab & leave.

I cannot believe what I’m seeing, student accommodation, realization that this place must hold mental patients, got to be patient, climbing to her floor, trying to be quiet but there’s creeks from the floorboards. This place is a mansion, 2nd year top house scouting, Barbie doll girls in each room pouting. Say hello and then keep walking , house full of girls up talking. Pool table on your floor like this is amazing, fridge is full for raving. No food & I’m hungry. 2 hour’s later and this has become an after party. Heads laid out on the settees, just me and the barmaid up making teas. No sugar for her she’s already sweet.
She said I can come with her if I want to get some sleep, but I’ve seen her kind before & I know where that leads. She walks off and doesn’t look best pleased but I lie down on the sofa and tuck up my knees.


It’s the morning and it’s a whole new twist. Going to sleep I never expected this. I’m more sober than I’ve ever been I’m not at all pissed. I feel something and it must be a lot like bliss. Something changed and it must have been with a kiss, but this epiphany has hit me and it starts to stick. I get a glass of water and I take three sips. I pour the rest down the sink & think chips & dips. This is not a mad trip, this isn’t a loss but a win, woken up to the truth so I can say hello now, gotta bring you back in. You have to be in the game, so I know what’s happening, look at my phone and I grin.. Look at my phone and I grin.

Remember Me

Apparently these days if you dress a certain way, maybe to the tastes of your musical idols, or just listen to a certain type of music, that gives you a God like power to say what is ‘good’. E.G. ‘I listen to The Beatles & then some various other bands that aren’t in the charts so that means I can tell you that Robbie Williams is shit’. It’s hypocrisy at it’s finest. You can’t say you’re indie but then copy the way someone dresses. You cannot tell someone else what ‘good’ music is. It’s about feeling, it’s always been about how the music connects to it’s listener. So I come onto the film ‘Remember Me’ , where Jim Lane, 68, from Sacramento wants to review it. JIM LANE, why would a film about a 22 year old man, with no direction, and a strained relationship with his father strike a chord with you? IT WOULDN’T ! SO SHUT YOUR NOISE.

I’ve been speaking about this film all day, and most of what I have heard has been pretty negative. ‘Worst Film Ever’, ‘I nearly fell asleep in the cinema’. I can only come to the conclusion that these people do not have the brain capacity to understand how beautiful & inspirational this film is. Or maybe it’s just that I have a lot of ignorant & naïve friends. Friends who’s lives are so hunky dory & perfect that they can’t identify with ‘dysfunctional‘. Then I thought about it, most of my friends are a 2.4 children family. Mum & Dad sitting at home cosy together, still happily pretending to be in love. Everyone doing well at school or university and everyone getting along thanks to the rules. So why would they relate to this character? They wouldn’t.

Tyler Hawkins is a man who has been sleepwalking his way through life. He has no direction, no plans. He has unresolved issues that he can never sort out. He also has a near zero relationship with his dad. Tyler is turning 22 the same age his brother Michael was when he killed himself, he is feeling the bitterness & hurt from the fact that life hasn’t turned out how he wanted it to or expected it to. People these days are too happy being normal to understand this character. But he strikes a chord with me. Lord knows I don’t give a monkeys about Rpat and Twilight. However I do give a monkeys about Tyler Hawkins. I’m 22, no direction, no plans, no job, a zero relationship with my dad. I see how this guy lives, day by day, just being himself & not caring about anything. I wait everyday for opportunity knocks but it never comes. Then I see him die. I see him die at my age, with his whole life in front of him. I’ve always known and appreciated the fragility of life. Yet it hits harder when you see this guy fall in love, then mend bridges & when he finally gets on track, it’s over. It’s scary to think I could be that guy. No-one on September 11th 2001 knew what was going to happen. They didn’t know that there was no more time for them to live & right all their wrongs.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to start going on peace making missions with everyone I’ve ever had a quarrel with. I have no intention or never have of having a relationship with my dad. But it does make me think again, about the people I care about now. Make sure you make every day count, make sure you don’t leave anything un-said, take risks, don’t be afraid, seek out your dreams & don’t be embarrassed to tell someone you love them. For one day it will be too late. You get one life and it’s a short one. I speak for myself when I say I can’t be wasting it wondering what if ?

We cannot guarantee anything. On Ally & Tyler’s first date, Ally said that she has to have her dessert first because she cannot guarantee that she will be alive to eat it last. It’s a scene that punches me in the face when you realise what Tyler’s fate is. She says ‘an asteroid might hit the restaurant before she gets to have her dessert’. For her she has to have her dessert first, but that’s just a subtle yet incredible way of saying do what you need or want to do most NOW for later may never come. For other’s it might be tell someone how you feel , go to a certain country , live out a particular dream. There’s no use in me going to university for three years to get a degree I don’t care about if an asteroid hits the building the day before I finish. Do something you care about while there is time! Ally asks Tyler to guarantee her it won’t happen and she’d eat her dessert last. He couldn’t. Because we can’t guarantee anything.

I fail to see the point where people are saying that the twist was ‘insulting’ & ‘offensive’. First off I clocked the twist as soon it said ‘10 years later’ from 1991. Why else would the film be set in 2001 if 9/11 wasn’t going to have something to do with it?
I find it offensive that people are saying that it would have been better if Tyler was murdered or run over. What about families who have lost loved ones to that kind of incident? Remember Me is there to show that although 9/11 was a national disaster, the people who died were individuals and not just statistics. The whole point is for us to watch a normal family with issues & problems (maybe just like our own) & finally getting them resolved to then realise they are now one of the 3000 odd stories that could have been told.

Tyler’s death ultimately allows everyone else to live. The last family member was the one who he at first wanted nothing to do with. His dad says to him ‘I may be a while’ and Tyler’s last words to him are ‘That’s fine’. Tyler had been waiting for his dad to be back in his life for a long time, and in the end he will have to wait forever, however his dad now knows that it was okay. Tyler didn’t mind waiting knowing that his dad was with the one person Tyler probably loved more than himself. Caroline. She was getting bullied & with Tyler frightening the bullies by throwing the Fire Extinguisher through the classroom door & her Dad back in her life, she can now move on. His dad has now become a better father, and after seeing the photographs on his dad’s computer Tyler died knowing that he was loved by his dad. (Of course his dad will also seek comfort in knowing he rebuilt his relationship, however doesn’t know that Tyler saw the photographs, this may make him make more of an effort with Caroline to ensure she always knows he loves her). Tyler’s best friend Aiden is seen now working hard on his studies & has now got a tattoo dedicated to Tyler, mirroring Tyler’s tattoo to his dead brother Michael. Then finally Ally, the girl who Tyler fell in love with. Unexpectedly but a person he needed in his life to bring out his heart. She can now use the subway after the murder of her mother 10 years previously. Realising that death can take you at any moment, no matter who you are or where you are & you cannot be scared of it.

I’ve always had issues with death. I’ve always wanted to be remembered. It scares me to think I will live but one day people will never realised I even existed. This film has shown me a new light. Maybe I don’t have to do anything significant or special to be remembered. I don’t have to be David Beckham or Elvis to live after I die. Just be myself & my actions will make a difference to peoples lives & they will remember.

Remember Me is more than the twist. It is a film about 9/11, but the twist is there to make you sit up and realise you have just watched a story of an individual. Remember 9/11 but Remember Tyler. Remember each individual & their story. Remember they touched people’s lives. Infact Remember every individual who has ever died. Whenever. However. They had families, and hopes and dreams. Just like me & you. For us it’s not too late.

‘Whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it's very important that you do it. Because nobody else will. Like when someone comes into your life and half of you says you're nowhere near ready, but the other half says: make her yours forever.’