Diary - Wednesday, April 11th, 2001

And don't forget I that meant to win.

One day left with nothing but the scars and the natural marks of freckle on flesh.

I'm stressed but you're freestyle
I'm overworked but I'm undersexed
I must be made of concrete
I sign my name across your chest

"So, are you nervous?"
"Not in the least. I'm terrified, yes, but not nervous."

I'm writing myself on myself for myself and no one else. But the vanity inside me is pleased that the eventual product will be beautiful.

Give out the same old answers
I trot them out for the relatives
Company tried and tested
I use the ones that I love the best

Give me the strength to accept and survive my own mistakes. Everything is writ twenty feet tall for us. We spend our lives living in a play, but it is real. I wonder when I got perverted, when sky fire stopped being electrical charge and changed into something else instead for me. I hear the music these days, and my blood surges.

Tomorrow it will spatter on my skin as the notes are etched in.

This was so unexpected
I never thought I'd get caught
Play boomerang with your demons
Shoot to kill and you'll pop them off
BANG! BANG!

Well, the confrontation with them was long. My demonic selves. And I laid them low through blood. It would be wrong for blood not to be spilt over this. And it would seem strange for me to approach the situation without the knight's battle tension and the simple human fear of the new.

I am trying to be glad of it all. Experience can give me as much material as those poet friends of mine I admire so.

Like an animal you're moving over me
Like an animal you're moving over me
You should be sleeping my lover
Tell me what you're dreaming of

Sunlight and water. Always the same, always different. I am glad of it all. It woke up a while back, inside me, this thing, and when it sang I found my soul again. Dreams should be real, and there is no reason why we cannot have them when awake.

I knew you were mine for the taking
I knew you were mine for the taking
I knew you were mine for the taking
When I walked in the room

I am changed. I was not always like this. These days I walk in the door and I do not cling to the walls or stumble.

I knew you were mine for the taking
I knew you were mine for the taking
Your eyes light up
When I walk in the room

Where did this confidence come from? I used to cringe under blows, both mental and physical. Now I set my teeth and attack in return. Or I laugh, or I dodge...what alchemical process happened here?

It's strange, I was frozen and of course a solid heart is as much of a philosopher's stone as anything. I had to melt it for the catalyst. Maybe the coldness meant I could do nothing but endure. Eternal retreat invites attack from the cruel.

(It is different now)

My eyes light up when he walks in the room.

A hammering in my head don't stop
From the bullet train
From Tokyo to Los Angeles
I'm leaving you behind
A flash in the pan
A storm in a teacup
A needle in a haystack
A prize for the winning
A dead for the raising
A catch for the chasing
A jewel for the choosing
A man for the making in this blistering heat

The old person I was is a foundation and is not gone, enough of them remains to colour my eyes grey rather than blue. That's not a bad thing. I do not want to reject or destroy my past. I need to remember what it was like before the music and the beat in my head so that I do not become arrogant or over proud of what I feel now. After all, it means little to anyone else.

(But it's the source of the gold, the structure that the lightning flashes down, the tapestry, the act of for once and always succeeding, the rebirth, the sudden leap, the gem and the flame)

I think I have become a composite.

Sweat it all out
Sweat it all out
With your bedroom eyes and your baby pouts
Sweat it all out
In our electric storms and our shifting sands
Our candy jars and our sticky hands

I now know how to actually work and how to get soil or blood on my hands without feeling as though it is unfair or unwelcome. The sweat is as clean as salt water. I have lost the heart stone and any solidity, rigidity, my flexing to allows me to survive.

Sweat it all out
Sweat it all out
Sweat it all out
Sweat it all out
Sweat it all out
Sweat it all out

And I can feel the anticipation and the nervousness of it all rising up into my hands, which move, and produce it here on the screen for you. There is the hot prickle of sweat between my shoulder blades, which will never be the same colour again.

I sweat.

I am afraid.

I am elated.

I am shaking like an arrow, like the quiver of a cat's tail, like hands gripping the shaft of the bow or the length of the pen. Once I never won anything, was lonely, was so cold in a small room that I thought blood should be spilt in profane ritual rather than holy. Tomorrow I remake myself in my own image and will always have the memory of Cathedrals and God just behind my right eye.

Don't forget what I wrote you then
And don't forget what I told you then
And don't forget I that meant to win
And don't forget your ventolin
So a hammering in my head don't stop
In the bullet train from Tokyo to Los Angeles

Release and grin. Breathe out and smile. Draw in to laugh. Does not everything look so different by moonlight, by star shine, by the warmth of the sun? Be pleased and mind what watchmakers wound the mechanism of your heart. You'll find more than one, but beneath it all will be the strong beat placed by the Engineer who shaped the aerodynamics of the feather. That's the song that will be etched.

The noise is louder now, and I say -

Catch as catch can.

Hope you can keep up.

Lyrics to 'Hammering in my head' copyright Garbage