The Ned Wood Archive

Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe it’s the time of man
I don’t know who I am

Brandi Carlile, Pyramid Stage, June 2025

Joe

As Joe walks down the hill with George, he finds that the anger returns.  Anger with himself.  It’s like the magic of Strummerville is fading.  His emotions come in cycles.  Long slow waves.  He feels OK when he’s talking to George, then he remembers how he screwed up and he starts to feel low again.  Brian Fallon swings by to haunt him.

I saw taillights last night in a dream about my old life

Everybody leaves, so why, why wouldn’t you?  

He knows that you get ups and downs.  The body has these rhythms.  There’s the day/night rhythm.  There’s the annual rhythm – that’s why people talk about seasonal affective disorder – SAD – getting depressed in the middle of winter.  He probably gets a lunar cycle too – like the tides.  I mean we’re all made of water.  What he should do is track how he feels and then do a Fourier transform or something to find out when he’s going to feel low.  Then he could make sure he’d got the right gigs lined up.  I mean Panic Shack are just what he needs right now, but you don’t always get what you want.  He could end up seeing some laid back folkies which might not help.

For a minute he gets distracted by some old bloke asking him and George about what they’re wearing.  He likes the skirts and probably wants to get something for his daughter.  They send him off in the right direction.  George says it’s because the two of them look so good.  He says Joe should be a model too.  That’s not what he wants to do right now.  He wants to be a wrecking ball operator or one of them blokes that blows up tower blocks and those massive factory chimneys.