MOTORCYCLE EMPTINESS by MANIC STREET PREACHERS. Story by Grace La Pace.

South West Sydney, 2015

I don’t go out. I never have, and I most likely never will. And it’s only recently that it’s dawned on me how this may be so unbelievable to some people, but it’s true. I’m 25, and I’ve never been drunk (much less even had a drink), taken drugs, or been with someone romantically. I’m not ashamed of that list (maybe just the last one) because for a majority of those early adult years where everyone else was living their scaffolded teenage lives, I was at home alone dreaming of a life, with a soundtrack to help paint the most perfect picture of what my life would be like tomorrow.

I discovered the Manic Street Preachers in high school when I was 16 years old. I was immediately drawn to Richey Manic, and thought we were soulmates (even though he was way past 20 years deceased at this point). Nevertheless, the first three Manic albums had a formative impact on me in my late teenage years, but it was the six-minute masterpiece Motorcycle Emptiness that truly was a rare opus in my incredibly mundane life.

In no way a love song, I found it to be incredibly romantic not only melodically, but lyrically. You might not understand every phrase and meaning, but you will hear the melancholic and existential yearn behind the words that pulls something in you to want to sing along in a scream- cry way.

I can’t speak of a specific memory that this song reminds me of, rather just an extended period of my life. My teenage-hood was a blur, and not because I was inebriated, as aforementioned – it was that everyday was exactly the same, that they all blend into one giant ghostly cloud of the past that unknowingly haunts me to this day.

I have always been an outsider, and the things I enjoyed as a teenager, and even now, were never shared with people I knew around me. I was very alone in my world, not only interest wise, but also socially wise. As I get older, I reflect on the experiences, or lack thereof, I’ve had in my life, and it leaves me with a melancholy that has forever changed the way I view my past, present, future. I was horribly lonely, and I still am. But at least in my youth I had music to drown out the loud humming in the background that things are not that okay. These days when the thoughts are too loud, unfortunately a sad song doesn’t relieve as much pain for me as it did as a 16 year old.

I gravitated to Richey, because I thought he was like me, in that we were both deeply unhappy and misunderstood by the celebrated people in our worlds. He was incredibly intelligent in his lyricism, and there was no one then, or even now, that writes with such intelligence, self-reflection and honesty that I could ever appreciate.

Richey, the Manics, all the music I was listening to at the time really did cushion me against a very tumultuous time, journeying between adolescence and adulthood, and wondering what kind a person I was going to be once I left the compound of high school. And where things were okay for while, the laments I ignored in the past are catching up with me, and now more than ever do I understand when the Manics say ‘Living life like a comatose’. I’m realising that I’ve spent a life with a blanket over me, and now that I’m aware, it manifests as grief, loneliness, rejection, confusion, heartbreak – all with the underlying theme that I feel like I’ve never existed. And that with whatever I do, or whatever I say, it’s as if nothing happened at all.

Upon reflection, Richey and I are not really the same – where he found at least a few people in his life that appreciated and paraded his words through song, I have never, and will never find someone who will listen to nor understand what I have to say.

Stereo Story #794