I would love to write a 33 1/3 book on Scritti Politti's Cupid & Psyche '85. Here is some of what you can expect, in raw form.

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The scene; oh, the scene. How I wish it was a city, a hip, even vaguely happening place. While I don't walk around Oakville murmuring "Toronto, Toronto" to myself, I know that one day I will live there, though how I will get there is beyond me.

But no; but no. Let me sample a day, scratch it, mix it up to make the day.

It is late June, the fullness of spring is here. Warm, dry, not too windy, everything still growing, and it still is fairly cool, as the sun sets. I am walking home from the mall: up Trafalgar Road, then along McCraney, on the fine gravel path that's always been there. I am wearing my favorite pink pearlized shoes, so I have to walk slowly and carefully, but will no doubt get some stray gravel in them as I walk anyway, upsetting my bare feet. To my left, the road, to my right, a sizeable wilderness ravine - wild raspberry bushes, wind-bent tall pine trees, a dense area that I know very well, as it has a small stream at the bottom and is marshy and at this time of year, lets in little sunlight once you are at the bottom. Even in this condominium-crazy area, there is the clear reminder that once this was all wild, with snakes and rabbits and perhaps even larger animals, as one of our cats was caught in a bear trap a few years ago...

But today is temperate and golden even on the rough path back home. On this beyond-perfect day, I have come back with some perfume samples, if not actual perfume; the scents are no doubt floral and powerful at once, light, very feminine but with a kind of oomph. The indescribability of perfume; the indescribability of music. I have been to the mall and have a new 12" single by Scritti Politti; I have no record player of my own so I have to wait until my parents are out to listen to it. (I do have my own radio/tape player, but no stereo just yet.) I know they will be out tomorrow, so I will be able to listen, and listen again; and then on another day, much later, I will get the album.

My pleasures are deferred and I don't mind.

I have never been the fanatical type and while I like Green I am not crushing on him, though he certainly would be the type to put up in my locker, except that I no longer have one; I have all but technically graduated from high school, and late June is the wonderful long pause before more sweating summer school, utterly pointless but necessary for me to finally leave White Oaks.

He wants his music to be just out of the ordinary, like white chocolate or hiccups; startling, but pleasurable. Clearly he is coming from a different place than anyone else I've read about in Star Hits (the American version of Smash Hits) and he knows it. In the world of Sade, Duran Duran and the Thompson Twins, he doesn't really fit in; but then he sort of does, just as he isn't really like The Smiths, Depeche Mode or Tears for Fears. He seems to like not fitting in, and as something of a misfit myself, I instantly and permanently identify.

I have no idea about deconstructionism, and had I heard the term, I would not know what it meant, where it came from, or why it needed to happen.

I have no idea about Derrida, Barthes, the lover's discourse, the inevitable breakdown of language, the signifier and the thing being signified.

I do know that there are some things that are hard to put into words, but words have to do somehow, in some way.

The rough gravel has gotten into my right shoe, so I stop to balance myself, take the shoe off and shake it quickly. No one else is on the path; the raspberries are ripening but not ready to be picked yet. I walk home, to a home distinguished by a lilac tree and a number and not much else.

It is nearly the very middle of the 80s, and whether I know it or not, an old world is gone, a new one is just about to happen; but for now, I wait for tomorrow morning and a chance to play my music loud.