Chris Martin: world's sexiest vegetarian?

Confession time.

I feel the need to digress and confess. And it was just a little song that brought it to mind, the sudden sensation of pleasure, alongside of which emerged my need to apologise and feel utterly guilty. Guilt equals confession, so I won’t say I am sorry, as I’m tired as **** of apologising. I will try to outline this forbidden emotion and I’ll hope that you sympathise, while I wrestle with my own need to speak the truth. As it is my problem, not yours, it is wrong to ask for sympathy. I’ll just have to immerse myself in the idea I can’t let go of, the pleasure that always seems inherently wrong.

I am getting off the track here. Let’s just get it out. Wait. Before I do, I have to say that this is not my only secret. I don’t want you to think I’m a one-note song. But here we go, deep breath, deeply unpopular point of view coming up.

I think Chris Martin is really … fanciable. There. I’ll let your mind fill in the ellipse; I am incapable at this point of actually speaking the word. And I am trying to keep this blog vaguely intelligent, although that is project doomed to failure. But instead of looking at my inability to speak my truth, look at him: he’s passionate, strange, driven. And when I heard that song off ‘X & Y’ again, the excitement I felt on the first listen reappeared, just when I thought I had gotten over Coldplay. Instead, I was swept off my feet, caught up in a feeling of love, the unusual emotion of warmth, as though someone actually cared how I felt. I like the singers whose voices reach out like a whisper in the dark to me, their poetry expressing some unresolved conflict of mine. In other words, the slightly embarrassing midnight journal writing school of rock. Chris has a soft voice that murmurs understanding; as though you were crying on his shoulder and he didn’t mind. And coupled with the strange soothing joining of masculine and feminine in his accent, there are the images, like the one of him lying on the stage in a yoga pose, feet touching his back, stomach exposed, eyes closed. Ask a cat. To do that before a crowd of strangers shows trust and bravery -and he’s obviously very flexible.

Even though the concert I saw was really disappointing, I feel that alone, Chris must be a firebrand. He’s just not a superficial crowd-pleasing testosterone frontman. Anyway, how can you have an intimate moment in a giant warehouse like Earl’s Court? So I forgive Chris that imperfection. He’s a homebody who travels the world, trying to make things good and right. And at home, what does he do? Is it true that he composes music in the nude? That he and his significant other eat dinner naked? It’s an interesting yet disturbing thought, which makes me want to try it the next time I cook up some brown rice. A spiritual, yet practical sensuality that makes the everyday different. The idea of Chris playing piano without clothes provokes a rush of imagining, especially when I recall his energetic piano playing at Glastonbury a couple of years ago. And I always thought that the guitar was the only instrument one could…engage with. I must point out that I am putting Gwyneth from my mind here. The idea that she watches him, equally nude, is not helpful to my thoughts. This is my fantasy, so back to our original subject.

‘I feel life,’ goes the refrain of one of his songs. What does he feel? Is he as sensual as the insistent rhythms he embraces for the anthemic Coldplay chorus? The camera certainly embraced him during his appearance on the comedy show ‘Extras’. Acting the star suited him, and let’s face it, whether you like him or not, he and his band are a huge success, so he knows what he’s about. Why shouldn’t he enjoy the experience of at least pretending to act in an egotistical way? We permit Mick Jagger all sorts of liberties, why not Chris? Is it because of his feminine sensibilities that he becomes an easy target?

I like a man who can laugh at himself. Men are very amusing; so few of them are able to recognise it. If he can take the image and play with it, that’s a very disarming quality. But admiring Chris physically apart from his humour adds to his appeal. He’s thin, long-limbed, quick to laughter. His intense blue eyes are very beautiful. It’s how I was able to recognise him once, as he was walking down a fashionable residential street, wearing a scarf as a sort of headdress, thinking somehow that made him less conspicuous. He was very slender, a reed in the wind, and looked rather crazed. Apparently he once said in an interview that no one would recognise him on the street as he looked like ‘a drug dealer’. It must have been him then, I couldn’t help staring. Chris was vibrating at a higher frequency, a charismatic beacon. He had the lovely look money gives some people: well brushed; glowing, not shiny; lines smoothed; slightly insane with self-contentment. Out on the street, I thought he looked nervous. I wanted to give him a big hug. If only we could have comforted each other, facing life at the end of the afternoon, a slight sadness in the air. We were alone in the emptiness of the day, no one else around, no one to confirm our sighting of each other. I was the supplicant, startled into desire; he was the glorious fool, watchful on his solitary journey, thinking. Always thinking. But not clearly enough or he might have realised that wrapping his head in a colourful scarf was not enough to hide him.

Chris has long fingers. At the end of ‘Extras’, as he was seated at the piano, endlessly plugging his song with an energy and irritation that caused you to wonder if this was a cathartic experience for him, the camera lingered upon his fingers. They were manicured, of course, slight, long, complicated, talented without explanation. His hands made me think of sex, which is also complicated and requires talent without explanation. What it also necessitates is a sense of the ridiculous. Where else, except in art, do you need to be able to lose the plot, feet off the ground and lost in deep fantasy, in order to succeed? I would bet that he knows that.

What else can I say? Chris Martin’s ability to be both ridiculous and serious at once, to be able to fight off the critics, even as they prod his weak points, is something to be admired. And the fact that he can go on television and make fun of himself, while looking sexy as hell, well, what more do we want? A man not afraid to kiss his best friend in the band on stage, a social reformer who isn’t afraid to be different. In an article where Chris spoke about the phenomenon of their band being hated as well as loved, he hinted at the fundamental androgyny of Coldplay: ‘Maybe we’re too feminine for the masculine and too masculine for the feminine.’

I like that he knows he is pushing the boundaries. He’s slightly outrageous, decorating himself with his drawn on Fair Trade stripes, and blue and red taped fingers. He’s gentle, as in the photo where his baby is in a carrier against his chest, and his face is pensive, softened, sheltering his child. A man, no, a person, who isn’t afraid to show his feelings, who admits to caring. A man who isn’t trying so hard to be hard 24/7.

Maybe that doesn’t make Chris popular. But it makes him deeply attractive.

faithful readers

Hello faithful readers - or non readers.

I suspect someone out there reads this from time to time, although I could be wrong.
I wrote this in a trance, thinking for once, of what they might be like.

Hello faithful readers. Or non-readers, although I do suspect that someone reads this from time to time, at least, at last. I am not entirely sure that their silence on the matter indicates displeasure, although this could be an egotistical delusion on my part. I would like to think of one particular person reading at this moment, the first one that has come to mind. May I point out that my imaginings on this subject are complete fantasy, and have no relation to anyone living or dead (although I’m not sure why they bother putting the last one in, surely no one dead minds at this point? What does it say about us as a culture if we think they mind? I suppose it’s their family we worry about, or is it?).

I imagine this person, distracted from what they call the real labours of their life, which can only be undertaken alone, begins to surf the internet in order to find something amusing to do that will permit them to avoid actual effort. They go over the usual news channels, perhaps a chat room or two, they glance at the responses to pieces they themselves have written. Then, idleness coupled with a hidden desire to see something they fear will be base and dross, which will encourage them in their sweet egotism and permit them to face the day, reminds them of a blog they had heard of, once. For some reason, they actually find the title on the litter of papers and books on their desk. And taking one look out over the green trees and garden of almost middle August, they heave a sigh and hope, in the darkness of their hearts, that it will be readable at worst, and at best, will contain some laughable quote or idea that could be cannibalised. No, there is another deeper layer – and that whispers to them that it might be compromising, it might actually speak the truth about the Pandora’s box of social interaction. Will it be a diary entry, filled with unspoken longings and deep dreaming? Will it mention soft fabrics and tasteful colours, harsh words and hidden desires? Hard wooden seats, and sudden exchanges of eye contact that certainly contain volumes, if only this foolish person could see it? Suppose they do see it?

The person I imagine stops for a moment, energised strangely by the thought that perhaps the blog will reveal that the writer has seen it and even more strangely, has been able to express it. Foolish thoughts! The reader begins their own voyage of imagination, observing the changes wrought in their own mind and body with a sort of wonderment. Not for the first time, they contemplate the fury and power contained in possibility, rather than completion. It is this thought that has let them achieve all that they have. Their ability to sublimate and contain, to push off instant gain for future solidity. The writer, they know, has not done this. They have gone down the road of desire and impulse, they have not been able to support pain, and so in this way have merely increased the difficulty in their life.

The voyeur in the reader wants to see this detailed. They tell themselves that they want to read what they have intelligently avoided in order to feel that they have made the right decisions. They don’t mention to themselves that they would like to see what impulse looks like, and if it resembles any part of what they drift into imagining.

How deep is their shock when they discover a vaguely middle class moan on the observations of the day, class structure and the hours. This is not what they had in mind.

The writer of the blog laughs. If they only knew! This was the one for general consumption! No wonder it is so dull! Then they pause. Perhaps this is why people find the writer’s life dull – as the best parts are hidden.

Note to self: give more clues.