“You really ought to read this book, I think you’d find it interesting and it’s very well written,” my husband said in the early hours,. one morning. As usual we were both reading in bed, probably way past when we should have been asleep. I glanced sideways but couldn’t see what it was, a big hardback, and asked more. “It’s by Dave Grohl, it’s his autobiography.” Oh, yes I’d given it to him for Christmas. “It’s very well written,” my husband added, as if to clinch his recommendation.
I only knew the vaguest details about Dave Grohl, I thought he might be in the Foo Fighters, and all I knew about them was that some years ago their logo was on the favourite t-shirt of one of my naughty students. I couldn’t think of any of their music but thought it might be some metal genre, and very loud. However, my husband’s recommendation was enough, and after he had finished the book, and after it had sat on the pile on my side of the bed and he’d asked me several times if I had read it yet, I picked it up and opened it.
It is very interesting and I am learning a lot about a music scene which about which I was totally ignorant. I was right that Grohl was a Foo Fighter and in fact had started the band, but I had no idea he had been in Nirvana too. I’m just over halfway through and I recommend it to anyone, whether they are interested in this genre of music, or any music at all, because it is, as my husband said, very well written. Which brings me on to something else.
The something else is my failed attempts to find a way to write my own story, not a fictional one, but a true one (as far as I can remember) of my life. I have never wanted to write the ‘I was born on the 12th of January, in Cambridge…’ and have tried to tell my story through different ways – through the importance of water and rivers in my life, though the context of my family history, through an imagined observer – but nothing has worked. I have written plenty of stories about myself and things which have happened to me, but I have never got a handle on how to properly do the thing.
I think, maybe Dave Grohl has unbeknownst to him, shown me a template. If you haven’t read his book, ‘The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music’, even though you might have no interest in his music, I really do recommend it. And if i ever do manage to write my own story, then I also hope you might read that too!
My featured image is of my husband’s band from his youth, The Sabres.
Lois Elsden 