The other day I walked past the college I went to for 5 years. The reason I was there for 5 years was because I originally tried to get straight onto the music course after school and I was so bad on guitar that the guy who I auditioned to ever so politely told me that I needed to do the course below it which was a year and it was a mixture of Drama, Music and Dance and that if I passed 2 of them, I could choose which course I would do for the next 2 years. I ended up choosing Drama instead of Music after this 1st year course as the music class was full of too many guitarists and after the first year my friend told me at the time that I was "The best actor" he had ever seen. When I asked him "What, the best actor EVER?" he replied "No, the best actor in Ashton-Under-Lyne." His point being that there aren't many actors in my town and it would be a wiser choice for me to do Drama than Music and I could always play my guitar as much as I want to at home and not have to be tied down to learning particular songs for music class with about 8 different guitarists. Anyway, I then did that 2 year course on Drama and was planning on going to university for 3 years to get my degree but a HND course opened and the plan was to arrange to do that course which was also 2 years and then as arranged with the university, I could then just do one year there as a top up on my HND to get my degree. After I and a few others finished our HND course and went to university, they then told us that they stopped doing "Top up" years and that we would have to do the whole course again. This was pointless as it would be 3 years and a lot of the people who were in university classes hadn't even studied Drama before and I had for 5 years. So after staying about 3 weeks, I decided to leave. More about my life on what happened on the next blog post but back to my point on this:-
The Performing Arts building isn't there anymore. After my last year the college decided to knock it down. I knew something like this was going to happen as ever other building in the college during my time there had been renovated and when the time came for ours to be done, they said that they didn't have enough money at the time and kept putting it off. I didn't think at the time that they were planning to knock down the building, I just thought that they didn't want to give our department any funding as they might have thought we were all a bunch of mad idiots. Why would you want to give mad idiots money?
I remember my last day in the college. It was strange. Surreal. The building and everyone in it were all just really flat. We did a monthly thing called "Studio Group," where everybody if they wanted to could get up on the stage and perform whatever it was they wanted. It was a great idea as it was an opportunity to try something different. Needless to say that I hardly ever took the opportunity. I think I was too scared of what people thought of me at the time or that I simply didn't have the balls. I think the same could be said for a lot of people there. The last performance in that studio group was some horrid temporary band that played Nirvanas' "Smells like teen spirit". It was a really bad performance but everyone decided to jump up and down towards the latter part of the song anyway. After it was all over, people left the building slowly knowing that it was going to be knocked down and then that would be the end. I don't know why, but I half expected that most people would be crying or something. Because of the emotional attachment and all that crap. A few people did but nothing major. I kind of half expected for people to strap themselves to the walls and tie themselves to the railings in protest. Hopefully the brave, selfless heroic students could save the building from those horrid evil machines that were going to destroy the place that was a second home. After about 10 minutes after the last ever performance, most people were in the pub.
I remember being one of the few people left after everyone had left. A couple of tutors were in the office and I decided to take a walk through the whole of the building. It was kind of eerie walking through a empty rooms that for some reason all seemed really different as if I was entering them for the first time, but knowing that it would be for the very last time.
I wanted to start from one end of the building and walk right through. The end room was always locked anyway. The bridge room. The recording studio. The music room. The room next to the Music room which hardly anyone went in. The Dance studio. The stairs. The computer room. The room next to the computer room which was held for written work which nobody cared about doing. Past the office. The green room. Then finally the Drama studio. I kept this last on purpose. Each room had a memory. The room with nothing important in so it was never used. The room where we had that psycho teacher in for one day where the students were afraid for their lives. The room where I recorded that horrible solo album which 28 people actually bought. The room where I learnt my first song on the guitar. The room where I secretly went to when I wanted peace and quiet. The room where I discovered that I couldn't move my body in rhythm to save my life. The room where I wouldn't do any research whatsoever but would instead go onto chat rooms and email. The room where creative writing classes ended up being held and I wrote so much but I was too scared to read anything out. The room where we got ready for performances a million times and finally, the room where I discovered that I was actually good at something but for some reason just couldn't give everything I had. At best I gave 50%. I never really understood why.
I am not sure why I chose to walk through the college that day. I think after my birthday a few days before where a few people who did performing arts at my college were there must have triggered that. I actually had my name in wet cement on the side of the building that isn't there anymore.
There were no heroics by me or anyone else to try and keep the building open. At the time, nobody seemed to care too much. I do kind of wish I had done something now.
