My introduction to the magical world of Myspace was through the growing buzz around Myspace music and my groupie antics for the Knight’s musical entourages. My personal profile got very little action and in the real world my life was growing more busy! When the band forum finally disbanded after hopping about for a bit while appendages and members slowly fell away to the wayside, I began a new project to eat up my time. Many of my friends were now embracing the myspace revolution, but still in my mind my life was positively boring barring the apple-of-my-eye.
See I was the guardian to a positively radiant pooch, a clever and cute bundle of fluff with great patience and charisma. Together we were a team and actually were at competitions most weekends, even having a brief flash of stardom on the BBC with Rolf Harris. Sorry I am deviating but she is a pretty remarkable dog!
When your dog is more renowned than you, it doesn’t take much for you to go off the rails of normality. So when I saw a “doggy” profile on myspace, soon to be re-coined “petspace” by the surprising vast community, I couldn’t resist bragging about my four-legged friend. You had to learn quick that your lovely human opinion was unnecessary, instead the community was a pet point-of-view hive. Full of simple pleasures, frankness, squirrels and food. Worries were left at the door and instead replaced by a general warmth of making new friends and sharing your daily canine shenanigans. Oh if life were so simple as a dogs!
I now talked about myself in the third person and took on the alias of The Missus. I was too young to be called Mum and The Missus is in fact how my mother addresses me to this day when prompting me to feed/walk/entertain my four-legged diva! It was surprising how by just replacing your profile information with that of your canine companion, fears of stalking and unnecessary male attention which was splattered across the news melted away. My parents didn’t mind because it was just photos and anecdotes of the most mundane kind. Even though my diva is way cooler than me, I didn’t feel that my friends would really get it and so I concealed my new profile from prying and often spiteful eyes.
It became my oasis of making new friends and oh I did – all across the world, all ages and background and I formed connections I will never lose. It was the beginning of a journey of creativity, business ventures, love, heart-ache and a little fame on the way. It seems only right I take the time to document it all because it really was a unique time in my life.
I learnt quickly to sift through the general drivel of cutesy profiles and look for the more serious, thoughtful and genuine people. But in this world, as with dogs in the park it was okay to just sniff butts and walk on, clicking accept friend request didn’t mean you had to invest time and energy into getting to know them, it just was a “Collect ‘em all” kind of attitude which was engulfing much of the myspace world. From musician to pet-owners, people were adding anyone and everyone with much thought.
And it was in the midst of many friendship requesta I saw what I can describe as the most emo picture of a dog you can imagine. In black and white and aged, the long nose of this standard dachshund pointed remorsefully at the floor, you knew immediately this wasn’t some dog dressed in pink and being carried around in a bag. This pooch had attitude. My diva and Emo Dachshund became friends and exchanged the standard pleasantries but I was soon to see that Dachshund was more colourful than I could imagine.
His art was in being frank and funny, coarse but fair. One-liners of pure gold would cascade into the comments like they were being copied straight from Jack Dee himself! I soon found out more about the writer behind, he was a she! A few years older than me and she didn’t live in the UK or America or even Europe, she lived in Israel. I guess I’d lived in a bubble and thought Israel would be a world away from my little island, certainly not have the internet or flashy cameras or follow popular fad but I grew to see that excluding the climate we weren’t that dissimilar.
A friendship grew, we artistically challenged each other (more on that later) but my photoshop skills, music recording and video all got tested. We checked in on each other every few days or so, with a little update on life. Jokes and a little mickey taking of the pettier petspace goings on also helped pass the time joyfully.
It was one normal boring day when I just logged on as normal that I saw something that brought reality crashing through the virtual myspace walls. I guess it had been a few days since I had heard from them but thought nothing of it as she was at uni. I saw a message; normally the opening would be the cue for a big smile and a hearty reply. Alas this was not the case, it simply read “Sorry for not being around, a suicide bomb went off and big bro got hurt”. Our world weren’t that similar at all... I don’t recall my reply but I think it just aired my concern and thoughts.
She had a gun in her house and was trained to use it, she had done military service. She was under constant fear of her own or her family’s safety, we really were worlds apart... Her world was a dangerous one and how I admired her courage, the way they just picked themselves up and kept going, refusing to bow to terrorism. And Emo Dachshund now donned a black hat, titled to one side – he was bad-ass, no one messed with gangster Dachshund, we smiled and laughed.
I realised that my escape from my “boring” life was pretty self-centred; she was escaping the war-zone on her doorstep. She had reason to want to escape, her dogs never went outside their garden and she was safest when at home.
We drifted apart as the sparkle of petspace fame began to grow in the back of my mind. We never exchanged emails or names but we shared a common love for our pooches as well as smiles, fun, heartache and a few memories but she taught me that my security, freedom and safety are a lot to be thankful for.
... And I’m pretty sure I’ll never meet another Jewish Emo Gangster Dachshund...
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