Procrastination: the invisible and soul-destroying force that prevents Paul on doing what he’s supposed to do, namely his school work. He knows he has left everything too late, spent too much time doing other, more pleasurable things*, and now it’s all catching up with him; the sudden realisation that he has much ground to cover, and the very real possibility that he may fail to do everything he needs to on time. Consequently, he now feels as if he’s the only person in the entire universe suffering from this shameful affliction.

I tried to find pertinent songs about procrastination to go with this post, but surprisingly it appears that this ubiquitous condition is not a subject much expounded on by musicians, at least not in my record collection. In the end, I chose the Dream Syndicate’s ‘Tell me when it’s over’ as the chorus of the song could plausibly describe the way Paul feels at this moment in time.

* See ‘Phantom flight’, ‘A gallery of phantoms’ and ‘Epistolary’ posts below.