maybe we’ll get forty years together
music
Music Monday | Fever To The Form – Nick Mulvey
It’s a short, sweet week. My words are being written elsewhere at present and I have none left for this place. I haven’t much of anything left. So today, I’m trying to live by music.
So whether music or madness
We live by one of the two
Songwriters: Nick MulveyFever to the Form lyrics © Concord Music Publishing LLC
Music Monday | Nuvole Bianche – Ludovico Einaudi
On May 14, 2014, I wrote this of you. The date is important because it would be less than two weeks later that I’d meet G.
“Thank you,” I text, after an arduous afternoon, “for everything. Always, for everything. Love you. xo.”
“Thanks for the bunny!!” you reply, referring to the chocolate-Easter-bunny-egg thing I’ve been carrying around with me for weeks because each time I see you I forget to give it to you and this time, I finally remembered.
I laugh to myself at your reply. But moments later, my phone beeps again. “I love you, too.”
This time, I don’t laugh. A smile teases my lips and I push my head back into the head-rest as I drive, listening to…something. It doesn’t matter.
It’s true, I say to myself because you aren’t here, I do love you.
And I wonder what might have happened if I’d gotten my heart together, stitched it up, only to let it burst wide open with love for you way back when your heart was curious. But these are idle thoughts. Merely observations because I don’t long for things to be different. And I wonder about all the things that have happened since. And the only truth I’m sure of, is that I am so grateful for your friendship. For your steadfast love and care. And, for you, looking after my cat.
On the weekend just gone, you came to visit us; G and me, and my cat. Years ago now, you introduced me to Ludovico Einaudi’s music and late last year I saw something pop up in my Insta feed: Ludovico Einaudi in his first Australian outdoor performance. “Come,” I wrote to you, “please? I’d love to see this with you.” So you booked flights and I booked tickets. And on Saturday night we sat entranced at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl through Einaudi’s latest creation: 7 Days Walking.
Of course, he couldn’t not play one of his most recognised compositions, Nuvole Bianche. And so in the encore, he did. As he played, I pondered the last eight years. You were so good to me at a time in my life that was particularly awful. When I was particularly awful. And again, I was reminded, that I am so grateful for your enduring friendship. For your steadfast love and care. And I love you.
Music Monday | Sleep Baby Sleep – BROODS
A friend I haven’t heard from in a while got in touch today. Our contact is sporadic but consistent. I have loved him in all the ways it’s possible to love someone over the last 21 years. I love him still. He’s had a rough month; a sliver of the hard news, his cat passed away in his arms a few weeks ago.
I once wrote a poem about her. Or about him. Or about us. Whatever it was about, it was called:
His Cat
His cat is whoring herself
out to anyone
with a warm lap.
She chews on a belt loop
and looks up
disgruntled
when prodded to stop.
She sighs, stands, turns around and
returns to sleep.
It is surreal
or perhaps just
unreal
to think that life could be
like this.
It can’t.
She wakes again
his cat
murmurs and bathes
without leaving my lap.
Circa September 2010
Sleep, baby Piper. You were loved. You will be missed.
Music Monday | Nocturne – Blanco White
It’s the 23rd December 2019.
I tell you this, not because you asked me what the date is – I’m sure you’re capable of reading a calendar – but because today marks five years since I packed up my VW Golf, drove from Sydney to Gippsland one last time, and moved in with G.
It’s forever and five minutes, all at once. And it always will be.
And time fell away
With the sound of each step
If the stars align then
For us they were meant in the lunar sky
Music Monday | A Hard Day’s Night – The Beatles
It’s Monday night and I’m at work again. On overtime. Again. I’m not sure if it’s a hard day’s night or a hard night’s day. Either way, we are short on people at the moment and it’s hard on everyone.
Music Monday | Last Goodbye – Jeff Buckley
By the time this song was put onto a mix tape for me, Jeff Buckley had already been dead for two years. He was only 30 when, late one night in May 1997, he waded into the Mississippi River and drowned while going for a spontaneous swim. His body was found a few days later, upstream in Memphis.
As 2019 draws to a close, I’ve been watching the rounds of photos comparing people’s current self to their self from the beginning of the decade. In late 2009, I had just turned 31 but was severely entrenched in anorexia and yet to choose recovery. I didn’t believe I’d see the end of year, much less the end of a new decade. By the end of 2010, I was attempting recovery. Cautiously, with only a little hope.
Life has shifted many times over the past 10 years. Many things have changed but unfortunately, some have not. I’m in treatment again and have been for a year. It’s 25 years since Jeff Buckley released this song, a year after I first developed anorexia. But this time, I’m hoping that with the right treatment, I can say the Last Goodbye.
Music Monday | Things You Think – Ben Folds, Nick Hornby & Pomplamoose
…smoke your little smoke, drink your little drink, and try to make sense of the things that you think…
Spotify has been throwing songs into my daily mixes from the new — well, relatively — (The) National album. Back in 2010, when today’s Music Monday song was released, I tried listening to The National but couldn’t get into them. Their new album, however, features numerous female vocalists, adding layers and a depth to their music that I haven’t noticed in the past. And it’s growing on me.
Even still, any time I hear “The National” mentioned, I cannot help but think of the song by Ben Folds, Nick Hornby and Pomplamoose.
But in the event that you haven’t listened to the new National album either, here’s a trailer for it.
Music Monday | Here With Me – Dido + a Bonus Track
It’s late. Monday is almost over and I’m trying to squeeze this in before midnight. I’d planned to do it earlier in the day but I’ve been sick, procrastinating, hoping I’d improve instead of getting worse.
In the early 1990s when Beverly Hills 90210 was released, my parents deemed it “inappropriate” television for me. There was sex *gasp*, drugs *the horror*, and domestic violence. While all my high school friends were following the lives of Brenda, Brandon, Dylan, Kelly, Donna, David, Steve and Andrea, I could only watch it in secret at friends’ houses, or listen to the stories around the school lunch table and try to piece together the episodes.
It may have seemed like “just a tv show” to my parents but not being allowed to watch it excluded me from fundamental group bonding between the ages of 12-17. I missed out on popular tv culture that not only provided entertainment, but that also dealt with some serious adolescent issues. Date rape. Eating disorders. Racism. Teenage pregnancy. Suicide. They may have been trying to protect me from the world but the world insisted on making itself known to me through direct experience, even if I hadn’t seen the preview.
Later, when I was living on my own in my late teens/early 20s, a new teenage drama began. I started watching it the first night it aired, not because of the show itself — it was on by accident — but because of the opening theme. The show, Roswell, didn’t last long, a few seasons only; sci-fi teen drama isn’t really a popular genre. But the opening credits rolled with a style of music I’d not heard before. An eerie swooning song, it captured my attention from the first bars. When Dido sang the opening lines, “I didn’t hear you leave, I wonder how am I still here, I don’t want to move a thing, it might change my memory,” I was swallowed whole, into their world.
Roswell wasn’t renewed for a fourth season but my attention was drawn by another show that was starting — The OC. I was married now but Ryan, Seth, Marissa and Summer were living the type of teenage experiences I’d missed out on. Except for the sexual assault. To this day, I don’t know many women who’ve avoided it completely. I inhaled all these shows; the characters with their complicated angst and their ability to act out their emotions so assuredly. The theme song for The OC had an entirely different impact on me; I longed for the seemingly simple, nostalgic American teenage years.
It took me years to realise I was always trying to be somebody else; to escape my own life for something else, somewhere else.
And it’s taken many more to build a life I no longer want to escape from.
Music Monday | Outside the Lines – Birdtalker
After running a Spotify account for about two years, I’m finally starting to use it in a way that doesn’t involve just searching for my favourite songs and listening to them. Lately, I’ve been paying attention to the recommendations and last week stumbled onto this gem.
Birdtalker’s debut album One was released last year after an EP in 2016, and a new single came out just over a week ago.
When I met G, I sent him a list of my flaws; number nine of fifteen said “I listen to too much indie folk music.” Birdtalker’s debut One may not fit as neatly into the indie folk music genre as their EP Just This but it is still largely reminiscent of that soft, folksy Americana that draws me in.
But what Birdtalker has, in addition to sweet sweet sounds, is something magical in their lyrics. There is an existential heartache in their songs; the search for meaning and purpose by a couple who’ve deconstructed from Protestant religion. Perhaps it’s their rejection of exclusionary dogma, a mirror of my own trajectory, and the unpacking of the baggage of religious narratives that I resonate with. Perhaps it’s the way they challenge traditional hierarchies while they examine their role in maintaining such systems. Perhaps it’s that their songs sit in a liminal space I’m far too familiar with. Whatever it is, I love it.
In an article with Billboard prior to the release of the song I’m posting tonight, songwriter Dani Green said: “I was pretty angry when I wrote it, but I don’t think you would know that from listening to the song.”
Dani, who co-fronts Birdtalker with her husband Zack Green, tells Billboard about the gentle, harmony-laden folk song. Organized religion was Green’s intended target, but “Outside The Lines” carefully encompasses hypocrisy on a broader scale.
“I was tired of feeling like people in that arena could — because they say they’re believing in good things — treat people really poorly,” Green explains. “That just stirred up a lot of anger in me. The language of the song, the words, are very flowery and elevated to poke fun at the elevated, flowery language of religion, the ancient texts. It feels like it’s deceptive. That language, because it’s so nice and flowery, is like a shield you could put up in front of you, but then you go and treat people in ways that’s not at all reflective of the things you said.”
“Outside The Lines” is, however, representative of Green’s lyrical approach on the album’s 11 tracks. “It’s sort of a snapshot of a period of deconstruction and having a lot of open-ended questions,” she says. “It feels pretty open-handed and like it asks a lot of question and sort of targets mainstays or institutions, things that are kind of an unquestioned part of your life — until you decided to start questioning them. So it feels like a lot of questions, with a little bit of resolve.”
