Sunday, January 27, 2013

Persuasion

There's this moment that keeps winding itself round my head and throat. A moment that occurred during that last conversation, where I had described the terms of disengagement. For a moment that keeps returning to me, I can't remember exactly what I said. Something like that he'd go back to her and our existence would be wiped. "And what are you supposed to do?" He'd ask me. "Accept it. What else can I do?"

I wonder if I ever could have exploited the luxury of persuasion, as she did. His question makes me wonder if I could have fought, if I could have won. Is it possible to make someone love you again? Is it really possible to win someone back in some grand cinematic gesture? It's a scenario I'd never really imagined for myself, but then I don't believe that I can convince anyone to love me.

I keep seeing all those successful romantic appeals, not in life but in art. There are painted murals, long-haul flights, declarations over the PA and grand-stand karaoke. It indulges that impossible fantasy that you can do something. It's another world where words have this peculiar currency. You can say something heartfelt and persuasive and it'd change the course of your entire life.

There is this hopelessness, living in the knowledge that there was nothing I could have said or done. I imagine that in this flippant question, there was this unexplored possibility and I could have had the life that I was promised. I tend to forget the persuasiveness of the words I had used. I tend to forget how it became apparent that he had never bothered to read any of those carefully crafted appeals.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Eros

Andrew would always say that if you stood at Piccadilly Circus for long enough, you would eventually run into everybody. I imagine it from time to time, standing among the crowds, vying for a space among those steps, looking up at the flashing lights above. After waiting years (potentially), you would eventually see them.

If I could lead a dozen lives at once, I'd spend one life waiting at Piccadilly Circus, sitting by the statue of Eros. There would be that phantom prospect of a glance or even a weak smile from a friend, now long lost. There would be some kind of acknowledgement that something once existed, in one life or another.

Spycam

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Swoon

There are times when I get terribly caught up with Tumblr and I spend ages, scrolling further and further down the page to see more and more images. I marvel at the cohesiveness, when it comes to sites especially devoted to art, fashion and design. I marvel at the obscurity, when it comes to rare photographs of musicians I've loved for too long. For some reason, I carry this presumption that I've seen every photograph of Freddie Mercury ever shot and to see something new still enlivens the fangirl in me. It thrills me to think there is still more to see.

I came across a Tumblr called My Fangirl Problems, a depository where fangirls create faux memes to articulate the habits and anxieties arising from their musical obsession. Although much of it relates to the tastes of the next generation (think, Bieber or One Direction), I have to smile when I read it. I love to relate to the problematic problem of loving them far too much. When I read those posts, I'm back there, in Year 8, with a locker full of Queen clippings, thinking: Why did I have to choose the most popular band in the world to fall in love with?

What's fascinating is the varying tones of their frustration: ... when you see them kiss fans in photos, ... when you try to convince everyone that age is just a number, ... when your favourite fanfic never gets updated. Sure, some of it relates to the impossibility of a genuine romantic interaction, but much of it relates to time, money or technological restraints. I saved the JPG of the problem that stung me most: ... when you can't find anyone to talk to about them because no one you know likes them as much as you do.

I want to assure them. One day, you will have the money to go see them in concert. One day, you won't have school on their birthday. One day, you will find someone who totally gets you. But even then, I possess that very knowing pomposity that would irk any phantom fangirl. I never would have accepted such assurances, because much like everyone else, no matter what conversations I had or connections I made, no one else seemed to understand what it meant to harbour that intense breed of love that was both very real and very made-up.

I still feel it. I derive all kinds of lessons from his music and character and in this, my twentieth year of fangirlism. I can say with a high degree of certainty that I'll love him forever. For now, however, the frustrations of the hormonal fangirl have lessened and I no longer have to think of that loneliness that one stung me. It's more than a serendipitous sequence of chance connections, having conversations that send the heart racing and the mind reeling. It's that odd understanding that no matter what the group or musician, when it comes to that intense breed of musical love, the feelings are vastly synonymous.

I see now that the legacy and the frustration of my fangirlism does not necessarily exist in that search for connection. It's that endless process of working out the parameters of my passion, analysing it and trying to work out how they managed to secure such an unbelievably high degree of loyalty and fascination.
100 Holland Road

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Wax

I brought in the new year alone. I didn't intend it to be that way, but it felt appropriate somehow. As I stood by the upstairs window and watched the fireworks over Northcote, I don't think I could have had anyone else there.

With any other year, I'd take myself aside moments after midnight to read a letter I'd written a year before. There'd be lengthy summaries, paired with annoyingly simple and familiar moral overtures.

As I sat alone, I recalled those instances where I was forced to reveal the contents of my yearly letter, to Gav in a gutter in China Town and to Min in a kitchen in South Yarra. In both instances, I warned of its intensity but they insisted I proceed.

They were both disgusted, but for very different reasons. Gav came up with the infamously ironic (and the fucking stupid) statement: "you have ephemeral attitude towards love". Min, predictably, dismissed my candour and depressive tendencies.

I realised it quickly, after I managed to pull the pages apart that were stuck fast together with silver sealing wax. A year ago, I wrote with the same idiotic naïveté that I displayed in revealing my words to those I had loved so much.

I don't think I'd have ever realised, in my ten years of doing this, that perhaps these letters weren't about resolutions for the new year. They were about an ideal: someone interested enough to excuse themselves from a party, to follow me out to calmly listen to private thoughts.

Everything is different now, everything is more different than I could've ever imagined. I no longer hope for connection, I no longer hold that desire to glorify passing moments. I hope for nothing, except for the ability to quash that pathetic propensity to talk and to trust.

Disappointments Diary 2013