Letters written, never meaning to send

I felt a small sense of accomplishment when I realised I hadn't written to you in a year. They never substantial communications, they were innocuous emails, at best. Reminders of in-jokes and maybe songs you might like, things you might have seen or missed. I didn't write frequently but I came to realise my writing fell into some sort of an abyss. No reply. There was something tragic about that silence and I slowly came to accept that when my name flashed upon your screen it triggered some sort of shame stimulus. I was a living shame stimulus. So I stopped writing.

I still find things I want to talk about but I let that inclination evaporate. I think about it and carry on much like a recovered junkie. I haven't reconciled that existential mystery: am I remembered with scorn or am I remembered with longing? I once believed in false dreams and images of warmth, but now I don't know. I tend to believe in something more complicated now. It's a bit like a hologram, you can hold it to the light and play with its perspective, and the colours will change, from moment to moment. There was a full spectrum of love and toxicity, I've had to face that alone.

I miss you in this reckless, life-wasting way. I can't write anymore, I can only hope you can listen to the songs we once listened to and remember some of the cackling, some of the harmonies we once sang together. It's not much but it will have to do for now.

Heady States

"You have to remember the power of your words too. For you, it's a heady moment to forget but for me, it's waves of electricity coursing through my fingers. You touch me."

It's a quote that's lived in me for years and years and for some reason it came back to me today. It was from this English rock star penpal who I talked to online when I was 20. He hated that "rock star" label so much, but I can say he was a musician from some emerging indie band that managed to infiltrate the mainstream. We met during a phone interview: he called from London and I spoke into a microphone from my little radio studio at RMIT. There was a minor confusion in the set up, did he mean the interview was this Thursday or the Thursday after? The conversation itself was long, relaxed and languid. We would go on to send super lengthy emails to one another. Soon it became frantic texts in the middle of the night and eventually, some real or imagined romantic dimension materialised.

In spite of its brevity, the communication was electrifying. In retrospect, I see that everything was closely tied to his narcissism. I had granted him this unlimited space to speak about himself and his band and girlfriend and music and neighbours and festivals... that he never really bothered to find out anything about me. It was just how I wanted it. Each email sent provided this incredible opportunity to blend my favourite things: therapy, music and analysis, all the while obscuring the pathetic truth of my existence as a failing law student. Despite all that, he managed to infuse so much romance into the dynamic, that we may as well have been dispatching ink-stained letters in the early 1800s. I died to see his name on a screen. It meant he was thinking of me.

The fall out was devastating. He returned home from a tour in Holland and texted me: "My world's seismic. I've fallen in love. I need to talk to you..." I momentarily thought that he was referring to us but he would swiftly disclose that he was agonising over some other girl. She was with someone else too but they had been talking intensely for some months now. Since it happened, all those years ago, I kept on screaming into the ether, "HOW ON EARTH DID YOU HAVE SPACE FOR THIS??" It's hilarious to say it now but at the time I was completely heartbroken. For years I pined for his poetic turn-of-phrase, his dramatic sensibility and his over-the-top insistence that I understood what it all meant.

The story is more nuanced and detailed than that, but that's why I've written so many essays about it over the years. All coded, disguising the identities of the victims. He was intensely quotable: when I asked him whether he wanted to see me in London, he said: "I'd only see you if it meant more to me than it would to you." It was romantic while at the same time there was an ambiguity that would confuse you. He doled out phrases that would hold you tight and squeeze you like a boa constrictor. My hostel lover was a bit like that, coming up with expressions like, "Just because I don't want to remember, doesn't mean I can forget..." and "Every time you've looked at me and felt I've wanted to kiss you, I've wanted to kiss you..." I mean, what does that even mean?

I don't believe either of them were really in love with me when they said these things, but there was something in their capacity to say such things so beautifully and spontaneously that led them into this very intense kind of euphoria, like a creative flow state. They fell in love with themselves and their own poetics. I'm not sad about it, they were powerful lines, any one of them could be shoehorned into a jagged post-punk anthem that we'd sing down at the indie clubs. I miss their poetic desperation. I would give anything now for their name to flash on my screen, despite the pain, despite the fallout.

Guidance

It's only when you open up to the wrong person that you realise how multifaceted grief can be. You mourn for lost moments, lossy memories and an even lesser regard. You've lost out on the most valuable cultural exchange but they never seems to understand it. They think sadness comes from the memory of physical love, but it's often about a more simple desire to be present with another person: it's a longing for the warmth and the education to carry on, as promised.

It's an ineffectual desire in light of where I find myself now. I've been attempting to think of the future and address those plans I once had. It's uncomfortable to dream, now that I find that I have to develop some other life. I wake up each afternoon in a kind of panic. I feel less and less welcome in the hostel, having read horrible things that were intended for me and horrible things that weren't. I have uncovered a plot to replace me and someone else must work for free until I decide that it's time.

I labour on ancient memories after a year of silence, his suggestions that I leave the hostel (and London) as soon as possible. We frequently described this place as a kind of purgatory, as the events of each night managed to bleed into one another and everybody appeared to be wearing the same clothes constantly. I refer to those poetic reflections, those agreements that touched upon how we have all lived together knowing that it was the best and the worst way to live. We lived knowing that this was a stolen season and none of this was ever real.

I don't know where I could possibly go, but I hope I'll have my desk, my books, some air, some light and my guitar. There'll always be those persistent dreams of demos with fuzzy hooks and loaded lyrics, but I know that I will naturally gravitate towards essays about music, grief, love and hope. The wrong people may characterise it as a destructive habit to remember, reframe and honour how I've been mistreated, but for me, it's the only way I can learn and grow and find out what I want. I don't want to talk anymore, I just have to write...

Absolute Beginners

I had never written you an unsent letter. My essays were my unsent letters. They were formalised affairs with broader themes, but I wrote them with you in mind, like Montaigne to La Boétie. I wrote them to heal and accept what had happened because I suppose in spite of everything, I had always hoped that you loved me more.

I have now returned to my home and I see that you're checking in, more and more. Again, I'm left to consider whether there's anything left to say. Are there any more poetics? Do I have any further revelations, anything you need to know? Do I want a dialogue? Perhaps, but I can't guarantee that I won't be destroyed by it.

For the months that I've known it was you, I've wondered what was the point of your readership, but then I remember how much you loved my writing. You swooned over it in chunky paragraphs, saying that my musical writing should be prescribed reading from the age of 14. Perhaps you are curious, perhaps you miss my universe.

I once wrote of my suspicion of those who didn't write, as if those who failed to write failed to remember. Now I've returned to my room, with stacks upon stacks of filled notebooks, creaking with dust and melancholy. I wrote to find an acceptable truth, but it meant distorting all I knew to create a narrative where I was the victim who cared more.

When they announced that the hostel was probably going to shut down, I used my sentimental reputation to patronise the feelings of others. In a heated discussion with a dear friend, I predicted a future where we all dispersed and they'd wipe out memories of the life we shared together. Teary-eyed, she swore at me and stormed out of the kitchen.

After that confrontation, I realised that I have challenged the sentimentality of others for as long as I can remember. In the most natural and subversive tactic, I've boasted that I'm prepared for their forthcoming betrayal. It's harsh and unfeeling and I'm not entirely clear why I do it. Perhaps it's an attempt to deceptively obtain an undertaking that they do care, some evidence I can take down for later use.

Otherwise, I often find myself sitting across from the heartbroken, counselling the sentimental. They yearn for a familiar face and dialogue. I speak of loss authoritatively and I encourage them to write it out. I speak, mindful of the lyrics of Paul Weller, "you can lose a lifetime thinking of it and lose an era daydreaming like I do..."

We can lose an era when we begin to contemplate our consequence. I can't begin to know of mine, but I will say that I cherish those qualities I inherited from you: the unyielding energy and enthusiasm for creative projects, the fascination for musical anecdotes, the desire to research weird subcultures.

It would have been cool to share all that with you, but it's alright. I can explore all that with the people who can be here now.

Desire Lines

I used to count how many cities I had visited since he'd left. I last counted nine, but I know there have been many more since then. Perhaps when I got to 10, 15 or 20 cities, I would lose that compulsion to report to him. I would no longer stumble over those various reminders that'd compel me to reach out, swooning with some references that only he would understand. Perhaps, then, I might have seen enough to convince me that there was more to life than that love.

The on-road associations used to rattle in my chest until I communicated them to him. It was the same even when we knew each other, I'd rush to tell him all I had seen in Stockholm or Budapest, all the neon, the cheap vinyl and all the model buildings, poorly constructed in balsa wood. It'd all be filtered through his tastes and persuasions, because I had lovingly retained all that he told me. All reports would be met with the same remark: "That's awesome! I wish I could have been there with you!"

He used to say that a lot to me. In fact, he used to say it every day. It started when he declined going to Tower of London with me. Instead, I went alone, quietly resigned to the dynamic that would always exist between us. He would always decline any prospect of a tacky adventure, citing lack of time and logistical difficulties. I would always go forth unbegrudgingly, earphones in place, prepared to tell him every detail of the day's mission when we reconvened that night. It was an operation that was on his terms, but then I was always prepared to accept whatever was offered to me.

In our last conversation, I detected a tone that almost resembled rage: "Look, if there was anybody in the world that I could spend time with, it'd be you, OK? But I just don't have the time." It's perhaps one of the most familiar components of any friendship I've ever had, this ambiguous sense of unrequitedness. It carries on from the first friends I ever had, refusing to come with me to Scienceworks to Laur's handwritten letter, explaining she doesn't want to go out with me on weekends because she's more of a "stay-at-home kinda girl". When Gav flaked out on going to a Smiths night at Ding Dong, my disappointment overshadowed any joy that had preceded it. My hope managed to fracture the love I would historically value most.

I tend to forget those days when they relented: they went out, they actually did what I wanted, the things I had dreamt of. There are three particular days which seem eerily similar to one another, even though they happened in 2006, 2012 and 2016. On two out of the three occasions, they would scald me for being "unable to walk down street properly". On each of the occasions, we would eat at a cafe and they would openly yearn for some other girl. They'd be distant and distracted, irritable and pissed off. As we walked down High Holborn on the third occasion, the familiarity of it overcame me. I choked out that had to leave and for the first time ever, I volunteered to be alone.

The friends that remain want to shake me, they want to rid of my desire to make associations, to create reports for these people who simply don't care. They want to rid me of a plague that consumes me, that occupies my heart in lieu of any functional attachment. When I'm challenged on the subject, I say that the difficulty is that he never actually mistreated me, the greatest brutality was his silence. I begrudge others for so much less, but in this instance, he's left with me with enough evidence to suggest that he would have wanted to have been here, he would have wanted to hear all about it, still. I suppose it's up to me to choose how to reconcile those proclamations alongside the fundamental truth that he could have been here if he wanted to be.

Blackout

I had developed this plan to cut out online living, in the vain hope of productivity and creative glory. The goal was to disconnect and focus on writing a script about the lyrical themes that appeared in Freddie Mercury's earliest compositions. I took a stream of consciousness approach involving a Parker fountain pen, dark purple ink and a grey thatched square notebook from Bookbinders Design. Paragraphs were dense, clean and unrevised, reading more like an academic thesis than a script for radio.

I broke my commitment to the blackout constantly, simply because I wanted to see his name in bold in my inbox, I wanted to read another message. I'd give him reports of my progress: "I'm still in 1969." He jokingly remarked that he thought he was actually hearing more from me now since I'd made that declaration to refrain from contact. He mocked me gently for it, only to make the bittersweet remark: "There's something very painful knowing that you can't contact someone if you wanted to, even if you normally don't contact them all the time."

We shared this mutual sense of urgency, this heady sense that we not only had to share many millions of stories, songs and ideas, but we had to do it as quickly as possible. It's a dynamic that I've since felt at the hostel, this intense connection and desire to convey everything well before check out. Despite all that, I've always characterised myself as a person who has had difficulties in being present. I had always figured that joy comes with meaning and meaning comes with retrospect, away and alone, at a desk.

I had assumed that my in-house best friend had learned everything there was to know, but then it was revealed that he knew nothing about radio, nothing of the blog, nothing of the writing. I kept on thinking about how odd it was that he didn't know, that in spite of all our time together, that once central and obsessive feature of my personality was no longer apparent. I then remember being struck by the existential quality of that connection. I remarked upon it at the time, that I was filled by this sense that I would only ever truly appreciate that connection in that very moment: "I've never been able to feel so present..."

Ambition tends to fall away with people like that. Hopes, ideas and plans tend to get temporarily suspended in the shadow of such a connection and I don't think it's a bad thing, necessarily. I like to think that it is because we are already fulfilling a more innate ambition to connect. There are many reasons that we create, but there is an essential component of it that suggests that we create to be remembered. When you connect with people like that, you have this vague sense of hope that you might be remembered forever.

Metaphors

I remember a time when I wrote and he replied. I wrote to him during his work hours, delivering news of triggers and associations as if he were still here: reports of the fridge door having fallen off its hinges and a photo of "breadcake", a piece of white bread with some candles impaled in it. He wouldn't reply as often as he used to, but he would claim that he sent messages that I never received. When I did receive a reply, he was polite but distant, half-heartedly entertaining my stupid stories about a life which could only really be described as Fawlty Towers meets The Young Ones. I knew that he hated it here and I knew he would never return after he left.

I mourned his physical and emotional absence. His replies lacked the kind of warmth and personal interest I had grown accustomed to. I dreamt up this metaphor of being partially submerged in a raging river. I would cling onto a rock to save myself from being carried away in the torrent. He was like that rock, inadvertently shaped like a handle, not purposefully doing anything to encourage me to hold on, but still providing a means for me to cling and hope. The river represented other hostel encounters and the existence of other possibilities that I purposefully avoided. I held my head above water, still feeling that pressure to accept his choice, to let go and move on.

I dwelled on that scene, describing it to Don, a short-term guest who had the tendency to veer our every conversation into the realms of intense romantic trauma. Don had the noble intention to keep our conversation light, but we were genuinely incapable of small talk and so he still found himself there with me at reception, extolling brutal therapy til the early hours of the morning. I'll never forget how he described what was happening to me, he said it was akin to a kind of haemorrhage: "You are used to having this daily exchange and now it's like you are losing your life force. You are bleeding everywhere. You are getting nothing back anymore..."

To anybody who had any kind of distance from the situation, the sudden and complete lack of responsiveness was to be expected. I could never really accept it, however, relying upon prior assurances that we would always have access to one another. He would always respond to me. In light of that, we had always discussed concepts like legacy and consequence, perhaps as a subconscious attempt to help me manage those future triggers and associations that would plague me. I'm now left to consider the veracity of all these grandiose assurances and I don't know how to reconcile any of it: "I won't be able to listen to music without thinking of you..."

Notebooks need to be filled. Essays, songs and unsent letters need to be written. It will eventually manifest in kindness, clarity and indifference. Most importantly, I have to continuously remind myself that although there might be silence, but the dialogue which I share with Missy Laur provides the kind of space and patience necessary to wring out any plague. It was surreal to have her sit across from me in receptipm, as so many others had done before. I described Don's vivid metaphor to her. I added that her insight had always managed to make me feel so alive, so together. I felt so gratified that she knew it too: "Of course! I am your dialysis machine."

Occupation

Ricardo would sit across from me when everything was quiet and dark. Everyone in the kitchen had stopped creating their messes, everyone in the lounge room had abandoned their epic film. He would ask me questions about love, lust and attachment, pausing to listen to my theories and then clarifying his own view. There would never be any embarrassment between us, we would merely attempt to describe an irrational attitude.

I would tell him things that I only ever clarified in morning pages, how the great lovers reflect certain passions like music, writing or creative projects, all things that continue to exist within myself. It's a moment that rang out, that second he asked me, "But doesn't it make you angry that they still occupy so much of your heart?" I felt such relief when I responded, "But they don't. They don't occupy any part of me any more."

I don't know when they left me, but I think I accepted that it was absurd to grieve, it was foolish to yearn when the present moment opened up so many more possibilities. They still exist in the ether though, as remorseless yet cowardly ghosts in stories. They are one dimensional figures with detailed and finite tastes and persuasions. I make careless declarations, "Of course I still love them, I will always love them... it's just that I've grown committed to those friends who stay, those who ultimately choose to be with me."

Intent

I have always derived personal satisfaction in this idea that I'm sympathetic to the male plight. I never really identified why I've always been like this, but perhaps it's safe to say that there was always comfort in the thought that I was privy to "insider knowledge" and ultimately, I was treated as an equal. I was gifted with a kind of honesty that would only ever be reserved for another man.

I took pride in the way I cultivated honest friendships with men, both single and taken. My brothers educated me in the ways of Mystery Method and I began to easily identify pick up artists during sober nights out in Melbourne. I was told about the endlessly frustrating mechanics of the dreaded friendzone, fully conscious that I had committed the same crime: I had relegated several suitors to the land of no action.

Why did I put guys in the friendzone? Simply put, I was afraid to be forthright. I never had the courage to say no.

I would later try to overcome my relationship reluctance, based upon this idea that I didn't want to be like "those other bitches". Taking down the walls of the friendzone meant that I entered into relationships that I wasn't particularly ready for. I became cold and unfathomably frigid. I knew that my desire to be a more palatable kind of woman backfired and approaching 30, I still struggle with that ability to effectively manage their feelings and my comfort.

I've maintained a healthy interest in the friendzone, particularly since society's recent sympathy shift away from the lovelorn male. Perhaps it was a discussion that came about with the astounding popularity of the Tumblr, The Nice Guys of OKCupid. The revelation is simple, yet compelling: "Your right to be angry with womankind is invalidated because being nice to a girl does not automatically mean you are entitled to have sex with her."

I like to recall the sentiment of one nameless woman from my Tumblr feed, "I happen to think that my friendship is a pretty special thing. It shouldn't be some consolation prize when a man doesn't get what he wants." It's a comforting idea that I continually return to. Growing up, I thought that the existence of the friendzone suggested that my body was more valuable than my mind. Perhaps this is why I have such a strong desire to solely exist as a brain in a jar.

Yet I continue to indulge in these honest discussions with men and usually I'm the one to volunteer an adept summary of the whole situation: "So, what you're saying is that you want her to put out or get out." I'm sure it doesn't sound like it, but I believe that I operate in this perverse role of undercover feminist. I don't admonish their behaviour, I don't go after these guys with a burning cross and a pick-axe. I simply listen and take it all in.

I convince myself that there is a certain power in doing this. I believe I am powerful because they're not saying this to me.

Precision

I knew it was the end when I saw that photograph of your smashed up steel-blue Fender Precision Bass. The headstock was roughly decapitated from its thick neck, the strings were severed and hung loose across the bruised body. Fans cooed dramatically, commenting on how rock'n'roll it all was. You never addressed them, but I know you would have loathed that suggestion. You only ever said: "Goodbye old friend."

I imagined your relief that came from that violence. How it must have felt for you to destroy the object that had kept you away for so long. It reminded me of our first conversation, when you told me about how you saw Richey Edwards' last show with the Manic Street Preachers. Years after his disappearance, you still seemed so shaken by the determination of his violence, diving head first into the drum-kit at the end of the show.

I hope you've managed to return to the life you wanted, free of old friends and draining obligations. I'd be lying to say that I didn't miss your hysterics, they were always so poetic. I still think of the world in terms of us and them. There are those who will swoon over the rock'n'roll gesture and then us, those who will try to derive some meaning out of it. I think we live differently to everyone else.

Lacrimosa

The proposition read as a perverse challenge to me: Sad music might actually evoke positive emotions, reveals a new study by Japanese researchers... The summary suggested that there is an odd ambivalence that comes from listening to sad music, suggesting that pleasant feelings derive from sad music because that it does not pose a real threat to personal safety. It was a vague proposition with little scientific certainty in its brief citation. In any case, I decided that I wanted to conduct my own uncontrolled study using myself, an old unfinished C60 cassette and the tape deck in my Volvo.

I tested the theory during a familiar late night drive, when time was indistinct and the streets were empty. I pushed in the tape and pressed rewind. The tape whirred, eventually clicking to start. The plane trees bowed ruefully over Orrong Road, the heavy branches clouded the flossy glow of the passing street lights. I was convinced that I could handle whatever associations it threw at me and I did. I remained stoic throughout the aggressive jangly semiquavers of Fonz. I felt fine through the scarcely discernible French ramblorings of Still Fond. Each lyrical proclamation left me unperturbed: One day, we're gonna live in Paris, I promise...

It was sad, but not in the Lacrimosa sense of the word. It was sad in that everything from its sequence to its sentiments felt so familiar to me, in spite of the fact that it had been so long since I'd listened to it. It felt like living: speeding through the darkness, being bombarded with scarcely-forgotten reminders, always battling to shut up.

Now homeward bound, the last song came on near where I spotted a Toorak fox, some nights before. I was bemused, having momentarily forgotten the song's inclusion on the tape. It was a lo-fi home-made demo with acoustic guitar and loud female backing vocals. I recalled its lyrics and sang along in a plaintive masochistic style, Why don't you call me? As the song went on to describe the devastating possibility of his crush running out of phone credit, I had to smile and acknowledge how dated and painful it all was. As much as I tried to guard the ongoing legacy of this thing, there was always the risk I'd trip over something like that. I'd come across a horrible reminder of how this is life, as it worked out.

I'll admit, I had some doubts about this scientific proposition. For one thing, I don't necessarily believe that music can be divided into the happy and the sad. There are associations, meanings and intentions, always contained and largely untapped. For me, both music and living is all about legacy management. I try to organise memories in the knowledge that time will never make the painful, painless. I appreciate that one point that study did make though: that music, like memory, poses no immediate threat to us in the present moment. Despite my initial reluctance to reacquaint myself with his songs, I will always be protected due to the nature of the past and its complete irrelevance. I am comforted in the idea that I'm strong enough to return as an unmoved silent tourist. I am safe, I will always be safe, so long as I am alone at some indistinct hour.

Legacy

I had this dream last night, where we were in the dimly lit carpark of my local supermarket and you asked me whether I read those essays you wrote, those essays where you described the extent of my influence. I let out this momentary huff of scepticism: "No, I guess not."

If I sleep for long enough, I eventually see these people I've lost. I recently had another dream, this time involving someone else, where we decided to make a break for it. When you were caught, you held me and said: "There will be silence, but I'll remember all you said."

I wake up startled and disoriented, but surprisingly reassured in my blurry-eyed state. It's remarkable how the subconscious can manufacture these consequential moments. It can depict these vivid encounters and these words that, on some level, I want to hear.

When I am awake and lucid, I see there's no real desire to experience these consequential moments. There's nothing particularly unresolved in my heart or head, but I suppose I want a legacy, as stupid and selfish as that sounds. I want to know that I am remembered.

I know that it's never particularly congenial to be included in the official records. More often than not, I feel like an indiscretion that needs to be covered up. I always marvel at how well it is covered up, though. It's much easier to construct a life where I never actually existed.

Brian Cook

Locks

I cannot help but think that my tendency to mourn for conversations developed when I first started writing a diary. I was nine and it was around this time that my best friend left the country and I'd secretly write about how much I missed her and our conversations. She would write me letters with fat wads of pages, telling me about her new life in Texas. With her broad, bombastic print (with large circles over her i's), she'd always complain that I never wrote to her enough. It was true, she was always more vigilant with her letter-writing. However, when I was alone, I thought about the things we had talked about and the things we could have talked about, if only she had been here.

No one really understood the value I placed on that communication. I tried to explain it, that desire I had just to walk around the school oval and talk endlessly about everything and anything, but it didn't make sense in that era of four square and kiss chasey. I thought I was doomed to be the serious misfit until I saw her re-appear in the door way of our class room: She was back! With an American accent! I was thrilled and I shrieked, reacting in a way that again seemed disproportionate and inappropriate but I didn't really care what anyone else thought. I figured things would get back to the way they were, but for whatever reason, it just wasn't the same.

I guess she didn't really care anymore.

I feel that in my heart, I've harboured that same desire to walk around that oval for nearly two decades, laughing and shrieking and carrying on. I had never really thought about the significance of that desire until I acknowledged the sheer amount of time I spent alone: thinking, writing diaries and practising musical instruments. When I was ten, my parents finally took some preventative action, installing brass door locks for my room and the study. The lock to my room is now worn, badly scratched and dinted, from my brother's repeated attempts to break in with a screw driver. To me, those locks are worth more than anything in this whole house.

I had always advertised the abuse, unashamedly. I presented the facts, never considering how anyone else felt. I never understood my friends' stuttering speechlessness. I never understood my parents' desperate willingness to protect his reputation. I never understood my teachers' desire to delegate any kind of investigation. I presented everything, hoping this mythical conversation would come to pass. I never knew what I wanted anyone to say exactly, but I was so disappointed by their failure to say anything, to do anything. I was so disappointed by that suggestion that just hearing about it was so fucking hard.

I was twenty when it finally happened. I heard what I wanted to hear, after hours of sitting in my then-boyfriend's car outside my house. He had intended to leave many times over the course of those few hours, turning on the engine and nudging forward in two metre increments towards his 40km journey home. We had this habit of talking all night, we shared this same breed of passion, wit and musical taste. I loved him in a way that I knew I would never love anyone else more. He'll continue to own that part of me, in the same way he owns this particular time of the morning, where the world is shrouded in a momentary hue of slate grey. It's that time of day he always fled.

What he said was quite incidental to a break up which, in that instance, didn't take: "Whatever it is, wherever you are, whatever happens to us, call me and I'll save you." I cried hard (partly in relief, but mostly in irony). My yearning to connect hinged on that one idea, that I was worthy of protection. It's kind of stunning that someone like him could have stumbled upon that jackpot sentiment, but then perhaps that just adds to the mythic nature of it all. Thankfully, I never did call him under such circumstances. We do get in touch extremely infrequently though, with whimsical recommendations such as a themed-Tumblr of Morrissey posing with cats. It can't go much deeper than that because any actual detail of his life tends to make me go hysterical.

Today, I am happy and grateful. The vast majority of my conversations are full of revelation or hilarity. I spend my time with the most wonderful, kind and loving friends. I adore my family, who are among the funniest and most intelligent people I know. I haven't seen or spoken to my abusive brother in over three years. I don't intend to see him again. I don't think I would have been able to convince that lonely nine year old that it would ever be this good. Saying that, I still harbour that tendency to mourn for those conversations. There are so many people I wish I could talk to. I think about it constantly, remembering expressions like: "It makes me angry to think he was so careless with your heart." I wonder if I could have made it up. I wonder how much of that love ever existed outside of me.

gab on deviantart

Inventions

It was a cold brisk night and Noreen and I had just walked past the cemetery. She said: "Just because they don't write essays about it doesn't mean they don't care. It doesn't mean that they don't remember everything..." I could only laugh a little, what with my wheezing and shortness of breath. I responded quite flippantly in that trade mark sardonic tone. "What are you talking about, no one remembers anything! I'd be an idiot to convince myself otherwise."

I don't know when I started believing this, but at some point, I thought that comfort comes from invention. It comes from that ability to convince yourself that they do care or they do remember or they do regret. There's always that scope to do that, if you spend enough time alone with your thoughts. In the silence, you can construct an alternative reality, one that need not be true necessarily, but one that is not quite so painful to live with on a day-by-day basis.

Lately, I've been sceptical of this practice. That's not to say I don't think it's worthwhile, I believe it encourages the imagination to provide solace at a time when it is so inclined to do quite the opposite. Saying that, I've started to resent the idea of measuring requitedness. Trying to figure out what they think, what they feel. You can stand in front of a person and they can insist that they love you and you can insist that you love them, but ultimately, it means nothing if they go on to remorselessly squash your heart.

Are those moments meaningless? Are they void of sincerity if you can't reconcile words with actions? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps I've had too many conversations to know how easy it is for other people to shelve such incidents in the mind. They don't need to invent imaginary regret or regard, they just distract themselves and move on. There's no desire to glorify passing moments or conversations, they don't even need to wonder if I care because I advertise that I do, in the most vulgar way imaginable. I advertise that I care on here.

I've been experimenting with damnatio memoriae, the Roman practice of completely wiping out a person's image and memory. It's just like carrying on as if that person never existed. It's strange and it's powerful and it's completely at odds with who I am. Yet, I've taken to it, not because it is easy to do, but because it is much easier than having to understand why. No comfort can be derived from that old practice of invention, there's no way to imagine their care or regret because it is impossible. It just doesn't make any sense.

The irony of all this is that I've started to see value in the meanings I create. I've started to see beauty in my own inventions. What they think is almost irrelevant at this point, I create consequence. I will always create consequence. I love how empowering that notion is, how it is not at all reliant upon detecting any semblance of truth or sincerity. It's all about establishing a kind of ownership: it's not meaningful because they care, it's meaningful because I care... and I express it all in a way that other people might care too.

Viktor Tsoi in Igla: get stabbed, light cigarette, walk away...

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