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.

Counterpoint

It was the most paradoxical element of the friendship with my brother, the musical aspect. He was the one to push for the acquisition of the Health Hustles cassette. He campaigned for the purchase of the iconic collection of cassettes that scored our trip to England. In 1993, he acquired Queen's Greatest Hits II and promptly educated me about the band. He soon pushed Dad to buy Greatest Flix I (and rent Greatest Flix II) and we watched them together, making observations about their music videos. I obliged in drawing a moustache on his upper lip and he climbed up onto his desk to pose like Freddie Mercury.

He was the first one to introduce me to the Beatles, again pushing for the purchase of the Red and Blue albums on vinyl. We watched the Anthology together when it first aired on TV. He'd dub songs from the Anthology onto cassette, with remnants of interviews from John, Paul, George and Ringo spliced between the songs. As I sat and watched it, I wrote and illustrated a short story about teenage twins who investigated petty crimes in Perth. In time, he'd make mixtapes for the rusty Magna and Porsche, primarily made up of truncated MP3s with low bitrates, salvaged from Audiogalaxy, ripped from Sonique and later, Winamp.

We bonded over Depeche Mode, Ratcat, Roxette, Erasure, The Smiths and The Cure. During one manic shopping spree, he purchased a stack of CD boxsets featuring one-hit wonders from the 1980s. He said he'd introduce music to me and then I'd ruin it, car crashing everything with my intensity. I'd want to transform all my musical passions into projects. I'd create an elaborate school project on the Milli Vanilli scandal. I'd teach myself HTML to create a Geocities webpage with lengthy lyric analyses and Choose Your Own Adventure fanfic. I'd design clothes inspired by Zandra Rhodes in a series of fashion folios. I'd handstitch lyrics from All Dead, All Dead into a cloth-bound journal. Behind a locked door, I'd sing covers on the piano, guitar and later, Microkorg and he'd come to bang on the door, demanding to play along with me.

The music was a fundamental component of the friendship that once existed between my brother and I. When the friendship broke down in 2001, he developed a newfound obsession with progressive hair metal, music that was far from the pop sensibility that we had once cultivated. To me, it was music that was primarily geared to impress those who wanted to impress others. When I cut contact from him in 2010, I knew that I would no longer have mutual access to those memories, persuasions or intensities. Wistfulness is currently limited to the practice of listening to Per Gessle obscurities. It's the only thing that I know he would like now, but I feel no compulsion to engage in any sort of dialogue with him again. I feel strong knowing that I don't wish to know him.

Our musical friendship was never compatible with my firmly established narratives of rage and control, violence and fear. Yet, it's the purest incarnation of a musical friendship that I've ever known. Future friendships with men followed its prototype, intense musical discussions with unacknowledged elements of shame, secrecy and resentment. When lovers left, I would devote myself to their ghosts, appointing them as patron saints of personal writing, post punk and creative enterprise. I'd fill grief into unread notebooks and dense essays, telling myself repeatedly that they are my muses, they own my creativity, they own the greatest parts of myself...

I've recognised the familiarity of the dynamic in those moments when the men I loved raged and verbally lashed out at me. My recognition would be sparked by a line that would recur in diaries: I try so hard to make them be nice to me... I'd become sensitive to their moods, adapting my behaviour to minimise the possibility of setting them off. I'd attempt to distract them with music, love or kindness, all the while knowing that they harboured this deep seated resentment towards me. In a naive gesture, I have revealed that I've had to implement familiar behavioural strategies to cope with their mood swings. Drawing metaphors with earlier abuse destroyed whatever love was left. My attempts to understand why this dynamic kept on occurring were left unexplored.

My brother once said to me that I was the best girl in Melbourne. There was a time when I was the only person he wished to spend time with. He described me as the best writer out of any of us, he raved that I was the most musical member of the family. As with any sort of legacy, it continues to be difficult to reconcile statements with behaviours. I have a choice of how to manage it, how to construct a cohesive narrative which accommodates for the contradiction of affinity and abuse. Perhaps I'll never understand why those qualities co-existed as they did, but I want to understand why I have permitted them to persistently occur in other relationships, living on and manifesting in this unacknowledged state.

Maybe I just wanted the music to be enough to cure us both.

Sentimentalists

I often contemplate the irony of how a sentimentalist could exist in a hostel, a place where you are expected to connect and let go each day. I've always struggled to effectively manage the memories of those I've lost, but now I live in the wake of hundreds of such losses. The memories of departing guests and colleagues attach themselves to the physicality of this place, these rooms where memories are being written over each other, again and again.

The sentimentalists of the hostel fantasise about old guests returning. It happened to a colleague a few weeks ago as he dragged me to the reception computer and pointed at the screen: "She's coming, she's actually coming!" You felt and knew that relief in his cry could only be the result of months of pining and daydreaming. It's a sentiment that I could closely identify with, but I have to remind myself that the guest that I Iong for will never return, as much as I yearn for it endlessly.

One such guest returned. Not for me, not for anyone, specifically. He lived with us last winter and his hostel lover was once my colleague. She has long since left. As I sat at reception, I watched him look at the details of the corridor, the doorframes and the window sills. His reminiscence was largely silent. "Les fantômes restent ici..." I remarked. He didn't appear to be pained by it at all. He headed out with the new staff, unperturbed, dancing and drinking and then staggering back home to tell me all about it.

Others have returned. You take them in a sweeping hug and you asked them about life on the outside. Those who remain in London describe dodgy landlords and a leaking roof, mould and damp and flat mates from hell. Those who stay for a few hours tend to get sad at the changes, the unfamiliar staff and the rearranged furniture. Those who return and actually stay get easily entrenched in the microdynamics of the group. There are crushes and hookups and tensions that exist and disintegrate and the rest of the world falls away somehow.

When they leave, some say they will visit. Some say they will be in touch but it is never like it is when you simply exist together, living and talking and loving and laughing for hours upon hours each day. I write down the quotes that make me cackle maniacally, almost developing a moment by moment sense of sentimentality. We squeal at each other when we enter the room, scooping each other up, dazzled by this sense of gratitude that we actually exist together in this space and time.

When I long for him to be here, I have to remind myself: "He could have been here if he'd wanted to be..." It's a sentence that really touches upon what it means to be present with a person, to sit and to live and breathe with them without guilt or distraction. You can lose a life, squandering your love and energy on somebody who decided to be present with someone else. The challenge is to solely devote yourself to those who choose to be with you now, to reconcile yourself with the risk that despite your love, one day, you might lose them too.

Ink

I developed an endearing type of affinity with Sophia. She was a hilarious Swedish girl who frequently crept into our darkened shared room to fetch something out of her overweight silver suitcase. Her creeping was both careful and thoughtful, ultimately intended to minimise any disruption to the eternally sleeping hostel workers. She would then invariably shriek upon seeing me, staring and standing motionless in the middle of the room. 

On her last night, she expressed a desire to have a tattoo to honour the end of her year in London. Foley calibrated his DIY tattoo machine on the desk at reception: buzzing, pausing and closely examining its stainless steel components. I was aghast when he got out the black Indian ink, I shrieked: "You cannot be serious, what the fuck!" I couldn't disguise my disapproval, it was a pale echo of my mother's violent anti-tattoo sentiment. I cited the prospect of pain, ugliness and hepatitis. They told me to get a grip.

Sophia went on to tell us what she wanted, showing us the design on her iPhone. It featured two upper peaks of a triangle aligned in parallel. It was the footprint of a Native American bird, its relevance was ultimately connected with the legacy of her grandfather. We looked at her right ankle to determine its size and placement. It was at that point when Sophia suggested I draw the design. Foley handed me a black ball point pen and I wildly wailed in opposition. I knew they were playing on my steadfast opposition to it, which makes it all the more puzzling why I finally relented. 

I crouched down closely and tentatively marked out a sequence of dots near her Achilles' Heel. The first few attempts were rubbed out with saliva, the design being too small or painfully placed. Once the dots were in place, I carefully drew the four lines. The right slope was slightly imperfect but it was meant to have this plaintive, hand-drawn quality. Once the design was confirmed, they relocated to the lounge. I got my phone out to take photos to send to our other Swedish friend, Malin. Sophia advised: "Just don't send the photos to my mother."

I couldn't watch closely as Foley pressed the buzzing double needles to her skin and the black ink dribbled over her ankle. I made myself useful and fetched some tissues to mop up excess ink from the ottoman. It was over in a few moments, which is just as well because she described the sensation as feeling "like knives". She wrapped some Glad Wrap over her now-throbbing, embossed skin. My vitriolic opposition to the tattoo seemed to soften when I saw how pleased she was. As Foley packed up his gear, I said to him: "You made your friend happy tonight."

What moved me more than anything was how she described the newfound significance of the design: "It means so much that it was done here, in this place and that Eleanor drew it and Foley tattooed it..."  Not much has changed in regards to my feelings about tattoos, but I feel moved that I became a part of the narrative of that symbol for her, a sign which is a conduit to an important time and place. It seems like hardly a fair exchange, but I keep the remains of her gold OPI nailpolish on my fingernails in honour of her. She's been gone a few weeks now and so they remain like flecks of precious gold leaf. 

It doesn't seem so long that she was still here, carefully creeping in the darkness.

Platform

A large throng of girls huddled tightly. Their school dresses were cut jagged and short, the fabric matted with dried blobs of red and yellow acrylic paint. They struggled to all fit together, some leaned outwards, threatening to topple off the two-foot high wooden platform. They held fast to one another, some girls held hands with their friends. Some pressed their plastic firemens' hats to the heads, others remained poised with party poppers.

I stood around awkwardly. Even in the last moments of high school, I never knew where to stand or who to be with. I never stopped envying those tiny microgestures of acceptance, a pose for a photograph, a pause for a moment's conversation. To be acknowledged meant everything to me, only because for those four years, it seemed as if I perpetually stood with some girl's back to me.

Once I received all the attention on that platform where we stood together. I had performed a scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. I had never been offered the opportunity to perform in a play or a show, not even in the chorus. I had always been predestined for the orchestra pit. It was hugely gratifying to play Bottom, if only for those few moments. I screeched and hammed it up to excess. I died for as long as possible and everybody loved it.

The bell echoed across the courtyard. Girls screamed, arms flailed, confetti fell. Out of nowhere, Nancy suddenly hugged me tightly. She was a tough girl who boasted about hanging out with the Triads on the weekend. On Year 9 camp, she had pinned me down, straddled my mid-section and punched me repeatedly during a night time game. In Year 12, she was reprimanded for punching Amelia. Her swollen left cheek morphed from blue to purple and then black.

I never thought to ask why Nancy suddenly hugged me like that and it was funny that even during that embrace, she still couldn't bring herself to look at me. At the time I consoled myself thinking that the gesture was the apology, albeit the apology of a coward. In retrospect, I think she was just pleased that we would never have to see each other again.

In the years that have followed high school, I have spoken openly about the sadistic bullying practices of our year level. To each other, we used to joke about the widespread myth that every second year level at our school was particularly dysfunctional. It was funny that despite the heightened level of self-awareness (and lengthy group-counselling sessions), we could never get it together.

In theory, it should have all ended in that moment, as we stood in friendship and relief on that platform. In actuality, every incident from those four years seems to spin around in my head forever. The memory of it manifests itself in interesting ways, like I used to live with this insatiable desire to confront any and every bully. Even in my dreams, I wanted to embarrass and condemn those who are cruel.

In more recent times, I haven't been thinking about the cruelty, I have only been thinking about the classes. I loved almost everything that I did and I think back to how inspiring those classes were: Shakespeare in Performance, Women in History, Protest and Conflict, Journalism, Fashion, Photography. In my head, I continue to navigate those grounds, the hallways and the classrooms, but everything is empty. Everyone is gone.

When people ask what high school was like, I say: "It wasn't as bad as it was."

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.

Hauntings

It was still daylight when we emerged from dinner and we stood at the corner of Little Bourke and Russell Street. I said, "I'll be happy to think that I'll associate all these places with you, when you're gone..." He didn't really respond, in fact he said comparatively very little on that walk back. I suppose we both knew it would be the last few minutes we would ever see each other, but I remained largely unsentimental. I filled the silence, recounting various hauntings of those narrow streets. We walked past Ding Dong and I told him of the friend who carelessly volunteered her heart to someone she shouldn't have. I told him of her heartbreak and how a mutual friend ruthlessly dismissed her grief. He sarcastically summed up the story I just told, highlighting the similarities to us and I playfully smacked his chest. "That was completely different."

We returned to talking about music in those remaining moments, about Parlophone and Steve Osborne and that other movement we thought we had played a part in. We kept walking until we came upon a street sign, a lane bearing his name. We stopped and looked up: "That's so strange..."

I once hated Melbourne for its hauntings. I would emerge from the house knowing that almost every street and intersection would bring up some unwelcomed association, some memory of a loss or mistake. I've never been able to shake that habit and I'm beginning to think that it's not even possible. I'm always attaching a memory to a locality and it was only recently that I learned that this mental process is called Method of Loci. It's a device which relies upon memorised spatial relationships to recall "memorial content". Even as I sit here now, I'm randomly generating geographical associations, namely the east side of Little Lonsdale and Russell Street, for no other reason than I want to remember what it is to be writing this.

Each morning, I take the train and between Flinders Street Station and Southern Cross I survey many places I associate with him. His hauntings don't bother me so much, in fact, I'm happy to think that he's somehow attached to the physicality of this place. I think about Little Collins Street and his thoughts on quantum physics. Through some ridiculous theory, he suggested that it somehow meant that we could have already lived out every path, every choice and possibility together. I said it was completely absurd and without even thinking, I pointed out the half-demolished building on the diametrically opposite corner with its crumbling Art Deco façade. "I don't understand why it needs to be destroyed." As the green man flashed at us and I instinctively stretched out my hand towards his, a thoughtless gesture to ensure we crossed safely.

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...

Accuracy

I'll admit, I harbour this unattractive tendency to remember everything. If that wasn't unattractive enough, I strive to remember everything more accurately than you do. I prefer to have that sort of information on hand, for if I'm ever challenged about the nature of a glance, gesture or suggestion, I can trump you and I will win. Because I can remember and you can't.

There would have been a time when I would have been upset by this notion. I would have been harpooned by the thought that it wasn't important enough for you to remember, whatever it was exactly. While I had endlessly rhapsodised about various plagues, you'd struggle to recall the scarcest detail of my existence. Once I would have been offended, now I don't particularly care.

It would have been fine except I recently realised that I'd convinced myself of personal truths that were fraught with factual defects. I don't know how but lust and intent became whitewashed with years of coffee-drinking, journal-writing and story-telling. I only realised when you admitted to remembering something: "Come on Elle, you know it was never like that!"

I've never had to account for the veracity of those personal truths, my stories on the Plague or otherwise. Even as I attempt to craft and create and honour those moments of consequence, even as I faithfully recall any number of phantom glances and gestures, the moral of any given memory is diluted by the fact that I refuse to face the truth. I refuse to admit what it was and why it hurt so much when I lost it.

Handlers

I had hoped not to attract any attention. I skirted the trestle table and I watched him concentrate on examining records and patting turntables. He was my first boyfriend and he had broken my heart six months prior, when he sat on my bed and said he didn't miss me when I wasn't around. I grieved and recovered. With glazed eyes, I looked on blankly, recalling his insistence that one couldn't just learn how to mix beats.

He suddenly swept up beside me, leaving his decks unattended. "Can I talk to you?" I shrugged and he pulled my hand towards the dilapidated back stairs. We sat close together and he smelt of cloves, still. Dizzy, I paid little attention to his apology, ignoring the questionable levels of sincerity. I flipped my hand dismissively and reassured him that it was fine and I was fine and it was really all nothing.

I'm unsure whether it was the dismissive reassurances or my staring at his glowing straight teeth which made him ask: "Do you want to take me home?" I smiled, shook my head and took his hand, leading him to the side of the crumbling weatherboard house. "I only want you for a moment." They were soft and ineffectual kisses, yet nothing had ever made me feel more empowered. I commanded it, all of it. It would be the last time I would ever see him.

Missy Laur and I have always discussed the notion of confrontation or rather, how we can ever expect to cope with seeing those we've lost. I've have dealt with it to varying degrees: I've approached, I've ignored, I've been visibly upset, I've been visibly indifferent. I have dreams where I am composed and untouchable and I can handle everything, even the most meaningless of passing contact. I have dreams where I am woken up to the buzz of my phone and a lost name on screen.

"You'll always want more, you'll always want them to love you again." She warns me. I sip my mocha and dismissively flip my hand. "I think I can handle it."

Sorbet

It was a birthday present Noreen delivered on the night of Eurovision, a bottle of MOR perfume called Sorbet. I sniff it occasionally but it's a bit too strong to wear. Its smell reminds me of my 16th birthday, when I received a great influx of candles and a blue glitter lava lamp. My Dad gave me The Freddie Mercury Collection and I listened to it, obsessively.

For my 16th, a great swathe of friends gathered to watch Ross Noble perform at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. He was still young and nubile, his hair was bright red and his comedy electric. We all sat in the front row, taking up all the seats. I hid the bouquet of tulips I received from Spiro under my chair and Ross mocked both Laur and I at length for holding our bags on our laps.

Andrew took this photo of all of us after the show, many of us with Slurpees in hand. It was perfectly configured, with many of us in complementary magentas, light purples and dark denim skirts. We grinned and hugged each other as if we were friends who really loved one another. I couldn't believe I managed to stage that photograph. It was as if I really belonged.

Those candles have lost their scent. Mr Bad Guy has since been ripped of its associations. I take a shot of Sorbet occasionally. It's similar, but not quite the same. It's like how I'd sometimes pass women in the street who have the same smell as that discontinued St Ives' moisturiser. It is the smell of reading my first Queen biography as a 13 year old.

I wish I could just accost them and ask what they're wearing. I might become reacquainted with that moment when I became so captivated... and everything became so completely messed up.

Confetti & Acorns

The path to Holy Trinity is strewn with confetti and acorns. It reminds me of our weekend adventures in England, when we would all pack into the dark red Volvo station wagon and go to churches and castles. If we happened to pass a fancy car tied up with a white satin ribbon, I'd emphatically insist we stop. In spite of my present resentment of weddings, I was once obsessed.


Up until a few days ago, the path to Holy Trinity led to my favourite op shop. It's tucked away from our High Street, only moments from the haberdashery store that resembles a leftover set from Are You Being Served? and the uniform shop that mends the school blazers of the rich and bullied. I'd walk that path alone after writing class and look for ages and ages.

I found amazing things in that op shop: books for 33.333 recurring cents, 7" records for 50 cents, Alannah Hill blazers for $20. You did need patience to wade through it all, there were times when there was nothing of particular interest or value. You'd see the same things in the racks for months and months, a Honky Tonk record or that taunting electric blue leather jacket. Could I get away with it?

I'll miss that ritual, the records and books, the jewellery and jackets, the confetti and acorns. There was a kind of warm solidarity associated with it: writing and looking at records, instead of marrying and being a lawyer. I doubt I'll ever shed that sense of expectation, but I enjoyed those moments alone when I did.

Earth

Once when Smile came to Cornwall, we went to St Agnes with Brian, Roger and Tim. We went to the Driftwood pub and then walked along the cliffs there. I'm sure Freddie was there too. And we found a cave down from the beach and sang inside it, and did this 5 of 6 part harmony of Earth which was Tim's song. Then we walked up on the headland and the whole place was completely covered in glow worms. It was amazing. The sky was so clear and every star was out, and of course Brian, because of his expertise in astronomy, could name them all. He named all the individual stars and constellations...

Sue Johnstone, excerpt from Rupert White's book, Queen in Cornwall

All the Pennies in the Thames will not make it how it was

"I can't stay very long," he said to me. "I have to be back in Crouch End to move out of my flat, you see..." I nodded, silently. I was silent in a manner that suggested I understood, not silent in the manner that suggested I was offended. But I was offended, you see, for it was my first night back in London and I had wanted to see my old friend. I had wanted to talk about music.

He smiled and humoured me, suggesting that we walk along Southbank as the sun went down. I took note of the things I had missed, the OXO Tower glazed in a gooey sunset, the ruins of another nameless church and its pulpit, flooded with cigarette butts, but we promptly ignored the beauty and the ugliness of our surrounds and retreated to our own world of blazers, musical love and lyrical sincerity. I had waited years to see him again and just when I felt most grateful for all of it, he said he had to go.

I sat alone on a water-filled barricade at the door of the Houses of Parliament. I had treated myself to an 88p dinner, an imitation Red Bull and two bananas. The light grew dim, I could not use my phone camera in such low light. I could only watch strangers and chortling tourists pass me by. I attempted to get onto my brother Andrew, but he was raging at a party in Hackney and would not answer his phone. Neither would any of my other friends.

As I ambled slowly up the north bank of the Thames, I contemplated what it was to feel so ill at ease with my city. In the silence of my own company, I could only think of those I had lost due to carelessness and indifference. For all the beauty, adventure and promise of London town, it all seemed to mean very little if I could not have those lost friends alongside me.

I stopped when I came upon Somerset House. The cream-coloured Georgian bricks glowed in a sodium vapour hue and I smiled. Loud music echoed and bounced off the walls, I realised that it had been five years since my first love and I had been there. I cried at that concert, even with his arms tightly wound around my waist. It was not an emotional response to the music, as such. Three days before, a bandmember of the performing band told me that he wanted to end our friendship. He never wanted to speak to me ever again. At the time, I could scarcely describe that disappointment, not out loud anyway. Instead I took a photograph that said it all to me: the night was over, the courtyard was deserted, the spotlights stretched out to reveal bent cups and indistinguishable debris. Every foot of that opulent space had been desecrated and I felt so completely wretched.


I started to walk towards the Strand when a woman suddenly accosted me. She grabbed my wrist and explained breathlessly: "I have to go now, but here, have my pass. It'll get you in for nothing. Here, take it, take it." She desperately attempted to reattach a fluorescent pink paper bracelet around my wrist, then she ran to her partner who had already hailed a cab. Confused and uncertain, I walked to the security guard of Somerset House and showed him my wrist. He told me to have a good night.

It was Noah and the Whale. Everything happened as it meant to. The band performed, the audience sang and the lights glowed. Upon hearing the first few chords of Five Years Time, a baffling sense of serendipity crept over me, a true sense of wonderment. There was the promise of meeting soul mates that night, new friends who could understand my every feeling and intent. But as I stood there alone with my broken paper bracelet, I wanted everyone to leave the courtyard immediately. I wanted to be alone with that moment I had lost.

Almost immediately after I recreated that photograph, my phone shrilled and vibrated. It was Andrew, agreeing to come to the Strand and save me. I later told him of my riverside loneliness on the 2am busride back to Paddington. I told him in the knowledge that I did not know true loneliness. It was not possible to be acquainted with such a thing. I live in the certainty he will always be there for me, even when all the others have gone.

Isolation

It's curious how you can miss someone you've never met. You can mourn the memory of one who lived and died before your time. Today is the thirtieth anniversary of the day Mark Chapman shot and killed John Lennon. It's difficult to fully comprehend the horror of that day, outside the Dakota building. There is an indescribable injustice attached to it, a kind of tragedy that constricts the chest and twists the gut. For all his wit, his humanity and untouchable creativity, he did not deserve to die as he did.


We love John. We talk about him in the present tense, as if he were one of our old friends. We refer to his words with ease and due familiarity. We sing loudly to his songs. We grin, harmonise and implicitly agree that I shall always take the bottom part. His music has underscored the most compelling of friendships. It continues to be subjected to the most lovingly relentless analysis, I'm sure it forever will be. Even now, I cannot listen to Abbey Road without recalling our promises to cover I Want You (She's So Heavy). I cannot listen to Yellow Submarine without chortling at the thought of us howling, growling and barking to Hey Bulldog. I cannot listen to Rubber Soul without wanting to resume our discussion about Wait. It's been six years now and I'm still waiting.

Every song is a lost moment. Every melody is infused with a personal meaning, every rhythm a universal consequence. I'm so grateful to John for all of it. I know that with him, there is the possibility to fall in love with these songs, over and over again. There is the chance of finding a new interpretation, a dubious method to understand that little band that little better. I live with John in the present tense, both grammatically and temporarily, as I do with any friend I've ever lost. I know I am likely to think of him as he was in A Hard Day's Night, turning left at Greenland or else snorting a bottle of Coke. He lives in 1964, with his cap, tight grey suit and that moderately gleeful façade. He looks just like him, y'know?

In spite of all his presence, his relevance and resonance, it's impossible not to miss him.

I don't know how it's possible not to.

Damnatio Memoriae

"Alas, that the friend of my youth is gone! Alas, that I ever knew her! I might say to myself, "You are a dreamer to seek what is not to be found here below." But she has been mine. I have possessed that heart, that noble soul, in whose presence I seemed to be more than I really was, because I was all that I could be."

The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe

I once wrote that my writings were never about one person in particular. They were ripped up photographs of those I once loved. Perhaps that is selfish or vague, but I wrote and published work in the hope that they would read it and understand that I still held them in high regard. I could never communicate with them, not in the way I would have wanted. In any case, it isn't healthy or socially acceptable to be on such intimate terms with the past. Perhaps with such persistent feelings of yearning, I only ever wanted access to the past. I wanted access to a temporal impossibility.

I did love them, in the most authentic sense of the word. I loved their conversation more than anything else. Sharing witticisms over mochas in Brunswick St. Sharing music over MSN, mixtapes and long car trips. Sharing lengthy musical diatribes to one another. I was addicted to their words, not their lips. It was the truest form of intimacy for me, it glorified the past and challenged the mind. Now we cannot talk, I can only pass the things they would have loved, the things we could have talked about. Who knows what could have been said, maybe they had lost interest altogether.

There is no way of knowing their thoughts. There may be an oblique reference to us in a lyric or a tweet, but I would only be entertaining my vanity to wonder such things. Do they ever feel the desire to talk? To discuss the things only we cared about? It is like a young teen, angsting over a non-responsive crushling. In such circumstances I can safely say that in the case of personal regard, if one has to wonder how much they cared, they didn't care enough. Clearly, the Dolly Magazine education has worked a treat.


However, therein lies the paradox. I found their regard to be the most empowering, intoxicating thing. Friends, lovers, whoever they were, I saw these people as incredibly clever and enlightened individuals. But then, they swore that they did see something in me too. They spent hours convincing me of my skill and potential but I was too proud to acknowledge or accept their kind encouragement. It was a feeling of mutual awe that I could never adequately deconstruct. It was the clarity and the requited nature of it all never really made sense to me.

I didn't understand it, but I became addicted to that breed of attention. Although I would come to meet more and more people with similar interests, I was always in a perpetual state of mourning. I became addicted to missing my past. I grieved for one in the presence of another. I grieved in the knowledge that, in time, they would come to hate me too. Brothers and friends warned that this would be my undoing, but I have only realised its net effect in recent times.

It is when I revisited Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther, that I understood what it is to be in love with the past. I always knew, on some level, that access to the past was analogous to access to my creative self. It makes sense when I think about it now. I would only feel spurred to create if I had their input, their influence and encouragement. In their presence, I was more than I was, because I was all that I could be.

So now I sit with my notes on how to build the empire. I wince and procrastinate and complain and I sniffle endlessly - I long to talk to you. You would understand all this. But somehow, I've realised that you, or rather the idea of you is all but a mirage. For all the laughter and compassion that we shared, there is a completely logical explanation as to why we must never speak. My desire for long winded d&ms is fuelled by the impossible situation we find ourselves in. We simply cannot speak. If my creative output is dependent on your speaking to me, I shall never get anything done.

That is not to say that I don't still love you. Our friendship was not a contract, where all our feelings rescinded upon expiration of the term. I will be forever inspired by your wit and your kindness and good taste, but I do not need to talk to you to be inspired by all that you gave me.

I do not need to know whether you remember me or not. I remember you.