I'm a festival, I'm a parade
We'll meet a friendly cat while listening to Blondie in a small town, clobber grief with hollandaise sauce and Jeff Buckley, read from a mix of genres and listen constantly to Bartees Strange.
Welcome to All The Songs. We use “soundtrack” as a verb here.
Listening
Washington D.C. artist Bartees Strange’s awesome E.P. covering songs by sad-dad indie rock icons The National has finally been released on vinyl. And I’ve been listening to it constantly.
Called Say Goodbye To Pretty Boy, the E.P. features his unmissable version of ‘Lemonworld’ which is so much more satisfying than the already-perfect original, a taut and restrained cover of ‘Mr. November’, and thoughtful remakes of the tracks ‘About Today’, ‘All The Wine’, ‘A Reasonable Man (I Don’t Mind)’ and ‘The Geese of Beverly Road’. It’s on streaming services too, and I really recommend you check it out.
If you only listen to one Bartees Strange original song, make it his addictive banger ‘Boomer’ from the album Live Forever. That song rules.
Everything You Hear Belongs To You feat. Bartees Strange - an episode of the podcast series Object of Sound hosted by Hanif Abdurraqib
“The way I look at music is it's all mine” says Bartees Strange. “I can do whatever I want with whatever I hear, period.” When Bartees approaches a song—whether he’s reimagining or remixing another artist, or writing for himself—he doesn’t hold back. In this episode, Hanif and Bartees talk about making their art into their career, and the journey they each took to get there. Plus, Hanif and Bartees explain how living well and fully engaged with the world and people around them is an essential part of their creative processes.Bartees Strange also covered the Phoebe Bridgers song ‘Kyoto’ and it’s gorgeous
Writing
Otherhood book, which I’ve contributed an essay to, will be available in stores in Aotearoa New Zealand from May 9 and available internationally from August 8. The essays are by writers who’ve felt on the outside looking in, who’ve lived unexpected lives and who’ve given the finger to social expectations. Some chose to be childfree, some didn’t get to choose and some — through bereavement or blended family dynamics — ask themselves: Am I a mother or am I other?
Thought-provoking, moving and often hilarious, Otherhood opens a more inclusive conversation about what makes a fulfilling life. I hope you like it!
Reading
I have been reading three very different things.
The popular novel Butter by Japanese writer Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton. The story is based on a real-life crime case about a woman labelled ‘The Tonkatsu Killer’ by media, a food lover convicted of poisoning three men to death. The novel imagines a journalist who befriends the killer with regular visits to see her in jail. The killer convinces her to stray from her diet-conscious ways and eat more butter. The rich food is a revelation for the prudent narrator. “When I am eating good butter I feel somehow as if I were falling,” the book enthuses. I am a woman who has been known to have four kinds of butter on hand - the Anchor brand butter for baking, unsalted organic butter for high end baking where I want to taste the butter, lightly salted organic butter for Vogel’s toast with peanut butter and the sea salt Lewis Road butter for when I eat butter plain on crackers as if it were cheese. If you, too, love butter, you’ll practically purr while reading this book. If you don’t like butter you’ll probably be grossed out. Either way it’s a good read, and the relationship between the main character and the killer is utterly compelling.
Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize-winning novel The God Of Small Things. I own a paperback copy I bought in India while backpacking there at the age of 19 (it says ‘For sale in the Indian Subcontinent only. India Rs 250’ on the back). It is about fraternal twins and the drama of their lives and family, centred around a particular period of trauma, with a touch of magic realism - but not in a nauseating way. The language is enchanting, sometimes childlike in its cadence and often from the fantastical and fearful viewpoint of children. A line on the first page is particularly charming: “The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hat.” The book brings the heat, humidity, scents and flavours of South India vividly to life. It transports me to a world completely different from my life in Wellington and for that I am grateful.
Cozy mysteries that allow me to switch off my own mind for a bit. There are so many and they’re mostly quite silly, but that’s what I love about them. The Country Store Mystery Series is cute. I welcome cozy mystery recommendations if you have any for me.
Watching
The miniseries of the sweet David Nicholls book ‘One Day’ captures so much of what is loveable about the book. It follows the main characters Dexter and Emma by showing where they are on the same day every year over a long period of time from when they meet. We see them swim in and out of each other’s lives, make terrible decisions and slowly grow up. Their connection is once-in-a-lifetime strong but it takes them a long time to learn how to be good to one another in the ways they need. It’s about love, friendship, how foolish we all are.
There’s a quote from the film ‘Before Sunset’ that sums up what I think of when I think of ‘One Day’: “I guess when you're young, you just believe there'll be many people with whom you'll connect with. Later in life, you realise it only happens a few times,” - Celine in ‘Before Sunset’.
I haven’t seen the film adaptation of ‘One Day’ with Anne Hathaway in it, and don’t care to. That is nothing against Anne Hathaway - I mean, ‘Princess Diaries’, ‘The Devil Wears Prada’? Stone cold modern classics. I just watched her latest film ‘The Idea Of You’ at 2pm on a Saturday, still in my pyjamas and letting pieces of dark chocolate melt on my tongue for lunch one by one from the heat of sips of black coffee, chased by palm-oil rich Snax crackers and sun-dried tomato pesto, chased by jelly beans (I’m fine). I loved it. Her character - who was turning 40 (just like me!) - put on a Fiona Apple song in her car and I was like Anne, I see you sis.
Cooking
I made Anna Jones’s chocolate and muscovado fudge cake but my advice to you is don’t ice it. It is moist, dense, rich and absolutely enough without any icing.
Everyone I’ve Ever Loved & All The Songs That Remind Me Of Them
For this memoir-by-playlist project, I write 500 words on my memories of a song. These vignettes offer a glimpse in to the rich and varied emotions we all experience in our lifetimes through showing a brief slice of my life at a particular time, in how I relate to a certain song. What the music brings up might be shallow or it could be intense. The memory may be joyful or thick with sorrow, a reflection on pleasure or a heavy exploration of fear. Whatever emotions a song dredges up from the spectrum of human feeling, they are true.
I remember snippets alongside songs. This is the soundtrack to my life. Let me be clear: Everyone I’ve Ever Loved & All The Songs That Remind Me Of Them is not a curated selection of the coolest songs I want to associate myself with. Some of them are my jam, others are trashy and catchy - all manner of music has been part of my life.
This project invites the reader to consider, where does this song take you? What does it remind you of? Where were you in your life when you last listened to this track?
‘Sunday Girl’ by Blondie
The cafe in Okato has a homemade banner in the window with a letter sewn on to each triangle of bunting. On the side facing the street, it reads ‘HOMEMADE PIES’. On the reverse, facing the inside of the cafe for only patrons to see, it reads ‘DOWNTOWN OKATO’.
It is a joke.
This is the only shop in Okato, apart from a Four Square.
I regret leaving the AirBNB down the road that I’d rented a room in for the night without talking more to the host, Wendy. When I sipped my instant coffee from the jumbo tin of Moccona she’d told me to help myself to, I looked at the books on her shelves. She owned a copy of the Atomic Cafe Cookbook published in 1995, from an eatery in Ponsonby I had frequented before moving to Wellington for a job writing at a newspaper.
I want to talk to people. I crave interaction. I miss the work of journalism, talking to multiple new people every day. Now my circle of interaction is the people I already know - colleagues, family, friends. I don’t paid get to talk to strangers and write about our conversations anymore.
My soy latte arrives with a bite-sized wedge of lemon meringue slice and despite trying to be vegan again - a dietary habit I adopt during times of stress - I eat it. I savour the taste of the butter, the gummy texture of the lemon filling and the way the caramelised base sticks in my back tooth.
A guy walks up to the counter carrying a mug he’s brought in from home. “Hi Ben,” the person behind the counter says. Ben doesn’t speak as he hands over his Eftpos card - they know his order - other than to ask, “Yarigh?” as in, “Are you alright?”, as in, “Hello, how are you?”
The couple seated at the table next to mine say hi to Ben. “So you got your house in position there now?” the man asks Ben, “That’s what you’re working on today is it?” Ben pulls out a chair and sits down, elbows on the oak antique table, and tells them about the clay he was working on yesterday at the site.
The song ‘Sunday Girl’ by Blondie is playing.
A man wearing cargo shorts and a tan t shirt with short silver hair takes his plate and cup back to the counter and asks, “Hey can I double up?” He orders another scone and flat white.
I wonder why I’ve never considered living in a small town. When my 12-year relationship ended it was Nova Scotia I considered moving to, not Taranaki.
I copy double-up-guy and order another soy latte. An orange cat who appears to live at the cafe saunters over and accepts the pat I offer. I take a photo of him and send it to mum, who shows her dad - she’s at the rest home right now. “He was delighted,” she reports. We are a family of cat lovers.
‘Last Goodbye’ by Jeff Buckley
We have the day off work and don’t really know what to do with ourselves. We just needed some space. To think, to process, to be sad. Our plans for the future have changed against our will.
The only balm I can think of is hollandaise sauce. I’m a week and a half in to coming off of a vegan phase and dairy still tastes overly, extraordinarily, wildly creamy - an indulgence so intense, it’s unbelievable that it is a food most people consume daily. It’ll bring me momentary pleasure.
I feel thick and blurry and fuzzy. I feel heavy. I’d like to stay in bed for a week. I’d like to sit some kind of shiva, and have the people who love me come join me in the dark to sit in silence, but I don’t have any religion. I don’t want hugs or to talk about it but I want recognition. I do not want to listen to any music. I do not want to cook. I don’t even want to break things, I just feel flat.
It is a Thursday so we will be able to get a car park easily enough on Cuba Street. They have good eggs benedict at Fidel’s, with potato hash and everything.
I walk through the cafe past the counter with Tim Tam Cake in the glass cabinet, past the toilets, to the small area of seating out the back. It’s my preferred place to sit. But there is just one girl here alone, slumping strangely to the side and looking vacant. I worry she is not okay but feel put off by the vibes and spin on my heel. “Let’s sit inside,” I say.
My appetite is absent, but I order the eggs benedict with sautéed green beans on the side. The food comes quickly and I pierce each egg yolk with my knife then add an appalling amount of salt. I feel reckless.
I think of the other times I’ve eaten here. I used to come here a lot in my early days in Wellington. I had brunch here once with a girl I never talk to anymore. Friendships can be weird.
When I lived on Staunton Avenue I’d often stop here for a date scone and takeaway flat white for my breakfast. I’d drink the coffee while walking twenty minutes to my office, then eat the scone at my desk.
The door to the Cuba Street-side outdoor seating keeps opening as wait staff deliver beverages and meals, and customers move through. The breeze shocks and irritates me each time. I feel fragile.
The Jeff Buckley song ’Last Goodbye’ is playing. I never listen to Jeff Buckley anymore.
I scroll through shit on my phone and consider buying a $999 handbag. I do not have $999 to spend on a handbag.
“I don’t even know what to do,” I say.
“You could write a letter. That’s a thing some people do. It’s in your wheelhouse.”
I pout. I don’t want anything.
Previous instalments of Everyone I’ve Ever Loved & All the Songs That Remind Me Of Them
Thank you for reading! Jazial x