I'm only in love for the weekend
Let's get physical. We're running around Wellington's flat waterfront and swimming through Johnsonville's public pool, listening to new Sasami and old k.d. lang, reading brilliant debut novels.
Alternate title: Never fucking call me ‘slugger’.
Welcome to All The Songs. We use “soundtrack” as a verb here.
Listening
The new Sasami record is soundtracking my entry to this year’s Autumn, providing a lush backdrop of big lusty pop songs as I go about my little life (I’m running a lot, working, being mindful of money, putting effort in to my protein intake, focusing on small life-enhancing acts like drinking a latte from a real ceramic cup without looking at my phone etc). For those unfamiliar with the American recording artist, she is both an indie icon with three albums under her belt and a conservatory-trained classical French horn player. Flexing her versatility as a musician and showing her strong understanding of song structure, each of Sasami’s three albums are different genres: one is folk, one metal and her latest, titled Blood On The Silver Screen, is pop.
The lyrics to 80s-esque track ‘Love Makes You Do Crazy Things’ could be right out of Taylor Swift’s Red era. The fact I even have that impression demonstrates just how much Swift’s pop output has influenced how we now interpret the music of other women playing in that field. But, I mean, just listen to this line from ‘Love Makes You Do Crazy Things’ and try to deny its Swiftian nature: “You and me are like a passing storm, we were wild and electric but always causing harm.”
Sasami’s record company’s press release says the lyrics narrate the ecstasies and agonies of being a modern lover: Each Blood On the Silver Screen track viscerally captures a different thread of love, sex, power, and embodiment. “Pop music is like fuel,” Sasami says. “It’s just invigorating.” I call it full of Swiftian drama but with electric guitar and big girl drums. I think of it as being in the same edgy alternative pop bucket as the best Grimes songs (‘California’!) or Sky Ferreira’s album Night Time, My Time or the critically acclaimed 2017 Michelle Branch album Hopeless Romantic.
Reading
The most gripping book I’ve read so far this year is the novel Paper Names by debut novelist Susie Luo. Written with taut confident sentences, it follows a Chinese-American family over three decades focusing on the father and daughter. The plot is shocking. I can’t wait to see what she writes next.
Recently I enjoyed both of Chicago writer Claire Lombardo’s novels. The Most Fun We Ever Had is a Jonathan Franzen-ish family saga. Same As It Ever Was tracks the poor decisions and personal dramas of an awkward woman who thinks her daughter-in-law is an idiot and an annoyance. Both books feature charmingly realistic and lovingly written depictions of how dogs interact with their owners.
Now I’m on to Rachel Lyon’s debut novel Self Portrait with Boy, wonderfully set in New York in the early 1990s. It features art galleries in Soho, the music of Pixies and Sonic Youth. The plot is appalling: the main character is an aspiring photographer living in a decrepit Brooklyn loft who captures an image of her upstairs neighbours’ son falling to his death out her window while snapping her daily self-portrait. The photo could make her career, but it will destroy her relationship with her grieving neighbours. As the back of the book says, “it’s an image that could change her life - if she lets it”. Joyce Carol Oates describes it as “beautifully imagined and flawlessly executed”.
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?
‘Honeycrash’ by Sasami
I tug blue running leggings up my thighs. Once they’re secure over my hips, I straighten the stretchy fabric at my ankles, making sure the reflective design is placed evenly at the back of both calves.
It has been over two years since I last ran 10km. My body has been through hell since then including an extended six month period of PTSD-induced insomnia, pregnancy, and pregnancy loss.
I’m prepared for this run: I’m jacked up on two cups of black coffee and I slept well last night. My breakfast of scrambled eggs, leftover stir-fried veggies and one thin slice of wholegrain toast will provide sustenance for the physical odyssey ahead. I am fucking ready.
My mindset shifts into an emotionless state of determined ambition. I am relieved to mentally step away from my usual self and all her bullshit about wanting to dust the leaves of the plants in the bathroom, get through all the laundry, weed the backyard, clear all items off the dining table that is the centre of our family’s life. I am going to kill this 10km. Just watch me.
I park my car by the train station and affix the AirPods in my ears. I set my watch to give me an alert when I reach the 5km mark but mute all other notifications. I want this time to myself. I don’t want to have to even look at my stupid phone, so I set Sasami’s Blood On The Silver Screen album to play on repeat. I straighten the cap I am wearing and start to run when I get to Flamingo Joe’s.
It is grey this morning, cool weather with only mild wind. It will not rain.
I dodge a couple of cyclists. As I pass the high-end restaurant Shed Five that I once hired out to hold a work event (it sold out!), I leap to my right to get around a couple walking their dog dozily around the waterfront. Their Sunday is slow. Mine might be, later.
The usual Sunday morning markets near Te Papa aren’t here this week because of the Homegrown music festival where Shihad played a farewell gig last night. Staff are still packing down the stages.
I run past Clyde Quay Wharf, avoiding looking at the woman coming past me pushing a pram. I feel hatred towards women with children when I see them, unfairly and in a way that might make bitterness stay in my heart if I’m not careful. But life has been unfair to me and I guess I’m still grieving. When will it hurt less to see other women have what was stolen from me? When will I stop asking why them and not me? My Asics slap the pavement steadily.
Running past Clyde Quay Wharf again on the way back, I pick up my pace when Sasami’s song ‘Honeycrash’ plays. I am smug as I stop at the 10km mark to stretch. That was easy. I didn’t once even think about pausing.
‘Constant Craving’ by k.d. lang
I smear tuna mixed with mayonnaise on to Meal Mates crackers and eat them standing up at the kitchen sink for a quick dinner, then drive myself to Johnsonville.
I take a selfie with my purple goggles on in the car before I go in to my swimming lesson at the public pool. I look ridiculous. I send it to my two best childhood friends.
It is not that I don’t know how to swim. I am confident in the water but changing schools twice the year I turned seven disrupted my swimming lessons. I’ve been embarrassed as an adult about flailing underwater, not knowing how to swim freestyle laps for fitness with correct breathing technique. When I do go to a pool, I only do backstroke in the slow lane. These lessons are something like a New Year’s resolution.
There are two teachers for my weekly swimming class. Every half hour the group of students they’re leading changes over and the two teachers take turns giving each of us individually-tailored advice. I don’t know the names of anyone else in my Level 2 group. Apparently half a dozen are enrolled in this timeslot but only one or two others ever turn up.
I remember to kick from the hip, not doing ‘bicycle legs’. The young German instructor kindly tells me again how to exhale under water. We sit on our bottoms on the steps, water coming up to armpit height. She shows me slowly, again, how she moves her arms and I copy her.
When I take off and swim the nine metre length of the training pool, I’m cupping my hands too much again. The other instructor, who looks about eighteen, paddles over and tells me with a smile that I didn’t lift my elbows out of the water enough. I try again and she praises me. I think of my dog performing for me again and again when I taught him the command ‘down’. I want my treat.
Now I’m hitting the surface of the water too hard with my feet when I kick. I try again and focus on breathing out slowly. “That’s the end of the lesson,” the instructor tells me brightly. She is masterful at smiling constantly and I admire the skill involved in her job, not just in the water but in how she interacts with others. I would be exhausted teaching others.
I keep my foamy plastic pink imitation Birkenstocks on in the showers. When I strip off my black bathing suit, I notice it has left black residue on my skin. The ageing fibres are deteriorating.
I make a detour to McDonald’s on the way home to buy a hot chocolate at the drive through. This is a ritual I undertake after each lesson. A little treat.
On the way home I listen to k.d. lang’s ‘Constant Craving’. I sip the sickly sweet drink and think guiltily how I didn’t bring my reusable cup, then doubting whether McDonald’s would use it.
Previous instalments of Everyone I’ve Ever Loved & All the Songs That Remind Me Of Them
Thank you for reading! Jazial x