Raised on promises
Let's bake cheesecake for loved ones, ride in our boyfriend's car at the end of the millennium, only watch films with Anthony Hopkins in them for a week, and hear Tom Petty when we least expect it.
Welcome to All The Songs. We use “soundtrack” as a verb here.
Listening
My fortieth birthday is coming up later this year so naturally I have been working on a playlist of songs that are, like me, from 1984.
Obvious highlights among albums entering their fourth decade are Purple Rain by Prince, Born In The U.S.A. by Bruce Springsteen, Run D.M.C.’s self-titled debut, L. L. Cool J’s self-titled debut (it was a good year for hip hop), Heartbeat City by The Cars and R.E.M.’s Reckoning.
Writing
The essay collection ‘Otherhood’ has now been published - I am one of the contributing authors. Our hard-working editors Lil O’Brien, Kathryn van Beek and Alie Benge held three different book launches so more of us around the motu could attend. I went to the Wellington launch and was honoured to sign books for readers.
You can buy our book from where ever good books are sold. I recommend independent publishers such as Unity or Time Out.
Reading
I waited seven weeks in the hold queue at the library for the audiobook of Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, read by Meryl Streep. The story follows a woman recounting a summer when she was a young actress at Tom Lake to her three daughters who are home on the family’s cherry farm during the recent pandemic. Ann Patchett writes relationships between trapped people well - see her earlier work Bel Canto, about hostages and their captors.
There is something false and irritating about this book and I think it’s twofold: the relationship between the girls and their mother didn’t ring true to me, and the family’s safety is annoying.
The way the family is barely touched by the reality and tragedy of the pandemic is off-putting. Three young women in their twenties happy to listen to their mother talk about herself for days? Rubbish. Those girls would have been resentful of being home, utterly self-obsessed and full of panic about their futures during the pandemic. The daughters’ worries are referred to but don’t consume them. The way the three girls were born each two years apart, with no fertility struggles or miscarriages along the way, sounds so perfect it can only be fake. There’s a scene in which the three girls plait their own hair together into one braid that I could not imagine actually happening.
As the story went on, the adoring girls caring so deeply about their mother’s experience, a thought grated at me: does this author actually have children? Because the interest the daughters take in their mum did not ring true. It turns out that no, Ann Patchett does not have children - but, she is a step parent. Ah, I thought, it all makes sense.
One of the thoughts that makes me consider if not having children of my own is the right thing to do is that, while I spend a lot of my life parenting a step child, no one is invested in my life. I’m an only child with no cousins on my mother’s side so there is no one on this earth who will have a stake in the history of my family - who will care about what it was like for me growing up knowing my mum was adopted, half my family tree blank, then meeting my biological grandmother as an adult? Who will care about my brave adopted great-grandmother who moved to India from England as a young nurse? People, including my step-daughter, may one day take an interest…but no is invested. Understanding it was a childless step-mother’s wishful novel made it make a lot more sense to me.
Having said all that, it was an enjoyable read. Can Meryl Streep narrate all books for me from now on please?
Watching
Since the last All The Songs was published, I went down with a bout of Covid. While unwell I passed the time by going on two different screen tangents.
Tangent 1: Mad Max
My go-to website for mindlessly reducing my stress levels during the work day is Elle magazine’s homepage (I sure as heck don’t turn to the news when I need a break), where I read an interview with Anya Taylor-Joy about her starring role in the new ‘Mad Max’ film. I fell ill with Covid not long after reading it. In my fevered state I embarked on a mission to watch all three of the older ‘Mad Max’ movies in preparation for viewing the new one. They are each quite different. The first, filmed in 1979, is Aussie, raw, bananas and full of homemade low-budget effects. The second stars Tina Turner, is always bombastic and sometimes gross. The third features Charlize Theron and Zoe Kravitz, and a ridiculous hype man playing electric guitar. All three films amused me.
Tangent 2: Anthony Hopkins
As you’ll read about below, I watched ‘The Silence of The Lambs’. This led to an appreciation of what a great actor Anthony Hopkins is (fresh thought, I know) so I followed it up with the prequel ‘Red Dragon’, a thriller co-starring Ryan Gosling called ‘Fracture’ and the new release ‘Freud’s Last Session’.
Cooking
I baked an extravagantly rich gingerbread cheesecake to celebrate the birthday of a ginger-lover. The base was made from crushed Gingernut biscuits and melted butter, the filling was cream cheese, sour cream, sugar, eggs, ground ginger, cinnamon and mixed spice. If you’re on Weight Watchers then half a slice will wipe out your points for the whole day…and probably be worth it.
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?
‘Glycerine’ by Bush
My boyfriend is six foot three, a Scorpio like me, and he is proud to drive a manual Nissan Primera.
He lives in a suburb of Auckland half an hour away from mine which may as well be another world. We don’t have any mutual friends. We go to different schools. We talk on the phone all the time. I am 15 years old.
For our first date, we are going for a drive with no destination.
His uncle sits in the passenger seat and my best friend sits beside me in the back. We drive around, music blaring and energy verging on hysterical. “The gearstick’s bigger than his penis,” the uncle taunts and my boyfriend yelps at him while my best friend and I lean on each other, shrieking. I laugh into her hair, clutching her hand – I am nervous.
My boyfriend and I both passed whatever test the uncle was putting us through as he supervised that first date, so we are allowed to go on a second date.
My boyfriend picks me up, wearing a grey button up short sleeve shirt with a wave pattern in panels on the front. I think it’s Quicksilver. It was definitely bought at Amazon Surf, Skate & Fashion. His dark brown hair is slicked down on top and rises in a series of tall gelled spikes at the front. He has full lips.
I smell of Pantene shampoo and wear a halter top with lavender coloured bootleg trousers from Glassons. I took the hems up myself. I am only five foot three so I am familiar with altering clothing to fit better.
The difference in our statures has been a topic of conversation on our phone calls that go on for hours. He has been wondering how he will kiss me, he teases me, because I’m so short.
He might have to bring some steps to put me on so that our mouths align, he jokes. “A little step ladder. I can keep it in the boot of the Primera for you.”
His nickname for me is Sunshine.
On our second date, he drives me down to Takapuna Beach and we sit on the cold grass beneath one of the Pohutakawa trees near the playground. He has brought strawberries and diet Coke, which he knows I like. It grows dark. We sit close, watching the ocean lap at the shore.
He parks on the street and walks me down the driveway to my front door. My parents have had the grace to not wait up, or at least to pretend to be asleep. “Now,” he says, stepping back and considering me.
He puts his hands under my arms, lifts me up on to a large rock. “That’s better,” he says, eyes level with mine, then he gives me a kiss I will never forget.
When we’re on the phone the next day, he plays the song ‘Glycerine’ by Bush down the line. “Did you hear it all?” he asks.
I did.
‘American Girl' by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
I am challenging myself to watch ‘The Silence of the Lambs’.
I've seen it once before. Like many teens, my best friend and I went on a quest to watch any and all R18 VHS films we could get our hands on at the age of 14. There was a lot of Tarantino in our North Shore adolescent years.
I remember watching ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ standing up, restlessly moving about her parents' lounge, because we were so on edge – but I also remember being bored for long portions and disbelieving how legendarily scary it was supposed to be.
Now I am 39 and the film has returned to my consciousness because I've been thinking about Jodie Foster.
Her naturally aged face in the latest season of ‘True Detective’ hypnotised me. I can't think when I last saw a woman on screen at 60 without fillers puffing up and stretching out her face. She is weathered and wise. She is real. I was irked watching Kristen Wiig's smooth glowing face in the show ‘Palm Royale’, for it is not the natural face of a 50 year old woman. I accepted the altered faces of characters on the ‘Sex & the City’ reboot ‘And Just Like That…’ because those characters would be big into botox in real life as wealthy New Yorkers. I just want to see a realistic face. It is mesmerising how Foster's eyelids droop and lines etch in deep near the corners of her mouth.
On an evening when I'm alone in the house, I make tea and snuggle beneath the grey woolen blanket the real estate agents left boxed up on the kitchen island as a settlement day gift, and start the movie. Here Foster is 29 years young and her face is tight.
I'm enraged on her character's behalf when she first goes to see Hannibal in his cell and Dr Chilton says to her, "You know, we get a lot of detectives here, but I can't ever remember one so attractive.” It is her biggest opportunity so far in her career and she is reduced to her beauty. It reminds me of how belittled and speechless I felt when the manager of a music company told me, before I interviewed one of the artists on his books for a magazine, "I didn't expect you to be so hot."
My body is alert with tension throughout the film. The Tom Petty song surprises me.
At the scene in the ambulance – the ambulance!! - I scream for about sixteen seconds straight, in absolute shock (my dog is alarmed). I have no recollection of it from my earlier viewing. I wonder if people screamed in the theatres.
I have a memory of being terrified of something involving a lamp, which I've misremembered as being made of human skin – the lampshade is ordinary, but it’s near the sewing machine that works on the flesh of dead women.
I want to watch it again.
Previous instalments of Everyone I’ve Ever Loved & All the Songs That Remind Me Of Them
Thank you for reading! Jazial x