We hang side by side
Let's revive an iconic late 90's drink, share an intense friendship and reveal how overwhelmed & chaotic our Christmas brain is (it's ok, I know yours is too)
Welcome to All The Songs. We use “soundtrack” as a verb here.
Listening
My favourite Christmas song is Elvis’s version of ‘Blue Christmas’. What’s yours?
Writing
I recently published a piece about the miscarriage of my son, Rufus, in Capsule.
Reading
The book Memory Piece by Lisa Ko enthralled me and, better than that, surprised me. It follows three girls who are friends as children and head in different directions as adults, but they keep in touch. One is a performance artist, another an internet whizz in the 1990s, the other an activist. What I enjoyed the most was the way Ko wrote about what it felt like to be on the internet in 1996, what those early communities gave us, the sense of anonymity and connection. It was so accurate and will be nostalgic for others who experienced that. I also loved how she wrote about the way friendship changes over the years, and good friends can have years-long periods of absence but the connection remains and the doors are always open.
The book ends up in a shocking but potentially realistic dystopian version of New York in the future. Highly recommend. Here’s what The Guardian had to say about it.
Drinking
I’m bringing back the Cosmopolitan cocktail. It has fallen out of fashion because it was the drink of choice for Carrie Bradshaw and her crew on TV a long time ago. However, it has everything you want in a cocktail: sourness, just a little sweetness, no salt or other crap on the rim, a cute colour. Am I a little bit embarrassed ordering it in a bar? Yes. But will I keep ordering it anyway?
Editor’s note: Don’t @ me about Chris Noth, I know.
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?
‘Eye of the Tiger’ by Survivor
The party is at my boyfriend’s friend’s wife’s uncle’s house. They’re looking after it, house-sitting. It is around the corner from where we live, the suburb in which we all rent flats in various states of decrepitude. This house is nice though. It’s fancy.
To spend time in a renovated home that’s ready - as many in Ponsonby are - for the pages of a magazine, is to try on the lifestyle of people who are older, wealthier, more secure, shrugging off our second-hand sweaters to borrow their pristine cashmere.
The hostess is practicing for when she’ll be older and have a home like this of her own. I don’t know where I’ll end up. I’m still studying. I earn my small salary by waitressing for celebrity chef Simon Gault at his restaurant on Jervois Road and the owners of this house would probably dine at it for more per head than I earn in an evening. Everyone who comes there orders the potato side dish, twice cooked with rosemary and salt.
Everyone was told to bring a bottle of red to add to the mulled wine simmering on the stove. The hostess has copied this from me: I invited her round to my mum’s house for dinner before I moved in with my boyfriend, and I’d served mulled wine.
G meets us at our place so we can walk together. At the party, my partner peels off and G and I huddle, giggling, in the garden to smoke cigarettes and speak to each other.
He has dimples when he smiles, and loose brown curls. There is plenty of space in the garden but we stand so our biceps and shoulders are pressed together, heads bent towards one another. As I lift my right arm to bring the cigarette to my lips, the June air cool, I feel friction as my arm rubs against his.
We meet for coffees during the week, just the two of us. He collects vintage brooches and has strong values. Everyone else I know is a bit silly but this man talks about integrity, loyalty.
On Sunday nights while my partner is working but we’re both at home pottering around, we watch the music video countdowns and have what G calls “texting wars” guessing what song is coming up next. When ‘Eye of The Tiger’ came on last week he sent me an SMS saying “I'm running around my room throwing punches in the air, Rocky-style". He likes jasmine tea, fish burgers, apricot shampoo.
In the dark, out in the garden, we observe the others distantly through the window glass. When we’re participating in conversations with the others, as a group, our eyes often meet involuntarily to share a reaction to something someone else said. We share an understanding.
This intimacy does not have a name.
We have an air of conspiratorial companionship, a mischievousness that is impenetrable to anyone else.
He ducks back inside to refill our drinks while I roll us each another cigarette.
‘Swingin Party’ by The Replacements
I need to buy more wrapping paper and I haven’t decided yet what look I want to go for this Christmas, maybe bright matte solid coloured paper and nostalgic curling ribbon in silver that will look festive and cute against any coloured paper, the paper and the ribbons can get so expensive and what about the gift tags maybe my step-daughter and I could make some but what shape like maybe Christmas trees which is a bit basic and boring but fun to decorate, we could get glue and glitter to do the baubles on the trees or glue on sequins I don’t think I have sequins and do I really want to add another task to my to-do list by going to Spotlight for sequins, no, that sounds like a nightmare, I don’t have time to go to any more stores, no, and what am I going to wear to the work Christmas party, I haven’t been to one before at my new workplace so I guess I’ll just wear something casual like that denim dress from Decjuba, the one that Susie Ferguson has too and wore in her publicity photos for something, and I should really focus my writing next year on a tight collection of essays that is publishable, maybe something about belonging, about like all the groups I’ve tried to belong to over the years and how we all need to go on the journey to learning that internal validation is the only way to find inner peace not external validation but belonging to communities is important for our social and mental health, I’m not sure how excited I am about that and Damien Wilkins told me to write what feels the most urgent, my shoulders are so tight, I need to put a load of laundry through with my gym gear from the last few days and when will I ever manage to go to three Pump classes in one week, it is such a simple goal but seems so hard for me and I really want to tone up my arms for hotness and strengthen my legs for hiking and running and maybe next year I’ll make it happen, I really need to stop obsessively looking up secondhand sales of deadstock handbags what is wrong with me and Deadly Ponies never replied to my email about that bag they don’t make anymore I wonder why, I should put ice cubes under my eyes this morning for the bagginess seeing as I couldn’t sleep with more pillows under my head to keep it elevated to help drainage or whatever the fuck that beauty blog said it would do and what I really need to do in 2025 is be more grateful for my family I’ll Google how to be more grateful for my family this Reddit post says to pay attention to linen pillow cases, coffee and The Replacements on Spotify so I’m going to listen to ‘Swingin Party’ in full with my eyes closed.
Previous instalments of Everyone I’ve Ever Loved & All the Songs That Remind Me Of Them
Thank you for reading! Jazial x