volume one hundred and forty-four
the chain
📍Written from Darkinjung Country otherwise known as Wyong while hitting rewind and play over and over again.
It’s exhilarating and torturous how quickly a song coming on can launch me too vividly into a memory. For almost half of my life, Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain has brought me to the same recurring memory. The same chain of events unfolds in my mind, seared into my brain never to be forgotten.
When The Chain begins and the kick drum comes in, playing a four-on-the-floor pattern*, my heart begins to pulse in rhythm with it, begging to be looked after as my stomach lurches to the awakening of a hangover. The beat of this vital organ is desperately attempting to remind me it is still there, apparently waking up from a slow slumber and ready to punish me by beating me from the inside. Then the acoustic guitar picking joins in as if to say, let’s get moving, let the music help you out of bed. Sway to its sound and glide into an upright position, even if it is a slightly hunched-over one. Listen to the wind blow, there is a day to be enjoyed out there and you are missing it.
Watch the sun rise was something we did while sharing drunkenly rolled cigarettes sitting in the gutter outside the house before our heads hit the pillow. Now my head, covered so thick in hairspray you could snap the strands, rolls back and forth trying not to get the stickiness of last night’s layers of foundation and blush and caked-up mascara on someone else’s bedding. I start to move my tongue around in my mouth, hoping this will eliminate the stale alcohol coating. The taste of some of my first public kisses with women on the platforms of the nightclub dancefloor that are now shame-filled this morning are detected.
The glory of a new day is attempting to sneak in through the cracks of the roller door. I haven’t had enough sleep yet. I don’t appreciate it. Down comes the night when my favourite time to be alive begins.
There will be plenty of time to enjoy daylight another day when you believe you will be this young forever. Eternal youth felt inevitable on this morning. I look up to the loft of the converted garage where my host sleeps knowing this is the blossoming of one of the most important relationships I will ever have. My best friend sleeps above me.
Run in the shadows, as I sneak to the closest bathroom trying to hide my being sick and freshen up, removing the smell of decay which is me.
The hint of eggs already enjoyed by the early risers wafts down the hall to us. I wonder if there are any leftovers. If so, would that be the best or worst choice to heal me as I pick tabouli from my teeth left from my 3am falafel kebab made by the man who knows my order by heart?
I slink back to bed undetected, with the fun Mum’s voice joins in the singing as she starts up the vacuum. Its whirs act as an angry rival to the music, attempting to drown it out. But the song continues to build, the fire grows and the volume of the speakers is increased so that housework will not be the reason to miss the song, but rather be a companion to it. Teenagers will learn that life doesn’t stop for a hangover. Whether you suffer through it and learn, or suffer through it and keep up that behaviour for many more years is up to you. But eggs will be made and music will be enjoyed, with or without you.
Dear alcohol: Damn your love, damn your lies.
Break the silence, “Good morning!” chimes my chipper pal, who greets me over the side of the balcony before descending and letting the sunlight in. Damn the dark who did this to me, Damn the light that punishes me for it.
And if you don’t love me now, you will never love me again, but I will still meet you as often as possible, for as long as I can, until I am brave enough to break the chain of drink, vomit, drink, dance, repeat. Many red flags were raised before I paused and raised a white one.
Last week, on the recommendation of the Welcome Guide put together by the homeowners of my current housesit, I planned a trip to a lighthouse for my Artist Date on Friday.
Then unplanned to me, on the Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday leading up to it, I experienced being wooed and courted in blissful romance and dove deep in, filled with the ecstatic joy that is all-consuming-cannot-stop-talking-or-thinking-about-them love. By the third day, it was all taken away. Ended. No voice in the matter. Done.
In other words, I experienced queer joy on television as I binged the entire two seasons (finally) of Our Flag Means Death.
Circuit-breaking years of being chained to the same memory and hundreds of hangovers that replicated it, The Chain was delivered with a new memory that fits the current me: Raising a white flag. Sober. Drunk on the potential of beautiful queer love.
Listen to the wind blow, “And hold on to your hat!” the volunteer guide told me, and only me, as no one else signed up for that time slot resulting in a private tour. I stepped out onto the highest balcony and glanced out to the neverending ocean. It felt fitting to be staring out to where my heart still was. Still is. I was still living in that world where pirates live and reality was far too real to return to, yet.
Each day that has followed, I wake up feeling happy, ready to Watch the sun rise, then within seconds remember everything all at once and the sadness resurfaces and my mourning kicks in again. I’ve seen plenty of people fall in love in film and on TV. I have seen other queer representation before, and certainly others who were more like me. Why had the ending of this particular show been so gut-wrenching? And was this the forty-seventh or forty-eighth time I had listened to The Chain since I sobbed my goodbye to the finale?
In answer to my prayers, I was connected to a new pal and it hit me.
My beloved friends — as I have come to know them all in this show — mirror how I have felt myself in danger if I were honest about my queerness in some places. My queerness has been in danger as a result of denying it. Their way of life and their source of happiness are all under threat because they go against the so-called majority. We watch this happen as The Chain plays.
Watching this show, I was witnessing two people fall in love and while it was pure euphoria, at the same time fear was interfering. Fear is what I can relate to the most. The blissful joy paralleled with the devastation of leaning in meaning letting go of what I thought my life would be and what others expected it to turn out like.
The overwhelming ecstasy of the two feet that lovingly meet at the end of this scene — the simplest sign of love surviving — is what I still haven’t allowed myself: Saying yes with all my heart, no matter what is left behind, no matter how scary it is. What lies ahead in that “yes” is what is going to fulfil me more than anything I have believed would before it.
Listen to the wind blow, with it comes change.
Lovely reader, head into the comments and tell me a song that brings up an instant memory for you.
*The biggest shoutout to friends who answer your rambly voice notes along the lines of: "Are strum and beat the best words to use here, or is there something more technical and musical to describe the start of this song?”.
I am all sorts of grateful for my talented pal who helped me with this volume. I appreciate you, Kevvy!
here are three things i struggled with this week:
🌈 Still just out here struggling to accept that I have created a life of blissful balance and I don’t know how to handle it because for so long I thrived in chaos.
🧘 Putting off yoga for so long because “If I cannot do an hour then what is the point?” and let me tell you the point is that fifteen minutes healed me.
🌂Where do y’all keep your umbrellas? Because every house I go to I struggle to find one and then I find it in a weird place and I think “Is this the one thing no one can agree on where they go?”
here are three blessings from this week:
🐈 Waking up each morning with a kitty sleeping on either side of me.
🎇 Texts from friends that remind you why you do what you do, because it's the same reason they do what they do.
📋 Supposedly mundane life things being the absolute highlight of the week because you’re present for them and happy to be there with those you’re doing them with.
here are three goals for the coming week:
🧳Try and figure out what my winter wardrobe is in Australia as I hop from colder and warmer cities and live from a suitcase.
🙏 Say thank you every day.
🍃 Listen to the wind blow.
pics or it didn’t happen:
I love you. Now I am off to embrace the fact that I love being near cities and laugh about how I ever thought I could move far away from them.
When I listen to “Burn” by Ellie Goulding (that’s very random haha) it takes me back to a very specific moment.
About 10 years ago I was heartbroken over a guy (silly me, but a nice one so it’s fine). I was at that stage when I’d wake up sad and go to bed depressed. It was unbearable at times.
That day I put that song directly when I woke up and started dancing and… wasn’t sad. For 20 seconds. Then I remembered I was sad. So I decided to postpone my sadness until the end of the song and keep dancing in the meantime (and let it burn - I’m quite dramatic haha).
The song ended. I resumed being sad. I took me longer than I’d admit to stop being sad.
But sometimes for 3 min 51 seconds I’d pause.