songs, too. songs like those i put on my friend’s playlist, songs like the ones from MASSEDUCTION by st vincent that i just listened to on loop at the end of last year, or like every mitski song i’ve ever heard, or john grant’s “touch and go”. songs can offer this same sense of transcendence that relationships do, and often they’re related – "ribs" is important to me because every time i hear it i feel like i do when i’m with those friends who are the only friend i need; sometimes it’s because you heard a song with someone or saw the show with them or they’ve otherwise been involved with your experience of it, but sometimes it just feels right to think of that person when you hear a certain song. my work friend told me about john grant’s album love is magic and i kept meaning to listen to it and forgetting because of who i fundamentally am as a person (i still haven’t listened to the marianne faithfull album either sorry matthew ily), and then one night i got stranded in london and stayed with him and he made us green tea and heated up some chilli for me and we stayed up late sharing our respective university traumas, and then he played me “touch and go” while he smoked a cigarette and now it will always make me think of that night, specifically, looking at the light-polluted city sky in the middle of the night, soft drizzle falling, the smell of cigarette smoke and damp grass. the next day i woke up after very few hours’ sleep and had to borrow his uniform to wear to work and even though it ended up being a Very Bad Day, the memory of that night was so bright and pure that i carried it, shining, in my chest all day, all week. there are certain songs, like these, that capture the feeling i had that night and the following morning, like the world is impossibly huge and you are impossibly small and full of so much potential that it is overwhelming, and everything is so intense it’s unbearable and you are miserable and mournful and nostalgic and also so excited and radiantly happy that that itself is scary. “ribs” makes me think of particular friends and the general concept of friendship, but it also makes me think of sitting on the beach in brighton on the last day of september 2017, alone, because right then i really needed to be alone so i lied to my friends about what time my train would get in so i could go and sit on the shingle and look at the water for a bit first, before i had to be a human who felt awkward and anxious and just Bad all the time, like i did in september 2017. the song contains experiences like that, moments when i felt very sad and lonely and hopeless, watching the tide come in; but it also contains the morning after: the 1st of october, when i wandered around brighton with new friends i didn't know very well and came back to london feeling a little transformed, a little healed, a little new. it contains the darkness of the night and the brightness of the morning; the vastness of a north london sky at 1am and warm bodies piled together in tiny beds in tiny flats, and the promise that one day we might figure out how to make it good, how to make it divine.
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