Mix-Tape 40 - I Knew You

It's been almost 4 years since I first started dabbling in the art of playlisting on Spotify. Inspired by the beautiful, quirky and random mixtapes folk around my age used to make when we were kids and young adults. At first we created them to record songs we liked off the radio and not have to rely on radio DJs or our own meagre record and tape collections to listen to our favourite tracks. 

Later, as we became more practised and relatively affluent, our mixtape skills focused on compiling songs that worked well together and then sharing our mixes with friends. To make a mixtape for someone was one of the most romantic or caring gestures we could make. That hand-sized plastic package of carefully chosen music with a handwritten track list and sometimes a handmade insert or cover crafted from magazine cut out collage, could seal new friendships, heal broken ones and keep us company through the many tough times of adolescence and early adulthood. 

The idea of being able to stream and buy digital copies of our favourite songs and tracks was something we could not even dream of yet. To have such a vast quantity of music available 24/7 would have been unbelievable to our younger selves. Yet here we are - unlimited streaming, vast catalogues and endless playback. 

Playlisting itself has developed into an art form of its own and despite lacking the tactility, smell or physical presence of analogue cassette tapes, digital playlists can carry a similar potency. The initial magic ingredients of taking time and thought to carefully curate a list, perfect for a certain time, a certain moment, a certain someone, remains. 

My first attempt was a little roughshod mix for a friend going through some momentous life changes. It runs over 5 hours long and includes such disparities as Pete Tong, Robert Plant, Alex The Astronaut, Billie Holiday, St. Vincent, Fleetwood Mac, Geri Halliwell, Elbow and many many more but each track is carefully selected and ordered (although back then, I naively imagined that the ultimate track order would be whatever I chose by clicking on ‘date added’, ‘album’ or ‘song title’ (ascending or descending) rather than the original order of tracks as they were added) to give an overall effect of playful curiosity and burgeoning confidence wrapped up in a soothing hug. I hope that comes across!! 

As you can see by the notes I added to the playlist description (or imaginary cassette insert if you like) there is magic in the giving of as well as the reception of a well thought out mixtape: 

This ‘mix-tape’ was put together as a musical hug for a friend. I've listened to it almost daily these past few months which have been a super challenging time for me. It has been a life buoy, comfort blanket, spirit lifter, solace, distraction + inspiration. I hope you feel moved by the music too x 

My first Spotify Mix-Tapes were considerably longer than they are now, reflecting my excitement at the seemingly endless possibilities of curating a soundtrack gift to share. They contained anywhere between 37 and 78 tracks - up to 5 ½ hours of play! Now they are limited to 27 items but are still derived from an addiction to the curating of music to share. 

In the beginning stages of writing practice back then, it seemed natural to bring that craft to the playlist too. Feeling the need for a challenge to shake up my early writing style, I gave myself the challenge of writing a piece of poetry or prose using all the track titles listed to construct a conversation, a letter, memory fragments or some other form of communication - a message in a bottle if you like. Thus the Mix-Tape Poems were born. 

Mix-Tape 1 - I Believe In Music - Jun2018 

November 2021 I began creating my fortieth Mix-Tape called I Knew You, titled after the first soul baring track by Future Islands. I'm not sure why this mix needed a full hibernation period before sprouting its wings out into the world, but this slowly emerging spring feels like the right time to unearth its gems and let it grow. Personally, I am falling in love with it, and the magic of the mixtape process, all over again. I hope you do too.. x

Mix-Tape 40 - I Knew You - Winter2021/22

Description Poem:

Always running down / this dead end street is hard / There's music in the darkness / grooves pounded into heart / sways with our emotions / Hush. Yonder door is open / bright lights beam our way / disco balls glitter, say / we've arrived.. x

Fragments:

Our last sundown fell aeons ago, way beyond our horizons yet

Was it so long-ago that you knew me babe and I knew you?

 

We were love’s refuges rolling a dark train of disappointment

Pushed underground through a tunnel snaking dark and long

 

Myriad memories meander over this aging mindscape-

That last year as surprising as the seasons confused

 

Like time runaway we were far from our true selves..

Unnaturally warm spring and it was cold in summer

 

A lonely girl in the rain and my love, I kissed someone (it wasn’t you)

Though I was thinking of you I swear, your face was all I saw..

 

They say, you’re on your way and I wonder after all this time

Will you remember me? Will you recognise these darkened eyes..

 

You came back then and I can’t believe we had another chance

Yet there on Redondo beach we claimed our own secret Paradise

 

The clouds lifted and we danced, you in your faded blue jeans

My white dress torn like my heart, a tattered shell, unshored

 

But you held my hand, said ‘I know places’ and you know how it is

When you love too much, I swear my heart was a firework - constant

 

Explosions - all senses flowing like a river to the open sea

We were in heaven, and I swear, it was just like old times..

 

At Groovata the sun swelled over the midnight ocean

In your arms I felt serene, full of grace by your side

 

I only feel cool when I’m with you and something wonderful-

Something unparalleled fell into our laps, babe, magic, I swear.

 

Our eyes fixed, you breathed ‘My Millennium Angel’, and I belonged

From that moment on, I swear I was yours. Even now, all it takes-

 

A touch of southern breeze can bring me back to you, those nights..

You remember how the edges bled and we lived in soft filter babe

 

Polaroid kisses, even the whale song called out to our wildness

The sound fills me with heartbreak now, time and time again

 

Sunset’s arms still stretch wide though there’s only me now

But you’re coming back, and I swear babe, if this ain’t love

 

I don’t know what is. This summer will be my last here so

Whatever the weather, find me babe, come give me love.. xx

The Room, Part 1

I felt haunted by the maddening fever of Charlotte Gilman’s Yellow Wallpaper from the moment I was handed the paperback book in sixth form English class. I can still remember the dusky faded lemon cover that seemed to emit dust and sorrow from every papery pore. The smell of sadness, hopeless entrapment, filled my school-girl nostrils and nothing ever felt or smelt quite the same after that moment. Perhaps, not so deep down, a part of me knew that one day I’d find myself in a room of my own – not expansive and freeing like the space advocated for so earnestly by Virginia Woolf, but restrictive and binding, as slowly suffocating as Gilman’s lonesome character’s room.

I am not trapped here by any supercilious, arrogant, self-righteous, ignorant or fearful man, or indeed by a patriarchal society that wishes me to remain silent and insignificant as all good women should do. Patriarchal suppression may be highly analogous of my situation, but it is not that, at least not directly that, which keeps me here.

On the screen-that-is-often-nearby, I watch Ben Whishaw play Ben Coulter, the unfortunate boy incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, or at least, we and he are fairly certain he did not do the murderous deed, but perhaps he simply cannot or will not remember what actually took place.

I find myself in similar situ, imprisoned for some deed or thought that I do not recall, and am most probably quite innocent of, and would remain so if it were not for the infernal, distinctly chiding voice that crows louder with each new dawn.

‘It’s all your fault

You are to blame

So, suck up your punishment

Accept your shame’

If there is always a cause for each effect as the tech-heads in Alex Garland’s DEVS proclaim, then perhaps somewhere along the pitiful line of my younger life something I did or failed to do, something I said or did not say, even perhaps a thought that entered my mind may have led to this particular set of circumstances. Perhaps a series of actions and inaction, or conversations had and silences kept, or thought processes that did or didn’t take place, allowed a portal between two (or more) multiverses to open up and one feed into another enabling this sorry state to begin to manifest itself, slowly but surely, painfully creating this extraordinary mess I find myself in.

Perhaps it was always meant to be this way, was decreed by the gods, ordained by the stars that I would one day find myself here. Perhaps it was always going to be thus, regardless of anything I said or did or didn’t say or didn’t do. Perhaps my wilful, desperate, pleading, bleeding thoughts had nothing to do with it – with this chaos. Perhaps I have no control whatsoever over this reality. 

The idea of a kind of fate or destiny offers a morsel of relief and acceptance at times of depletion. Mostly, however, I find it difficult to accept this as a valid, pre-ordained fate – a particular set of circumstances chosen by the universe or multiverse or by a divine being or even by my own pre-human-self to live through. And endure. If it didn’t kill me first.

I’ve always loathed the story of Job – his endless suffering on top of suffering seems so futile and wasteful. What is or was the point of all that pain? The physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual breaking of a human life? To what end? And for what purpose?

I feel the weight of sorrows – not all my own, lying heavily upon these bony shoulders. A weight far heavier than one human, one woman ought to bear. But we do, don’t we? Women have bourne the world’s weight on our shoulders, heads, and broken backs for time immemorial just as surely as we have born the next generation and the next and the next within our cruelly despised, scorned, and suppressed bodies.

Is it any wonder I found myself on the 5 mile trudge to school at the tumultuous and torturous age of 15 or 16, crawling along the pavement, dragging grazed knees after each all consuming push forward of an elbow, first one, then the other and hope that the legs will follow along behind..

I recall reading with shock and fascination about Clara from the Heidi stories who cried so much her tears eventually dried up. Or was it Helen Keller? I’m not sure now. But I do remember the tears. The flooded years of almost constant crying. Wretched, unbidden flows. Sorrow's salty sting covering my face, falling into my lap, saturating sleeves, exercise books, pillows and endless nights. The acres and acres of heart-breaking grief. The pull and pull of gut-wrenching emotions – confused, liberally churned out, more liberally stuffed and packed deeply inside – layer upon layer of sadnesses forming an unpalatable sky-high dessert of melancholy or an impossibly tall pile of mattresses all trying unsuccessfully to protect me from the pain of that one solitary, bright-green pea. The lentil sprouting in the darkness, taking root and multiplying itself like bacterium, sending spores out through the sleeping strata. As quickly as I discovered or imagined a new layer of duplicitousness to protect me from my self, the pea spores would pick their way through each make-believe layer, each over-thought barrier designed to cushion the blow but failing badly every time, consequently trapping me with their wily wicked ways. I was stuck, like Sandra Bullock, in the web. A matrix of numbers, indecipherable digits and figures closing in on my wild nature, suppressing any semblance of free-will, tearing down any illusions of freedom and choice.

Was it always this way? Have I always been nothing more than a single digit in an endless equation? A piece of code that I will never be able to fathom? I cannot believe that, not wholeheartedly anyway. And yet, here I am. A single being, maybe only a half-being, flashing away in analogue mode, thinking that I must be making a difference, effecting some form of positive change, when all the while, the truth is that I mean nothing more than a single grain of desert sand, one miniscule drop in an ocean more vast than I could ever imagine…

A Farewell To Arms

Spinning around the liminal spaces
pushed towards an edge
she finds herself outside herself

watching
listening intently
as her lips - her own lips transferred onto this other -
open
in slow
distorted
motion -

See
you
soon

The words tumble out precariously
as the world holds collective breath ..

And it feels as though these words
might never before have been uttered 
never before in this world ..

A silver-spangled brand-new phrase -
this collection of letters and sounds
flown in by cosmic forces
at this precise moment
to be extracted for the very first time
from human lung and throat
uttered for the very first time
by human mouth
this delicate triptych, for the very first time 
is heard by human ear
laid gently, insistently, for the very first time
upon human mind and heart

The tone sounds familiar and nostalgic
recollections spin like dancing plates
hurled at break-neck speed
down the staircase, across the hall

But each word is a novel occurrence
tied together with silver string
gilded with stardust
as though they alighted here from some distant galaxy
sending soothing signals
out into the great unknown

An utterance of such simultaneous profundity
sits alongside an air of nonchalance
perfectly juxtaposed for higher definition audio

Three words

They fall upon us both
shroud my mouth
cloak your ears
in hopeful, strange delight
sprinkled with a smatter of tense anticipation

You drink in the surprising nectar
swill each syllable inside your heart
before cautiously allowing the echo
reverberating inside your chest
to spin upwards to your throat
as your mouth on autopilot
repeats
the same
three
words

See
you
soon

A slow
drawn out
poignant yet forgettable disengagement
of bodies first
then arms, wrists,
hands, until finally
just two fingers remain intact
clutching tightly

ramparts guarding resolutely against the passing of time

But time will not be stopped

Let go Let go

Just for now
until we meet again..

And To Make An End...

...For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning...
T.S. Eliot

For those of us who tend to over-think almost everything, have an inbuilt obsession with attaining an unattainable perfection, and seem hell-bent on criticising every aspect of our tortured selves on a regular basis, the end of a year can feel like an impossibly difficult time. 

The expectation that everything will and should change for the better, is difficult to avoid. The predilection for ruminating on the past year's 'failures' and less than successful projects and relationships is rife and often overwhelming. As Charlotte Carpenter so succinctly puts it in her beautiful song Another Year - "...this trip around the sun, it ain't easy..."



I watch myself going through all these fears, disappointments and anxieties year after year and only seem to add to the chaotic mix of chemical imbalances by attempting to stop feeling the feelings that cause such pain but ultimately cannot be undone by undoing.

Having, by no small miracle, begun to put into practice the probably life-long lesson of allowing feelings - whether they feel helpful or less so - to flow through unhindered throughout this past year, I imagined that this year end would be less painful than the previous. Yet despite putting mental, emotional and situational safety barriers in place, I've found the crossover from 2019 to 2020 just as exhausting and full of disappointment with myself, one or two unfortunate others and with life itself.

Putting the past behind us as Eliot suggests in the wonderful quote above (and elsewhere in his Four Quartets piece), is no easy task and takes huge amounts of courage and trust in the eternal process of change. 

The idea of calling an end to one way of being and thereby allowing a new way to come forth, however, is very appealing and resonates loudly in my soul. Thus, I have allowed myself the miserable luxury of spending the day (and much of the previous night) immersed in all the sadness that came skulking out of the new year woodwork, ruminating over unhelpful thoughts and disappointments whilst simultaneously attempting to employ the art of observing feelings without too much judgement. 

It's been a long day but I feel ready to make an end and let the beginning roll in. I hope you do too.. x


P.S. The following extract from Burnt Norton, Part 1 of Eliot's Four Quartets (perhaps not intentionally) sums up the feelings of fear and anxiety that, perhaps necessarily, hang over this time of year poignantly. I also like how it (definitely unintentionally) evokes the Twittersphere quite beautifully.

...Here is a place of disaffection
Time before and time after
In a dim light: neither daylight
Investing form with lucid stillness
Turning shadow into transient beauty
With slow rotation suggesting permanence
Nor darkness to purify the soul
Emptying the sensual with deprivation
Cleansing affection from the temporal.
Neither plenitude nor vacancy. Only a flicker
Over the strained time-ridden faces
Distracted from distraction by distraction
Filled with fancies and empty of meaning
Tumid apathy with no concentration
Men and bits of paper, whirled by the cold wind
That blows before and after time,
Wind in and out of unwholesome lungs
Time before and time after.
Eructation of unhealthy souls
Into the faded air, the torpid
Driven on the wind that sweeps the gloomy hills of London,
Hampstead and Clerkenwell, Campden and Putney,
Highgate, Primrose and Ludgate. Not here
Not here the darkness, in this twittering world...