Happy New Year everyone! I know it's a bit late in the day/January to be wishing you so, but as I said to my mother after 48 hours of labour on the 2nd of January, 1999 instead of the expected 24th of December 1998, ‘better late than never right?’.
…
Or at least that's what I would have said if I had a grasp on any form of communication apart from screaming my not-yet-developed tits off for milk.
Moving on from the topic of my breasts, I’ve been unfortunately trapped in my apartment for the past few days recovering from a bout of tonsillitis/sickness bug/heartbreak. Spending Saturday and Sunday shrouded in my duvet, I thought I might as well make use of the free time at home (rest is a concept I know not) to start cracking on with planning for this year's goals. I am and have always been a resolute resolution maker. Every year I set myself a set of goals, some huge, some small, some easily achievable, others which require a keck of a lot of work. Take last year for example. 2023’s goals ranged from ‘move to Japan’ (tick), to ‘get something published (tick), to creating a Spotify playlist documenting my year (tick, tick, tick).
It’s my yearly playlist that inspired this small little collection. Throughout the year I added songs that I either came into contact with or felt spoke to me. Every month I limited myself to adding five songs so as to end the year with a 60-song-long list:
It’s a silly little thing really, but means a lot to look back on. Listening to it in the first few weeks of this year has been an exercise in self-reflection. The arc of my 24th season was one full of tumult, and hearing one specific song transition into another I am transported back into the body of my previous self. It’s pretty clear what I was feeling, when I was in love, when I wasn’t. When I couldn’t be. And I’ve decided to share this playlist with you too, accompanied by a poem for each month. Some of these were written during the month they represent, whilst others are written in hindsight. Though I’ll keep the details of which is which to myself, if you don’t mind…
Anyway, here goes nothing. I hope your year is everything it can be in terms of highs, and lows are but survivable background noise in amongst the firework of your existence.
January
26- Carol Ades
Special Girl - dodie
Better - Cavetown
You’re So. - Milk
Weeds - Beach Bunny
There are holes in my bones, and a crack in my heart
You sit there trying to patch it up with murmured dots of empathy.
It’s not working
You don’t even have a box,
Let alone the tools that I do to comfort others.
Scissors and Delicate little tweezer-like tongs to pull out this wart by the root.
I tend to the hearth
Avoiding an eyeline I once
Tried to match
With sniper-like precision
I don’t know which of us was the target then
And I’m less sure which version of us died first.
It doesn’t matter anyway, we’re both still here
Still alive, for better or worse.
Is this getting older?
Because it feels there are worlds upon me.
… Can you even begin to imagine what it would be to echo those words back,
and have them hit in the way I meant?
In a roomful of people
I can’t feel you anymore.
Not in the way it was.
Not in the way it will ever be again
.
February
Welcome To My Island - Caroline Polacheck
Farewell- Covet
How Can I Not Know What I Need Right Now - Charli XCX
Lagoon - Horsey
Chronically Cautious - Braden Bales
The months drain out like pus
A series of unfortunate events
Too close for comfort.
When everything crumbles
And there's just sinking sand
You swim to stay alive.
Days grow dark.
This feeling starts
Of feeling like I'm nothing
Like intensity’s a part of me
That means I’ll never work.
But still I try, and I can't lie
That it feels good to feel like nothing
Because at least then I feel something
I need something.
…
Emotional creatures
Transition to screams
Alone in the places
That no one can see.
March
Annwn - Mari Mathias
Time - Hans Zimmer
Vroom Vroom - Charli XCX
Wildest Dreams (Taylor’s Version) - Taylor Swift
FUNGUS - The Narcissist Cookbook
Cut the chord quickly before I get attached
(yes, I’m a girl like that).
Ignore me and let this fade into the background
I think you’re better when I’m not around.
But I’m sorry love if I’m off-track - just if you
‘Care about me too much’
How can you forget to text back?
I’m too nice, too kind, too perfect for a good time.
Does saying sorry give you peace of mind?
I’m too soft to handle the truth,
So you saved me from the Monster of You.
… Does that make you feel good?
Do I make you feel good?
But if you’re not enough
Then why’d you bring this up?
And expect me to go on thinking the same?
Now it’s like all I can say is
Well done baby, you’ve saved me
My white knight,
Now you can sleep at night whilst I
Toss
And turn
And burn
Imagining the girl you’ll give your heart to
If you only date those you’ve capacity to hate then baby what’s the point in calling that loving?
Does she know -
She’s just a side chick?
Not a sidekick?
Just a side-gig.
You’re not nice, not kind, just looking for a good time,
That old line.
It’s time to switch up switching off.
Because it doesn’t make you feel good
And doesn’t make me feel good.
And if you ever read this
I hope that you won’t feel good.
And don’t you dare say that I’m a sycophant
When you’re sucking me out
I don’t think there’s anything attractive about that
You say
It’s kind of cliche
That I’ve been on your mind like seventeen hours a day
You talk so slow
How can you not know?
It’s a stalemate play though
Because I never leave and you’ll never go.
I know.
You'll never go.
April
Breathe - Lin Manuel Miranda, ‘In The Heights’ Original Broadway Soundtrack
Don’t Wanna - HAIM
Sleeping With Anxiety - Maddy Hicks
Suzume - RADWIMPS, Taoka
We’re Gonna Find It (From ‘Barbie and the Diamond Castle’) - Barbie
I am having a good day.
No, I promise I am.
Because I refuse to travel at this
terminal velocity of sadness
In an exceptionally speedy life.
When life crumbles,
Rome-like in a day
- Every day -
You pick up the pieces
And start building something new.
I like the idea of crazy paving
in the garden
- what does that sound like to you?
May
Wait a second - Charlie, phritz
Cha Cha Cha -Käärijä
All Things End - Hozier
Mama Will Provide - Alex Newell, ‘Once on This Island’ Revival Cast
Summer of Love - Austin P. McKenzie
At the centre of this storm there is quiet.
The quiet of a Saturday caught inbetween
A job offer across the world
And home.
The centre of this storm is Colchester.
The calm before this storm was
A missed call received in
The breast clinic of Whipps Cross Hospital.
An email emblazoning the possibility of
Choice
And crappy aeroplane set meals.
I travelled in through the wind and the rain,
Metaphorically on a surprisingly sunny day,
My head awash and thoughts adrift
The serendipity of decisions yet unmade
And the pureblood dread of getting it wrong
Rattling alongside Greater Anglia’s clunky best.
Yet when I step off, and see you,
There is this light feeling.
In-between all these worries,
All the stress, and the admin,
And bold-faced life decisions.
You heave a great breeze of a sigh and say:
‘I don’t think anything anyone could say would convince you not to go’
Then you smile like it’s prologue to our next great adventure:
‘Not that we’d ever want to, of course’.
I feel seen.
And know in that moment wherever I am
As long as you’ve that light,
That clarity,
I’ll never be lost
And I’ll always find my way back home.
June
花束と水晶 - Galileo Galilei
東京- Kinokoteikoku
Airplanes (feat. Hayley Williams of Paramore) - B.o.B., Hayley Williams
Flyers - BRADIO
Touching Yourself – The Japanese House
It's the dancing around the peripharies of each other
The touching you and knowing I am home, because I mould into you and you into me
It's the being welcomed in
The antibiotics
It's the fact that I love you
Always have in a way,
And always will in even more.
In all of London, you are the singular most spectacular thing
And I am so grateful that you came into my life.
Because that happens sometimes,
Meeting people who feel like home.
It's the I love you I know you say
It's the taking opportunities to almost-touch,
And the hugging twice before I leave,
Once properly and then once again as an afterthought, a chaotic moment of trying to communicate when I'm already halfway out the door
It's the human contact .
The wishing I had more time
More opportunities to touch you.
Not in that way, perhaps.
It's you being the most wonderful thing.
Even if you're not always the best for me,
And I for you.
If we could meet inside your mind I don't know what I'd find in the corner of some mental kitchen cupboards.
But I hope it's something similar.
And I hope it's something nice.
I hope I see you in Japan.
And then we'll see what comes next.
We will see each other though I think.
I Hope.
I Love you.
One day all my bones will break, and my eardrums might pop. But even when I'm old I think I will still hold this tenderness
Because it takes no effort at all to love you.
July
Spinning (with Charli XCX and The 1975)
夢のはなし - CHAI
Delicious Monster - Alan Gogell
Dragonfly - Fauness
HEY BESTIE - Neanderthal
In my monochrome beauty, I stand there and glisten.
You made me shine so.
Unapologetically myself I have become a thing you love,
Through your love.
Needle-sharp wit and Classical form
A banana republic patchwork,
Picture-perfect-moment-snapper
Polaroid-like in your mind.
It’s there I shall stay when I’m gone,
When I leave you a while,
Wiping drops away, blinking in the light.
That is where I shall glimmer
all through the night, the day, and crepuscular dawn.
Always here,
Always bright,
Always yours in just the way you made me.
In just the way you love me back.
August
FEARLESS IS THE FLAME - Will Joseph Cook
crossing field - LISA
地球儀 - Spinning Globe - Kenshi Yonezu
ありおりはべりいまそかり - onomatopel
Workin’ Hard - Fuji Kaze
Coin laundries
And telephone chords
Are the sum of my parts.
Ice lolly sucrose and salt stream
down my arm in an August typhoon.
But I am inside, looking out
At illustrations that now must be letters.
At shapes that now must be signs
At a sky and city I now must call my own
For this portion of my little life.
I send missives to loved ones
And organise dates with new friends.
Sitting still never came naturally to me
So being here in this hotel room is an task in itself.
An episode in stasis after summer tumult.
I wait.
Until the weather settles a little.
when I go out and
baptised by the drizzle,
I am reborn myself again.
September
My Romance - Ben Webster, Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison
Easy Thing - Snail Mail
September - Earth, Wind & Fire
A town with an ocean view - kiki’s delivery service - luvbyrd
夜に駆ける - YAOSOBI
Shinkansen,
sink or swim.
I’m on the tracks
Out on a limb
Worried if you’ll like what you find within me.
Or if everything ends.
This isn’t how my story goes,
I find a guy, I hold them close,
Then they let me down and let me go.
She’s down for bad boys in nice clothes.
Now here you are and I don’t know
If I can trust your lamb-like tones.
It’s all too fast
It’s all too dumb
Please stop the press, this isn’t fun.
It’s not your fault, since I’m the one
Who serves love overdone.
So easily unspun.
Yet easy comes
As easy goes
On goes the train, this life I chose
is not so bad for all these woes
And in you I see hope.
I hope this time I’m not proved wrong.
It’s up to you to end this song.
October
I don’t know how to tell you that you’re my best friend - Vylet Pony
Cup of Tea - Wes Reeve
In The City - Charli XCX, Sam Smith
This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) - Natalie Cole
Castle on the Hill - Ed Sheeran
I used to call myself a summer girl,
Red-hot heart sunglasses
And showings of skin
Sunkissed
The sickly scent of overripe peaches in a very thirsty sun.
Soft half-smiles roused by warm kisses,
My days layered onion-like in suncream and sweat, encrusted in salt-cured statuism.
I needed to cool down.
I used to romanticise Winter love,
Tracing the lines of your soul alongside damp cobblestone,
Lamplight glistening on the smooth melancholia of our oh-so-short days together.
Feet-damp and stiff-palmed in a hunt for warmth,
Then the coziness of locking up for a night spent deppresively well-in.
Yellow spot of lamplight on someone’s grey coverlet
Listening to the 1975
and falling into lugubrious pleasure far from the sun.
I used to love feeling like that, frozen in a moment.
But with you, I realise
What I needed after all this time.
A love like ours
Is easy, breezy, relaxed.
Crisp and cool and basking
In the warmth of an orange sun
Whilst tracing your palm like the veins of a
Fallen leaf.
A love like ours is eternal Autumn.
Our love is Yellow
With sunspots and mustardseed
Jumpers over turtlenecks and undershirts
La France pears resting on the side.
Our love is Orange
The muted blink off-and-on
Of the train signal.
Gentle patience before we move forward.
A spritz of Mikan, freshly-peeled.
Our love is a sensible brown
Unassuming and clear,
Treading our lives up and down mountains
Our lives a series of footsteps.
Everyday adventures.
Our love is evergreen through the dying of heat
And a muted burgundy punctuating days with warmth and passion
Our love is mushrooms rising
And foliage falling
Caught up in a breeze
And swept to rest in a heap,
Layers of vital fungus covering our bodies
In connections and communication.
I love this lull,
This gentleness and easy-living.
A welcome break and bolster for hard times,
You mean all this and so much more.
Here's to a season well-spent.
November
Chocolate - The 1975
(not) a love song - with Will Joseph Cook - Liang Lawrence, Will Joseph Cook
Mii Channel (From “Nintendo Wii Mii Channel) - insaneintherainmusic, Year 5
Hahaha - Stevie Bill
One That Got Away - MUNA
Persimmon fruits hang
Bauble-like, dusted with frost,
Flesh syrupy-fresh.
Season’s bounty, full
of promise whilst Winter creeps
Ever-slowly in.
December
Yurukan no theme - Akiyuki Tateyama
カイト - Noriyuki Makihara
Wintering - The 1975
Sparkle & Shine - Nativity! Cast
Stop This Train - John Mayer
Year’s end and
Looking back
I see a patchwork puzzle-piece mess of
Broken things
Mended with gold.
I've learned a lot,
Cried.
Laughed more.
At, about, with myself
And the benevolent mess of an existence
My time on this earth constantly becomes.
I love myself a little more
Each day I see double-chin
Or wrinkle line,
I am glad of my face,
And the places my smile
Has carried me.
That stupid smile.
Gets me into scrapes, I'll tell you that.
And yet, here I still am
Trying to find a connection.
Sometimes I wonder about the day I die,
Or the conversations people have about me when I'm not in the room.
The poems of which I am subject
Or object.
I imagine as if in a story, the tales they tell.
I imagine they say
That I'm the girl of a million mistakes
Always ends up undone, lets people take what they take
She's left to pick up the pieces
Alone and afraid
But I think life’s highs are sweeter this way.
Because what's the point of living life in the shade?
I’d rather run in the sun
So reader, let me be brave
With warmth over my back
And a glow in my face,
At the end of an annum I stand here and say:
I love how my life moves. Despite everything.
And the others?
They come and go.
The Cancers, Leos, Scorpios,
Virgos, Libras, bring the vibes
Aquariuses set me right.
Sagittariuses, Capricorns, shine so bright
While Aries make waves through my life.
Some Geminis have made me cry -
And you couldn't pay me to go out with a Pisces.
Just to be clear.
These people populate my life,
And I'm so grateful for their time.
As I am for yours.
So whoever you are, thank you so much
And be brave this year.
For me.
All my stars,
Char xxx
Be your own sunshine, baby xoxo
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