For the first time in several years, I found myself sifting through all that wonderful, messy, mix of computer junk. You know the kind:
Brain fart word documents, university essays, family pictures, amateur model shots, video entries, attempts at poetry, garage band recordings and of course, pirated videos of films and tv shows that you obtained somehow, somewhere from someone (who wants to know?). Or is this just me?
In that assorted mess, I found a handful of recorded songs, or more accurately perhaps, music videos. These videos were of me on an old keyboard, singing lyrics that I had come up with on the spot – blind, unedited and without much thought. In some of these I’m wearing my pyjamas, and in other ones I’m wearing my work clothes – clearly having just arrived home and having not had a chance yet to change out of the day. They aren’t staged, they are just very intimate little portraits of who I was on the day – where my mind was and how I imagined life at the time.
Much like sifting through my old diaries is often a source of wonder and inspiration for me, sifting through these videos made me feel very full and warm. Of course there was a time I felt passionately about a lover, curious about romance, uncertain about change…And much like sifting through my old diaries, there was something so playful and unstructured in these videos, (at least, not structured by design anyway).
Maybe when you spend a lot of time floating along, wondering how you got to be where you are, finding parts of yourself from when you were younger can be a real comfort. In this case, it was a video, but these moments become apparent to us in all different ways – through sketches, notes, pictures. Perhaps it’s a bit self-indulgent to spend too much time analysing who “that person” was – but at the same time, how do you imagine where you might like to go when you forget the path that you meandered here on?
The text below are the lyrics from one of the music videos I found. In it, I’m wearing a bright green knitted top that I still own & still wear to work! It must have been written a short while after my first ever real break-up with my first ever real lover. And although I was still processing heartbreak and loneliness and all that brutality that comes with sudden endings, there was something poised in the way which I sat at the keyboard and sung these, (hopefully) quite clear lyrics, in contrast to the gibberish I usually sing.
Without wanting to seal my fate as a romance poet – I’m posting this less so about the content of the lyrics, but more so because I found it a fascinating character study. The Gab I was at 24 was so enamored by the idea of a passionate, fierce love and heartbreak, that I felt I couldn’t experience it fast enough. I wanted all of it: the warm, cuddly, good bits and the excruciating feeling of loss. The funny thing was, I got it – I got all of it, even perhaps, more than what I bargained for. It just didn’t arrive in the way I expected. And what happened in the years to follow was similarly surprising – but again, also, in a weird kind of way, what I wanted.
So here’s a shoutout to all the first-time lovers who think they’re treading new ground. If you think no-one’s ever been there before, in a way you’re right. But at the same time, the story has been told so many times, by so many others. This is me singing my verision of the story in my bright green knit top in my cosy room in a chaotic sharehouse, snatching time between work and study to spill my guts to a private camera in the form of a musical diary entry.
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I met him by the fireplace we met when it was summertime I met him by the fireplace I said hello and he was mine I didn’t want to see him go I didn’t want to say goodbye I met him by the fireplace I let him go and then he died I told him it was all a game I told him there was more to say He didn’t want to read my mind so I painted him and then he stayed I told him it was for the future he said that it was in the past I told him it was for the best he never wanted it to last so please in this old age let me follow, let me strengthen where will we go from here, without knowing the rest? where will we go from here, without knowing the rest? where will we go from here, where will we go from here I met him in the summertime his hair was warm against my face I met him when the heat was soft he never didn’t need to have no race I didn’t want to break his heart but he broke mine oh just the same I met him in the summertime, in winter he was by my place this isn’t over not at all it’s not my end it’s just my fall it’s not why I’m telling him this at that all is not known this isn’t over not at all this isn’t here not he’s not home this isn’t over by my bed this is just him and what he said
Gabriella Florek 