When I sent out the last Sprinkled Pepper newsletter, I got an email back touchingly entitled ‘there’s always a song playing in the background’, which instantly made me think of Comet Gain’s ‘You can hide your love forever’ and the way it instantly makes me feel like I am standing in the middle of a field in the middle nowhere in south-east Sweden. Ever since that phrase keeps coming back to me whenever I think of a song that distinctly reminds me of someone or something. It sprung to mind yesterday when I came across this ILX thread where someone had quoted a line from a Big Star song that distinctly reminds me of someone (the song — not the line):

“I loved you, well, never mind”

I have to admit that my first thought was that ‘September Gurls’ would never even cross my mind if I was looking for the saddest line. Today, I suddenly see his point.

By the way, I have no idea what I’d say the saddest line actually is. I’ve been thinking about it but I can’t seem to come up with anything. Something off ‘I started a joke’ perhaps? Something off ‘Suzanne’? Dear Nora’s “and I’ll think about it all / including how you never call / even though I sit waiting by the phone on any given night”? Laura Watling’s “what would you say if I told you I always look for you when I’m walking down the street”? Can it be that I really can’t think of anything else?

And what do you think? What is the saddest line?

One thing I love about life: those nights (or afternoons, or weekends) when I get a real, beautiful, deep connection with somebody. When for a while it seems like we are not really as separate as we had thought all along but merely two sides of the same one thing.

And one thing I hate: when in the days (or weeks, or years) that follow it feels like it has never happened.

Thursday night, and Rob and I are sitting on the beach —or, to be precise, on the steps that lead to the beach. It’s the sort of thing you dream of* doing when you dream of moving to Devon. We’re watching trains go by on the other side of the river and talking about songs about sandcastles, when Martijn calls to say goodnight — quite naturally assuming I am at home.

“Is Rob still there?”
“Yes. He is still here. On the beach. With me. Are you jealous?”

Meaning, are you jealous we’re on the beach in Devon when you’re in your room in Oxfordshire, about to go to bed because you have to get up early tomorrow morning’? Except Rob gets it a little wrong.

“Martijn, it’s not what you think it is!”
“Oh, damn. And I thought you were just sitting there, talking.”

*If, that is, you are the sort of person who moved to Devon because they had been dreaming of it — and not the sort of person who had never given the place a thought before they discovered their dream course was situated there. And never gave it a second thought after that until the find themselves in a soddy ‘holiday home’ on Morton Road. But that’s a whole different story.

I’ve been unwell. Unwell, and buried under a pile of difficult things to think higher than me. And in a way, I’m still under it (in another way, I always am). But today the sun was shining properly –it was warm– and the wind was more playful than cold and I felt alive more than I felt like crying. I wanted to go out and draw trees more than I wanted to crawl under the duvet and hide for the rest of the week. And I wanted to write more than I wanted to stay silent.

And, of course, as it happens in such cases all the things that had been waiting inside me —waiting for a chance to be talked about— rushed out all at once. And, as it happens in such cases, they all got stuck at the door. Currently they are arguing with each other about what I should write about. The way the indiepop community still seems to be the best place to make friends after all these years? Athens and how my memories of it occasionally come back to haunt me? Or that old, half-forgotten project on ‘the beauty of the way that we are living’ and all the things that make me want to pick it up again? The opening lines of the poem Joan gave us and how they describe a land I sometimes visit in my dreams?

Or, perhaps, how sometimes every raindrop that lands on my window feels like a kiss on my soul, and I don’t hate the rain anymore.