Anyway, Don’t Be a Stranger
On getting stuck & getting over <The Letting Go Series: letter no. 3>
Darling Amara,
Hope you are listening to some good songs on your drive to Alabama. I’ve always had this image of you driving in your car with music that feels too cool for me to even be cognizant of, singing along with your beautiful voice, free-spirited, picturesque-american. Yes, the lower case is intentional. Funny how some languages, like French and German (and probably lots of others that I don’t know), don’t capitalize country adjectives; being “francais(e)” is just like being nice, or happy, or blue, a quality, not instantly political to the eye. My usage of “american” is meant that way here, to describe a feeling the picture in my mind exudes.
Songs, Snippets, Stuck
I just checked my Spotify wrapped for 2024, even though it’s already 2025, because it seems like I was too busy to breathe at the end of 2024 (and for my fellow tech-grandpas, you need to update the app to see it. There, saved you a google search so you can use that time to listen to another song. You’re welcome.) Apparently, I am among the top 3% of the listeners based on my listening times, and top 0.4% of the listeners to repeatedly listen to my most repeated song (subscribe if you’re curious about Amara and Ina’s most-listened-to-songs and their musings over what they were thinking when listening to them! We’ll do a subscriber-only post).
I’ve always been a huge audio-consumer. I attribute it to my mother’s generosity in bestowing me with pretty much every cassette I’ve ever wanted, mostly on mythology from different cultures, or fairy tales (she would help me skip the sad ones though – I would cry for hours otherwise). Listening is my preferred way of taking in information; it’s comforting. I’ve wondered if the activities we did as little kids, the earliest ones, are what brings us comfort as stressed-out adults.
But I digress. I meant to say, with the facts I’ve listed above, that you’ve probably gathered, I don’t listen to “cool” music or even a broad range of diverse artists (I think my “coolest” music are mostly from your recommendations, or just absorbing in the passenger seat of your car, on rare occasions we get to physically be in the same city, sigh…). I get stuck on a song, and I listen to it over and over again, until I don’t have it stuck in my head anymore when I’m not playing anything.
Sometimes, these are chunks of verses and choruses. But oftentimes, it’s really just a snippet of a song I heard in a coffee shop, and I would pull out my phone and try to search for it before it’s over, and experience a big sense of relief if I manage to find it, because now, phew, I can listen to it for as many times as I want to, to revel in the snippet that got lodged in a nook in the auditory cortex of my brain, and yes, to get over it, so I can stop only humming that one line repeatedly.
“Anyway don’t be a stranger” is one of those lines that got stuck in the nook when I heard it somewhere. Turns out it is the last line from Scott Street by Pheobe Bridgers. Feel free to listen to it as you read. I haven’t checked out the lyrics to the rest of the song yet.
If they were a song…
The funny thing is, a lot of the times, when I listen to the entirety of the song where these lodged snippets of melodies or words come from, I’m less enthralled by them. Suddenly, puff, the magic is gone, it’s just an average song. I’ll still add it to my “liked” folder, so it can serve as a memory aid in the future; when I listen to it, I can remember the moment of obsession and the rejoice when I found it, where I was, the ambience. But for the song itself, my intensity of liking it is only concentrated in the snippet I first heard.
Some songs are like some people, your mind dwells on them, can’t seem to think about anything else, or even about them as a whole person. Only the little snippets are stuck in your head: a phrase they uttered, a look in their eyes, a chuckle they gave in response to your joke. And once you get to know them better, they occupy less space in your brain. I’m not intending for this to be an analogy for crushes, or even limerence. I’m trying to distill this feeling, or an interim conclusion, about something more fundamental, that is applicable to all types of deep human connections, not just romance. Anyone you meet and strike up a conversation with is quite special really, since considering how many people are around, it really is a low-probability event. But not everyone *stays* special. The special ones are like those songs you listen to the entirety of, and still want to listen to every minute of it, including the instrumental parts in the beginning and the end.
Although, it’s not always good to like a song, or anything, that much or obsessively. In cases where I like a song so much I played it 47 times in a row, I inevitably will arrive at a point where I will skip it when it comes up when I’m listening to something else. Do you think this is a common process of getting over something, or someone? You think about it, wallow in it, until you don’t.
From getting stuck … to getting over
A couple days ago, I was trying to comfort a friend who is experiencing a nasty shock of a heartbreak, and it’s like dark nights that won’t end. She struggles to see how it is ever going to get better. And I really didn’t have anything very helpful to say to her, other than it will get better with time.
Possibly everyone who has gone through a painful heartbreak knows the feeling. But I think it’s not like an endless night (my gemini moon immediately went to Agatha Christie’s novel under the same name, but okay, focus! It is a great book though - if you like plot tWists. I’d like to write to you about it sometime), it is more like a polar night. It too shall pass, with time. And then there might be periods of seemingly lasting joy and revelry again, like the midnight sun, when it never gets dark, until it does again. All part of a cycle we have no control over.
To my darling friend whose heart is aching over someone whom, perhaps, your nearest and dearest would call an unworthy person, I’d like to humbly recommend a song that has, yes, been stuck in my head for weeks, in a good way:
It’s been a long time
And seeing the shape of your name, still spells out pain
It wasn’t right, the way it all went down,
Looks like you know that now
…
Don’t treat me like
Some situation that needs to be …
handled
I’m fine with my spite,
and my tears and my bears,
And my candles
…
Yes, I got your letter. Yes, I’m doing better
It cuts deep to know ya,
Right to the bone
Yes, I got your letter. Yes, I’m doing better
I know that it’s over. I don’t need your
Closure
…
I know, I’m just a wrinkle in your new life
Staying friends would iron it out so nice
Guilty, guilty,
Reaching out across the sea,
That you put between you and me,
But it’s fake and it’s oh-so,
Unnecessary.
–Taylor Swift, Closure (live from Zürick, July 10, 2024. No I wasn’t there, but this is the version that first got stuck in my head)
Incidentally, I don’t even think this is a song about a romantic breakup, but rather a business partner/mentor one (I would defer to the Taylore (get it? Taylor + lore) Scholar Ally Sheehan)
“Anyway, don’t be a stranger” felt apt as the title for the topic “getting over” somehow. Because, after all, even with time, do we really truly get over something that left a true mark? Maybe it becomes a tattoo or a faded lil’ scar that doesn’t hurt anymore, but will always be there as a souvenir of the polar nights. Incidentally again, the English word “souvenir” originates from the 18th century from French, souvenir - to remember, which in turn originated from Latin subvenire - occur to the mind. Hmm… from souvenir ‘remember’, from Latin subvenire ‘occur to the mind’.w
If you, dear reader, are also living through polar nights, I hope you also get to see, and remember, some aurorae.
Je t’embrasse,
Ina
Sharing is caring. If you enjoyed this letter, copy the link, share it with a friend you think might want to read and discuss it with you!<3