My Dear Friend
We find ourselves at three Fridays in a row in our most recent correspondences. I think this might exhibit the characteristics of a habit. I should remember exactly what it is that defines a habit. I remember some of the words: cue, trigger, reward, basal ganglia (this last only because it’s such a glorious word) but not really the way they relate to each other.
I should remember more, shouldn’t I? After all those books and articles I read. Do you remember when I was reading them all, when I was all about wrestling myself into some form of productive being? All those books I bought at Magrudy’s in Al Wahda Mall, and then, when it opened, at Kinokuniya in Dubai Mall? All those lists I devoured of writers’ daily habits, of the importance of morning routines. All those apps I downloaded and then spent hours populating. I don’t think I ever told you this, but back in those days I even wrote myself a manifesto.
I do wish I had spent more of that time repairing my mind instead of constantly berating it. But I didn’t do that, and here we are, and if I haven’t quite given up on being a productive person with astonishing output, at least now when I get out the highlighters and post-it notes it is with the insight that all these plans and lists will help to calm my mind and leave space to get on with the things that matter.
I still get Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter though. I like him, because he isn’t writing about productivity, but really he is, even if he’s writing about not writing about it. Anyway, I woke to find that he had linked to a piece by Susan Piver about Getting Stuff Done by Not Being Mean to Yourself (which must surely be one of the only such pieces I have never read) and which, in this lockdown time, was a lovely reminder that some days the most productive thing you can do is simply to do the thing you most want to do.
While I have been looking forward all week to writing to you, I realised that there was one thing I wanted to do above all else, and that was to read Tracey Thorn’s My Rock and Roll Friend. And time has shown that spending the morning reading this book was definitely the best thing to do, because now I can write to you about reading this book which is now one of my favourite ever books.
(Here I take a quick moment to note that of course, the elephant in the room this week is lockdown, into which my city has once again been plunged. But what’s to be said about that that hasn’t been said before? Would I write a melancholy piece about the strange passage of time; a hopeful piece about familial relationships now forged through unanticipated proximity; a mournful piece about the loneliness; an angry one about political ineptitude; a fearful one about what comes next? And besides, my experience remains minor in comparison to most others’ in the world.)
I had been planning to send you a postcard, a photo of my travels and a little story, but My Rock and Roll Friend is much more interesting than that. It’s a book about Tracey Thorn’s friend, Lindy Morrison. In being a book about Lindy Morrison, it’s a book about many things, but it gets its narrative drive from the story of Lindy Morrison’s time as the drummer in the Go-Betweens.
The Go-Betweens was one of those bands I always thought I should, but never did, get. A few years ago, thinking it was a gap in my music knowledge, I listened a bit to Robert Forster’s album Songs to Play and I almost loved it. Then, a few years ago, I tried a few times to read his book, Grant & I, but again something stopped me loving it.
That’s interesting, isn’t it? That I should start telling you about this book about Lindy Morrison that I have loved so much by telling you about the book by her ex-partner that I didn’t love? Always, the woman’s story framed by the man’s. Which of course is partly the point of the book.
There’s so much to love about this book, deeply love. I have underlined and asterisked more pages and paragraphs than I can tell you about (yes, I’m sorry, but I have marked them in biro…I always use pens and highlighters, I dog-ear the pages, sometimes I even put a fold down the full length of a page…I know this hurts you, but to me this is all part of the experience of falling in love with a book, and of giving love and life to a book).
I love the insights into what it means to truly be radical in your thinking and your actions in your early adult years. (I think I didn’t have the intellect to be radical when I was young. I was once in a conversation with someone who said, ‘We spent Saturday night on the lounge drinking beers and reading Marx.’ I tried reading Marx, but woah, I didn’t know what I was reading.) Lindy Morrison was a beautifully radical young adult. But as radicalised as she is, somehow still, she ends up almost going missing from this history of the band.
I don’t want to tell you too much about the book because I don’t want to spoil it. Not that there are spoilers like plot twists and revelations. More I don’t want to spoil the moments of recognition, the flashes of familiarity, the times of clarity of thought when something you’ve been vaguely thinking in the back of your mind suddenly appears as a fully-formed idea. The older you get, the less often you find a book that does that to you, eh? Perhaps, in light of that, I will share this one passage about entering middle age which I have both asterisked and underlined:
“The uncertainty feels like it is connected with my age, and yet reminds me more than anything of my adolescence and young adulthood. It is like an uncomfortable return to youth, with all of its vexing questions about how to become a person, a whole person, the person you most want to be. Or the person you have to be.
…Late at night, when I’ve had drinks, I feel loose and like my wheels are coming off, and I’m not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing. I go out in the evening, dressed up, talking, getting drunk, dancing, feeling a bit wild and young, feeling alive. I miss euphoria, and am euphoric when I find it again. I have to ration myself, and not do it too often. It’s an escape, not a solution.”
This is one of the few moments in the book when Tracey talks about herself rather than Lindy, but it’s a core moment of the book, of its very existence. Because it is in this moment that she looks for a way to write a book about a woman she loved; about being a woman and making art; about a friendship that survived despite a 20-year hiatus; about what it means to ground your middle years in the lessons of your youth.
Perhaps next week I will write the postcard I intended to send you today. Or maybe something more interesting will happen along the way. Or maybe this isn’t a habit after all and months or even years will pass before we correspond (not years, it won’t be years, but you know what I mean).
Whatever comes next, I send you my love and my hope that there are many gentle moments, between now and then.
Tracy xx
PS I made you a short playlist from bits and pieces I was thinking about while I wrote this letter.