Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS WRITER
The first time Jen saw Joe, she couldn’t explain what she felt. Was it recognition from a previous meeting? Had they gone to school together? Played in an orchestra together? Met whilst travelling the world? Or was it that she recognised something inside herself in the look that they shared? A sense of knowing that can only be found face to face in someone’s eyes? Not online, or in a text message.
Jen felt herself at a loss for words. She was generally pretty good in one to one conversation, however, was feeling particularly shy tonight and glad that she and Joe were amongst a group. She felt the temperature drop in the retro bar where friends and strangers had gathered for a birthday celebration and pulled her thin black cardigan around her shoulders. Gathering her long brown hair to one side, her hand caught on the red sequined choker she had chosen to match a simple black dress with subtle red and gold lines thinly patterning the fabric, giving the Melbourne uniform of black a little colour. What was happening to her? She smiled shyly at Joe. “So, how’s your day been?” she asked, encouraging light conversation so she could clear her head.
Joe was talking, however, Jen wasn’t hearing the words, just the sound of them, softly spoken, soothing, familiar. It had happened to Jen before, meeting someone that she felt she knew, but had never crossed paths with. It was difficult to believe that these occurrences were a coincidence. She played with the red sequined choker she had worn that night. It was an unusual accessory choice for her to make as Jen liked to blend into a crowd.
Recently though, she’d made a decision that anything that she didn’t use or hold deep sentimental value for needed to be gifted, recycled or discarded. She’d picked the choker up at a night market in Bangkok, and it reminded her of a more adventurous time of feeling free and like she could reinvent herself every day. Life had become too cluttered, and Jen wanted simplicity. She felt overwhelmed by the weight of material history that held memories of life events that were now so long ago that she could barely remember them as having happened to her.
She had only one regret in discarding part of her history. Jen had moved house more times than she could count, each time picking up her box of cassette tapes and storing them in her next home. She never opened the lid, just shifted the box from one place to the next. She didn’t even own a cassette player, and after a long day of packing, moving and unpacking, a few years ago with an overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia from owning too much “stuff”, she tossed the box into the garbage instead of into the back of her car, rationalising that music was available online.
Whilst the music could be replaced and found as mp3’s that took up no space, she missed the feeling of popping a pen or pencil into the cog of the tape to make sure it was wound tight, and never quite knowing what track was going to sound through the speakers of her stereo when she hit play.
Jen pulled herself back into the moment. She often found herself distracted by thoughts of music, seeing it as the soundtrack of her life. She regretted discarding the tapes, for those precious mixtapes would never be mixed quite the same again, and many were gifts that were now gone forever.
The group she was with were talking amongst themselves, and Joe hadn’t seemed to notice her lack of words. They had shared a few more smiles and glances whilst Jen’s mind had wandered. The dim lighting and upbeat music playing in the background gave a happy and relaxed feel. The décor was of gentle green and orange tones that were warm and reminiscent of a time gone by, but not yet passed. The lamps glowed purple, orange, red and yellow, and had character, not like those mass produced Ikea lights that lit up every space these days. Jen realised that what she liked about a place was how she felt and she wanted her home to feel like this space did.
She wanted space for new memories, distance from some old memories whilst still holding some of the ones she cherished. Not being materialistic, and an experienced backpacker who could live indefinitely out of a bag she could run with need be, this overwhelming amount of “stuff” that she had accumulated was starting to feel like a heavy weight holding her in place. She thought of a tin of coins and notes sitting on her dresser. It contained the currency of countries she had visited over her many years of travel, in hopes of returning there again. Did she need those?
Finally, Jen looked up and made proper eye contact with Joe, fully present in the moment. “I feel like we’ve met before,” she said softly, leaning in towards Joe. “Me too,” said Joe, “We haven’t though, have we?”
“No, I don’t think so,” replied Jen.
They continued to look at each other shyly, using their eyes rather than words to communicate in the noisy room with its layers of music, conversation, clinking glasses, closing doors and trams passing by. “Hey, do you know this song?” asked Jen. “Yeah, hang on, I need a second,” replied Joe. They both looked at the speaker above as if it held the answer.
“Jamiroquai!” exclaimed Joe.
“Yeah, one of my favourites, ‘Canned Heat’.” Jen smiled as she answered.
“Hey, we should dance,” suggested Joe, moving gently towards Jen and unimposingly guiding her towards the dance floor.
Jen hesitated as she looked out to the uninhabited yet inviting dance floor. Sometimes it just took a couple of people to start something new. Jen followed Joe under the sparkly lights and found herself in this song, which held so many memories for her. Dancing when no one was watching. On the side of a road in broad daylight to keep warm whilst hitch hiking in Finland. In a hut in Norway when she felt alone and depressed. With synchronicity on the eve of her 40th interstate at “No Lights No Lycra” with some of her oldest friends. There was something there, in the absence of words and in the presence of music, that provided a connection that went beyond. Beyond anything that words could convey.