They're playing our song

'Everyone has chemistry with the hot person'

Every few years, without rhyme or reason, April/May seems to set off my very own dopamine-detox scheduler. More tangible explanation: my headphones have abruptly stopped working again.

Two years ago it happened, and I rolled with it. Popped them in the bin and decided to accept the challenge of a-life-less-lyrical for a while. Walks became sacred again — sometimes excruciating. Confronted by the company of my private mind and its many fluctuating forms as I set off for 1-2 hour post work wind-downs. As someone who lives quite firmly inside their colourful imagination a lot of the time, the ease of music as an aid to finding and feeding feelings has always been useful. The portal to my very own self-prescribed placebo. Thinking back to the romantic intoxication I could flood my body with as a teenager lying in bed listening to my Mp3 player is wild. Oh the precision with which I could tune into one tiny vocal shift, layer of melody, or tiny crackle in the production of the song I had chosen as the foundation to create my altered reality upon. And oh how fast my finger could hit that rewind symbol to perpetually perfect the vision that played out on the screen of my mind until eventually succumbing to inevitable slumber.

Last week, it happened again. Headphone chord went kaput. The enforced offline vibe returned. That being said, I am now very much in the habit of walking sans-headphones and proudly have been since the run in with this technical difficulty two years ago. But every now and then, when I’m feeling exceptionally realm-bendy and in the mood to create, I will go on what I call ‘cinema walks.’ I take it seriously — like an elite athlete might bathe in their own coded playlist to build hype before stepping out to deliver the blow of their full potential. But my end goal usually winds up being a little less about polishing my performance, more about breaking it down. Dismantling it. Once again, letting the method of having ‘exact control’ over the sound and its timing offer a humbling as emotions bigger than me arrive and then speak.

Living in Athens for the summer last year, I slipped and leaned pretty heavily into this old habit again. Not because I was mostly spending my days alone, or needed distraction in moments of boredom, or wanted to become some hermetically sealed and sensitive little unit exclusive to the dynamic stimulation of the city. It was, in fact, my way of enhancing it. Making it eternal and legitimised. These were some of the most scintillating days of my adult life. Unplanned, uncertain, and luminous. And with the help of music in appropriate and strategic doses back then, I am right there again now.

I’m reluctant to share the exact rotation of songs that cement this experience for me, because I know they will not mean a thing to you….yet. They hold magic just for me. You have your own, and I want to remind you they are there and waiting. Not just the sounds, but that self.

There you are in that coat on that street on that day again. There I am riding the train home at midnight - the graffitied windows set open and letting in warm polluted Athenian air - realising the crush is still there after all. There you are, trying to find the perfect words to articulate what the scene before you really actually means as you sit taking in that certain place where you saw that particular thing. There I am in that aisle seat avoiding eye contact with the airplane stewardess, who has already caught a glimpse of my wet cheeks and hoodie sleeves, trying my hardest to be brave in not knowing where the story goes next.

A close friend and I once came up with a theory as we discussed the trance-like quality inherent in a carefully constructed atmosphere: “everyone thinks they have chemistry with the hot guy.”

Of course you do. Everyone does. Look at him.

I wonder now if this could translate into a metaphor for how much ownership we really do have over our own self-belief. The power to convince ourselves and ride the lovely mental rhythm of it for a little while, in an act of inadvertent creation. Just because it didn’t happen, doesn’t mean you didn’t feel it...

Isn’t this why we listen? Entertainment being the major factor, yes. But what about those aforementioned emotions. The big ones on reserve inside the room requiring lock and key, the formula, the secret password, the special song. The room you go to to have a conversation with another you.

In meeting this suddenly more monk-like month — music listening limited to driving, or cooking with a tinny sounding ‘phone in the fruit bowl’ for acoustic improvement, each song becomes an immense rush. A treat to savour. Dopamine hits only work when they are landing on a levelled system, or meeting a tolerance that hasn’t been tampered with too much. In having the immediacy of complete sensory envelopment taken away, will I realise and respect more what it brought in prior moments? Like recognising how a voice takes up so much space only when it falls silent. The silence is always there, noise just lies overtop of it.

Maybe to fall in love with life, be convinced of some extravagant chemistry with it, build the world in which we long to live, the trick is to find it in that expansive space right between our ears.