list 43 songs and the memories they conjure

Oh well in five years time we could be walking round a zoo
With the sun shining down over me and you
And there’ll be love in the bodies of the elephants too
And I’ll put my hands over your eyes, but you’ll peep through

And there’ll be sun sun sun
All over our faces
And sun sun sun
All down our bodies
And sun sun sun
All down my neck neck
And sun sun sun

So what the heck

Cos i’ll be laughing at all your silly little jokes
And we’ll be laughing about how we used to smoke
All those stupid little cigarettes
And drink stupid wine
Cos it’s what we needed to have a good time

And it was fun fun fun
When we were drinking
It was fun fun fun
When we were drunk
And it was fun fun fun
When we were dancing
It was fun fun fun
Oh it was fun

Oh well I look at you and say
It’s the happiest that I’ve ever been
And I’ll say I no longer feel I have to be James Dean
And she’ll say
Yeah well I feel all pretty happy too
And I’m always pretty happy when I’m just kicking back with you

And it’ll be
Love love love
All through our bodies
And love love love
All through our minds
And it be Love love love
All over her face
And Love love love
All over mine

Although maybe all these moments are just in my head
I’ll be thinking ‘bout them as I’m lying in bed
And I know that none of it will even come true
But in my mind I’m havin’ a pretty good time with you

Oh

Five years time
I might not know you
Five years time
We might not speak
Oh
In five years time
We might not get along
In five years time
You might just prove me wrong

Oh there’ll be love love love
Wherever you go
There’ll be love love love
Wherever you go
There’ll be love love love
Wherever you go
There’ll be love love love
Wherever you go
There’ll be love love love
Wherever you go
There’ll be love love love
Wherever you go
There’ll be love love love

Wherever you go there’ll be love

It’s five years later and I still miss him, but I don’t regret anything. I have a clear image of myself in a white shirt with a “Paris” screenprint, first day after summer holidays, and he was saying, “Let’s skip the speeches and go behind the gym for a smoke.”

They gonna clean up the looks,
With all the lies in the books
To make a citizen out of you
Because they sleep with a gun
And keep an eye on you son
so they can watch all the things you do

Because the drugs never work
They gonna give you a smirk
‘Cus they’ve got methods of keeping you clean
Their gonna rip up your heads,
Your aspirations to shreds,
Another cog in the murder machine

They said all
Teenagers scare,
The living shit out of me
They can care less as long as,
Someone will bleed
So dock in your clothes,
Or stike a violent pose,
Maybe they’ll leave you alone
But not me

The boys and girls in the clique,
The awful names that they stick,
Your never gonna fit in much kid
But if your troubled and hurt,
What you got under you shirt,
Will make em pay for things that they did!

They said now
Teenagers scare,
The living shit out of me
They can care less as long as,
Someone will bleed
So tuck in your clothes,
I’ll strike a violent pose,
Maybe they’ll leave you alone
but not me

“You’re severely depressed. I’ll give you alprazolam, but if you don’t get better in 2 months you’ll have to rest in a clinic for a while.”
“Wanna go out tonight? Gig at 10, I’ll bring vodka.”
“I can’t believe it! It’s disgusting, how can you throw up on purpose?”
“This year’s Prom Queen is…” me.
“I declare you husband and wife.” And I got my happy ending the summer I turned 18.

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were talking so brave and so sweet
giving me head on the unmade bed
while the limousines wait in the street
Those were the reasons and that was New York
we were running for the money and the flesh
And that was called love for the workers in song
probably still is for those of them left

Ah but you got away, didn’t you babe
you just turned your back on the crowd
you got away, I never once heard you say
I need you, I don’t need you
I need you, I don’t need you
and all of that jiving around

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception

(After his gig, backstage, barefoot. Lying on a couch in his arms. “Do you want this? You’re too young for me.” I kissed him. I went to his house. I slept with him wrapped around me, safe and comfortable and wrong. I pretended I was asleep when he touched me at 4 a.m. I Glossed over his offer to move in with him. I cried at home, and slept next to him three more times before I could let him go. I miss him, and I’ll never see him again.)

Because we are your friends
You’ll never be alone again
Oh come on
Well come on
Come on

We were free and happy and hungover. I always get nostalgic when I hear those lyrics. They feel like early morning, grey light and love.

we are chosen
the chosen ones
we
we will linger here
we will linger
under the trees

we are the beautiful ones
turn your backs to the cold winds
they’ll never hear from us again
these crows
they shall not win

free
freedom gathers
freedom gathers
northwestern sea
we
we will leave
we will leave here
first day of spring

I worked as a model. I remember going to the agency and seeing all my friends lined up against the walls in the waiting room, wearing loose clothes because, like me, they were always cold, with their ipods cutting off conversation. During fashion weeks, they fell asleep in our hotel rooms while they were cleaning their nails of some unflattering shade of mauve and eyeing the minibar. I see them lined up in front of mirrors, blank-faced, while someone painted their faces and shoulders. They always looked themselves in the eye. I did the same, I know what they saw. They saw nothing – but it was backed up by vanity, the belief they’ll never die, the knowledge they had a sell-by-date, by families left behind and high school not finished and lack of time for love. I asked a make-up artist to lend me her ipod while she put on my eyelashes. This was the song that came up on shuffle. I quit when I turned 17.

we broke into a swimming pool after dark
i was slipping through chains and padlocks
she was all smiles and vice

I was a 14-year old junkie hanging out with my best friend doing things only kids with too much time and too little consideration do, breaking the law and each other’s heart, being soulmates but sleeping around and never sharing a pillow.

some girls know just how to wink
as they climb lonely steel gates

He made me smile and act my age, even if I was already jaded and cynical and sad. And I made him forget about his family, all money and no affection, just like mine.

eyelash to eyelash to
eyelash to eyelash to
eyelash to eyelash to

I cried and he held me with my eyelashes glues together with tears, he didn’t let me fall; he was always a little lower down the scale and pushed me up, he lived through me.

she drops bombs and her name is gunshots
and my name is daggers and payphones
the night’s too young
for punk rock kids like us to grow old

We left our houses whenever we wanted, the maids never bothered to stop us. We roamed and shot up and ran and chased each other until we collapsed in a heap in some park and called his driver to pick us up and deliver us home, missing sweaters and fears.

and her with her folks overseas and out of town

With my mother in Paris and his mother in Stockholm and my dad with his mistress and his dad in New York, we maxed out credit cards and pushed limits and held hands through it all. No one answered.

and me with my shock realisation that suddenly
i didn’t nearly say
good morning
you local lonely cyclist
you lonesome adopted small-town kid
small town kid
small town piss

We watched sunrises together with a bottle of vodka between our thighs, wrapped up in each other, and watched the early morning crowd shuffle through before us. He would hold me with his left arm and drink with his right, and then pass it on to me with a blank look that I never figured out. Even though I tried for years, lonely months when I had no one and buried myself in books to forget about him. I never figured it out and I never forgot him.

she looks good when she looks back to leave
oh she looks good when she looks back to leave
oh she looks good when she looks back
when she looks back to leave

I left for Paris and got involved with someone else. He had a breakdown. I came back to him, but he was unresponsive, locked in a mental institution. The person I’d left in Paris killed themselves over the breakup. He was never released, and he never responded.

Some people look good when they look back to leave; I’ll carry that blue stare in the airport luggage claim for as long as I live, even as my husband makes me happy and I hold down a job and stay away from drugs. This song makes me cry in happiness and grief, because it’s the sound of my wonderful, disenchanted, charmed, privileged, jaded, blurry childhood. It’s the sound between needles piercing skin and our parents calling, the sound of parks and my heels on marble and his beer bottles on packed earth. And his brother’s voice on the phone, telling me he’d cracked under the pressure.