2a.
2018, a presentation
Title Slide
“Why I love music”
Slide 1.
A ranking of my siblings & me in terms of our “intelligence” (1 being the “best”):
- Sister
- Me
- Brother
Slide 2.
A bar graph of my siblings & me in terms of our “vocabularic? range”:
- x axis Sister - y axis 99
- x axis Me - y axis 83
- x axis Brother - y axis 57
Slide 3.
Let me explain that question mark behind ‘vocabularic’ above.
A picture of a 3 x 3 grid with various letters. The centre letter is enlarged/in a different font.
When I was growing up I used to do those puzzles with 9 or 11 letters in a square or circle. You had to use the letters to make as many 4+ letter words as possible, and in every word you had to use the centre letter. When I was uncertain about whether one of my words was legitimate I would put a question mark on the end. Sister would always (well… almost always, no one always does or is always anything) come up with more words than I did. She has this familiar tone (one time a friend of mine said “when she talks to you she sounds like she’s leaving a very negative review of a restaurant because she was disappointed in the quality of the service.” I asked “what about the other aspects of the restaurant?”, to which they said “she knows this is the only restaurant that does this food. It was just the service that was questionable.”) with which she would tell me my question-marked words were not in fact words.
Slide 4.
<small text> What’s the point of this?
<large text> I don’t have sister’s intellect, her vocabulary, her knowledge-of-everything
Slide 5.
My siblings & me in terms of our “emotional intelligence”:
- Brother
.
.
.
2. Sister (maybe)
3. Me
Slide 6.
A line graph showing what percentile in the world we are in terms of starting sentences with ‘I feel’ (where 100 is the person in the world who does this the most).
- Brother - 100
- Me - 61
- Sister - 17
<presenter’s notes> The line graph was chosen for variety. I know a line graph is certainly not the best choice for this data. There is no “trend” to display…
Slide 7.
Another chart about the emotional power and authenticity of brother.
<presenter’s notes> I haven’t finished this yet…
Slide 8.
<large text> Nor do I have the emotional range or intensity of my brother
Slide 9.
A venn diagram with aesthetic colours. One circle is brother and one circle is sister. The overlap of the two circles has an arrow pointing to it with text reading “me”.
<presenter’s notes> …but when I listen to music I feel like I get to express the best parts of both brother and sister.
Slide 10.
Why I love music
<presenter’s notes> On a good album, there is always one track that ‘devastates’ me. It’s the one that makes me write as if I have some vibrant emotional life which I am always in tune with. It’s the one that makes me think I have words which are worth taking the risk of moving them out of my head into other people’s ears. Often what the devastation song does is take you to cherished memories. Other people might have been present for that memory, but that memory is precious and unique to you because of the way you experienced it. Yet over the years that memory has taken on a slant, it’s been taken off the shelf (if only for you to dust it off and smile at it), and imperceptibly altered. There are minor alterations, like when you retell the moment amongst friends and add in non-verbal communication you’ve never added before, and there are major alterations, like when the person at the centre of the memory broke up with you. The devastation song is a door being opened for 3 or 4 or however many minutes into the weight of the memory, not just as it is now, but how it was then. In the car on Thursday, the devastation song was this 7 minute closer. 5 minutes in, after transplanting the emotional heartbeat of each previous track on the album into this swirling nostalgia trip, the track drives off a cliff, and all you hear is piano rising and falling - for me it made me feel memory after memory, suggesting everyone has a version of their world that they want to go back to, and questioning whether that was a good thing.
2b.
sometime around the present
This particular Thursday Family Dinner is promising: sister chose the playlist; even mum was involved in cooking; people are laughing at Joyce’s attempted jokes; dad shared about a friend of his who he misses; sister and brother both seem happy; no one has asked me (yet) why I am wearing a hoodie (brother perpetually forgets how cold I feel when dad blasts the a/c); and we’ve successfully made it to the post-dinner drinks stage. Drinks are as follows:
- mum: water
- dad: beer
- brother: wine
- Joyce: soy milk with some maple syrup swirled in
- sister: matcha
- me: black tea.
It is the kind of dinner you think about when you wonder why you haven’t visited more often. I assume in any case, because I still live at home.
“So Rico is throwing the towel in” brother blurts out. Rico’s the cousin on dad’s side closest in age to brother. He works in politics (or is trying to? maybe?). Our most recent interaction of any substance: he dropped off some cookies and a parrot and asked me to look after it for a week whilst he was away for work because brother said I “would be cool with it”. The parrot got out of the cage and plucked the raisins from the cookies…
“Seriously?” Dad says, scrunching the word into more of a yelp.
“Yeah, he called me up yesterday.”
A shiver runs across my shoulders.
“But isn’t he going for the empty electorate?”
“The swing voters would love him and his story!” Mum.
“His mother was telling me he had the support to make it through pre-selection.” Sister.
“Right! I feel like, why would he give up that chance? Today I was talking to Sunny, she had thought they didn’t talk about the decision enough, but then he cried and then she cried, and apparently they went out for dinner and had a really good conversation… and now it’s OK he’s quitting?”
Sister shakes her head. I slink into my chair and put my hood on.
“Sunny has a big heart. She responds to tears.” Joyce suggests.
“But Rico always does stuff like this - he’s got so much potential but keeps blowing it up… to get married… or to go into politics in the first place… and now he’s blowing that up too!” Dad.
“Those two should…” Mum sighs, and in the space between her sigh and her speaking again I do possibly one of the most dangerous things a human can do: presume to know what someone else is saying and check my phone. Nothing… or nothing sufficiently distracting. I open a note-taking app.
‘<heading> when people talk about us like this
rico and sunny are hanging out at home - “maybe we could have a baby now, instead of putting it off?” he suggests. “we could live with your lola in the philippines for a year or two, like we talked about in our 20s” she says hurriedly, happily. rico grins. “do you remember that scrap of paper from that restaurant in Marrickville, where we scribbled down some priorities for us?” sunny exclaims. “we could actually live by them.” rico rises to his feet “we’re doing this. can you find that paper? i’ll get the whiteboard.” as she walks to their filing cabinet, sunny hears a knock at the door. rico, sensing that the joyous movement of their parrot might choreograph the energy of the moment, opens its cage. sunny watches a baby blue envelope slide under the door. she calls out rico’s name and picks it up. she taps her left foot on the floor. all she hears is the repositioning of belongings in their spare room. she lightly bites her right index finger. she opens the envelope to find a thick piece of paper. the side she can see has the words “what we think you should have done” written over and over in different fonts. rico, still grinning carries the whiteboard. just as sunny flips the paper over, their parrot dives and plucks the ink of the voices she and rico will never hear off the postcard and ’
“Son! What are you doing?”
“Ummm…” I lock my phone and sit up. Dad's question asking voice is so loud. “Just checking the scores in….”
“Crying is often performative isn’t it?” Sister arrows, sharply turning her face to brother. I laugh louder than I want to be seen to. Brother makes a sad face like a puppy reluctantly accepting its need for a shower. Crying does get the job done for him. Joyce touches his shoulder.
Mum’s right hand flies up and flails “Oh oooh, do you know what that reminds me of?”
“Yes” A synchronised groan comes out of her two sons. Sister says “Oh no, not this family meta-narrative thing again.”
“Just humour me… One time my father…”
“Oh, is this a new story mum?” I say.
“Shush! - My father, your grandfather, he went to buy a TV.”
The story follows grandpa's attempts to purchase a TV after his children were clamouring for one. The unit the store recommends is well beyond budget. He notices one of the salespeople always wears a pin with a smiling dog on it. So he weaves this tale about a kelpie cross border collie who follows him to work every day, and when his new supervisor was allergic to dogs, the dog would wait at the train station for hours for grandpa to come back, and when the train network changed their ‘animals on trains’ policy the dog would wait in the park across the street. One day, so the tale goes, grandpa gets to the park and instead of the dog he sees one of his daughters, with water in her eyes, shaking her head. “The dog died”, grandpa says with water in his eyes. The salesperson, so moved by this story, gives him the TV at half price. On this occasion mum adds the detail that the salesperson was given a promotion on account of their “humanity”.
“So there you go, the family has a TV, a half-price TV, boom.”
Dad nods with his eyes closed. Brother laughs, angling his glass, admitting “it’s a good story”. Joyce looks up gently, smiling. I glance at sister, who has both hands over her face. “Don’t ever end a story with ‘boom’ mum” I offer.
Sister drops her hands “So why are we OK with grandpa crying if we aren’t OK with our cousin?”
“That’s a cagey question dear” mum says.
“Do you have an answer for it?”
"They're different situations. And the person got promoted too!"
Brother jumps in “I feel like you do anything to secure what’s best for your family, even crying right?”
“I’d hardly call a TV what’s best for a family.”
“When grandma originally said no to the TV my sisters & I cried for days”
“It’s as if you believe crying belongs to this family!”
No one says anything for twenty seconds.
Mum crosses her arms “You’re quiet as usual son. What do you think?.. and why is your hood on?”
“I agree with sister.”
“What?”
“Well... I think it’s unfair to celebrate grandpa and tear down others, especially when there is only so much in Rico and Sunny’s life that we can see. Maybe not doing politics is what’s best for them?”
“That is not exactly what I was saying…”
Wait, why is sister now back-pedalling?
I lie in bed asking myself, as I often do after the grandpa dog crying TV story, if mum knows her dad didn’t even come up with an original story. It was someone else’s story to share.