I Wish You Were Here | Not Quite a Review
The first time I remember seeing you is at New Folder at Oldes. You and Tsholo are a quartet of elbows and unrhythmic moves. We only begin talking in 2018 when I tell you during society sign-ups that I want to be your friend. In a “not review” of Robyn’s second album Honey, Read writes, “she would have loved this” becomes “a tense you find yourself using a lot when you talk about a dead person”. I’m currently stuck in “I wish” as a tense.
I am amidst tears falling and belly hurting laughter when I get the call that you have died. It feels like a joke but Zama isn’t a person who would make a joke like that. I immediately start crying and I shake so badly. That night I dream of my other friend dying and when I wake up, there’s a second of everything being fine, fine as in you’re still alive before it hits me again and then I am cold and shaking again.
We were supposed to talk the day you died. It wasn’t a special occasion and in my “I wish” tense, I wish that I had bought data because if I had then we’d have spoken for hours and you wouldn’t have been where you were. But I am also not that naïve to think that the universe conspires to fulfil my wishes. When I hear about you not being here anymore, I go check your Instagram stories, any new stories you’ve posted, screenshots of what you’re listening to but there aren’t any.
I made all of these plans for us when I’d come back to Grahamstown. About us working together on the sex issue for New Valley and waiting for Kelsey Lu’s album. Now I just have Mark Zuckerberg’s team constantly reminding me that no one has heard from us at New Valley and, Kelsey’s album is here.
There’s so much to say. I am so angry at you. I wish you had stopped smoking. You broke my heart.
I know I’m being selfish.
You tell me that Kelsey recorded her EP Church in a church. It’s one of those facts that make sense that you don’t have to think about. In Liar, the EP that you regularly post on your Instagram stories, she sings in, “I’d be lying if I said I was okay/ Cause I’m not/ I’d be lying if I said I was okay/ Cause I’m not / Yeah, I’m angry/ And I’m sad/ Yeah, I’m angry”.
She says the album, “is a recognition of the Pain, the Horror and the Beauty of finding the ability to observe it all in order to move through it” and to be honest, I’m not sure what that means but now that you’ve gone the lyrics mean something different. I think the album is about love. You would have loved it. It’s not too different from Church but you can definitely see the how she’s pushed her artistry and how’s there’s more production work in it.
She’s as weird as when you were here. She’s almost an anime character these days with that strange wig and there’s a lot of dancing in her insta stories. You would have loved all the songs I think. I’m betting on you loving: Rebel, Blood, Pushin Again the Wind, and of course, her cover of I’m Not In Love by 10cc, because of the connection to The Virgin Suicides.
I wish you were here to hear it.
In the last song Blood (also the title track), she sings in the second verse, “History has taught us hope/ Hope is the answer/ Yes, it is”.
Living in a world without you isn’t something any of us thought would happen but it did happen. Some days are opaque, I want to tag you in everything like Susan Sontag’s notes on Camp, the theme for this year’s Met Gala; Noname and Lakeith Stanfield calling Hollywood a dumpster, and I want to tell you in our list of “eat the rich”, I definitely would eat Mark Zuckerberg. I don’t think he’d be as gross as your pick: Elon Musk, but that they’d be a quality of nonhumanness but you aren’t here even if I wish you were.