Of songs and stories

First song

I remember how it all began. Freshers week, yellowing leaves marking the welcoming of autumn, shy smiles of new students trying to fit in, clubs trying to recruit new members, and of course, the dozens of Instagram posts at any given time asserting their old friends that hey, I’m cool and all in this new uni!

In short, it’s your typical picture-perfect opening scene for any romantic comedy movie ever — except that I don’t belong in any of your typical female lead trope. This is a story of a mediocre girl: most of the time I feel okay-ish with how I look, I’d settle for a B+ grade, I listen to Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits playlist, sing in the shower, my favorite Instagram and/or Snapchat filter is the dog ear one (only because it makes my face smaller and eyes bigger — you know, like everyone else), and most importantly, I narrate my daily life.

So, it’s only natural that upon seeing one fine senior handing out flyers for the debate club, Frankie Valli’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You blared loudly in my head, complete with the wind effect and slow-mo vision.

But no, the first song is not Frankie Valli’s classic — instead it’s a band fanfare in the background, excited chatters of freshers, and the unapologetically loud laugh of seniors. The first song is how you bumped into me, said sorry, waved your right hand, and walked away with your friends. The first song is how truly unimpressive we first met, and how I couldn’t have imagined of the profound and lasting impact you’d have on me.

Second song

The faculty’s decision to paint the lecture hall ivory was fueled by the desire to look elegant and expensive, but cheap enough and longer-lasting than wooden paneled walls. The second song was a lecture on Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension and the buzzing sound the projector makes.

It would’ve been nicer if the second song was Dua Lipa’s New Rules, as how a girl’s phone suddenly played that song that brought an abrupt end to the lecture. Thanks to her (although the poor girl had to stay after class), the lecture was cut short and the professor asked us to convene in pre-assigned pairs and start the semester-long project on anthropology in business.

It was then when we first talked — I could’ve said it was fated by the universe but in its most honest sense, it was really just because of the lecturer’s pairing system. We learned each other’s name and agreed on how we’ll work this forward. It was your typical lecture.

Third song

Running through this playlist in my head, I slowly realized how the weather outside changed. I was so certain that today is a fine summer morning, so the strong wind and gloomy sky didn’t add up. Little by little the droplets of water became more violent, until it raged a thunderstorm. It was just like that day in the library.

That day we found out that you’re the better one in finding relevant books and I’m the better one at googling. You have the basic skills to be a private investigator, you said. Or a stalker, I said.

That day we found out that we hated the same film genre (horror) and loved the same genre (romantic comedy, although it needs a little bit of probing and teasing to squeeze that out of you). We have a highly contrasting music taste though — you despise my Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits and I barely know the musicians you considered as gods (later I will learn the magic of Miles Davis, Chet Baker, and Antonio Carlos Jobim).

That day I found out that I really liked hanging out with you, and realized that I had secretly counted days till we work together again for sub-section III of our anthropology paper.

The third song is rightly Hans Zimmer’s Maestro from the movie The Holiday, the movie we found out that we both really liked. In the movie I’ve always regarded it as the beginning of a budding love story, which I had silently hoped would be befitting for us back then.

Fourth song

Fourth song is easily the cathedral bells and the busy Christmas market. By then we’ve had dinners and lunches together on the pretense of bonding over better paper writing, but this time around was the first time we went out without laptops in our bags, no books on hand (my hand was not yet in yours, as I had hoped for the two months prior).

Do you want to visit the Christmas market? you inquired after a lecture.

Sure! Want to do it tomorrow from the library? I was thinking to finish the chapter by the end of this week, said I, oblivious to your intention.

I was thinking to go now… There’s this choir that’s only playing today. I went there last week, and I loved it! Thought that you’d like it too. But, if you want to go tomorrow too, that’s fine by me.

I caught the word too. Took me a split second to realize that you wanted to hang out with me often. Took even a shorter amount of time for the butterflies in my stomach to flutter around at the thought of you reciprocating my feelings.

We went, drank some mulled wine, listened to the choir performance, marveled at the majestic cathedral, and talked and talked till late and you walked me back to my flat.

I had fun, you said.

Me too, I said in return, hoping I wouldn’t mutter an inaudible sound out of nervousness.

I had fun not only this evening, actually, but through the entire months of hanging out at the library with you, lunch, dinner, and stuffs. Let’s do this more often? you continued, flashing a smile that was highly unnecessary, given the height of the moment.

I would skip the stomach-turning details of how I nodded, how we kissed, how we hugged in the middle of a cold and damp winter evening, and how we parted goodbye with a sheepish smile etched on our faces.

There were a million different songs playing in my head — explosive love songs, romantic jazz standards, every single main theme song of all romantic comedy in recent times — and I couldn’t pick any. So the fourth song is easily the cathedral bells and the busy Christmas market, the moment where our eyes met and we laughed silly at each other, couldn’t have imagined spending the day with anyone else.

Fifth song…and hundreds more

It could’ve been the wings of birds that flutter in spring, the drum brushes from the jazz club we frequented, the midnight phone calls and the hurried knocking on the door to let each other in. It could also be the music box I brought you from my winter break and your curated Bossa Nova playlist. It is most definitely the Norah Jones song playing in the background during our homemade candle-lit dinner and the Queen songs we sing along to in our road trip. My most favorite song is of your laugh and your hour-long recollection of inventions in Mesopotamian Age — and yours is the pouty sound I make and my rant why Sense 8 should be continued, among others.

There are hundreds of songs we shared from when we are together, all playing in harmony. I guess it’s true when people say the best times fly fast — it went by in a blink of an eye.

On hindsight, however…I wish I had blinked slower.

Last song

There were days where your eyes are the first thing I see when I wake up and your hands are the last thing I felt when I fall asleep. Gone were those days.

I started to forget how it feels like being in your embrace — what I once thought was my home. I was afraid I’d one day forget how you taste like. On the rare occasions that we meet, our hellos were muted and our touches empty.

I tried long and hard to think where it went wrong — I remember it was on this very room, on a similarly beautiful summer day that I replayed every memory, searching for little clues on how it happened, how we happened. People’s cheer outside sounded like a world apart, as I was perplexed by how my own world came crumbling down.

Was it that one time I insisted to pay over dinner? Did I offend you?

Was it how we missed the train because I woke up late?

Was it the row we had, stemming from your uptightness?

Was it the food that wasn’t salty enough; the text messages that missed emojis in it; the Netflix series you dropped; the socks I lost in the laundromat — what was it?

The last song is, I guess, a radio static. At least that’s what I had in mind for the longest time. I, who by that time was a devout follower of your curated jazz and bossa playlist, didn’t listen to any music for the longest time. Heck, I didn’t even know what the top 40 songs were as I have long neglected the Today’s Top Hits. Unknowingly I would spend the days looking at the ceiling, absent-minded, hollow. The notification of your message brought no solace, for your text doesn’t mean anything but a string of texts, devoid of emotions we have long lost.

It was radio static when we last met despite the live music in that restaurant. It was radio static when we briefly hugged for the last time and waved our hand to say goodbye. When I reached my room, it had disappeared completely, the sort of silence that drives you crazy. So there you have it: radio static, the last song we shared.

— -

In a futile attempt of finding the answers, I’ve repeated this playlist for God knows how many times — foolishly hoping that the C Major in Maestro would magically conjure a 10-pages essay on what went wrong. It took me months to realize that it wasn’t my lack of deduction skills or the absence of clues — I simply have been asking the wrong question. It wasn’t a why and wasn’t a case of what was it. There was no reason — we had just simply fallen out of love.

I didn’t hate you then — by God I adore you still, always have been and always will! It will be utterly impossible to rip you apart from me as I can see reflections of you in me, and mine in yours conversely. We hadn’t been fighting, neither were we bored, each of us was just…growing and we were no longer each other’s missing puzzle piece.

You will forever be a part of me, for the good things or the bad you have imprinted on me and I will forget you never — in the same way how the church bells will always remind me of that winter day, the same way the band fanfare will always remind me of the sunray that fell on your face, and the harmonious medley of hundreds of songs that serves as an eternal storyteller for our memories.

Prompt: playlist