poem for melodrama (2017)

it's just another graceless night — lorde

MELODRAMA: five years

Some nights like standing at a station 
underneath loss or perhaps 
aliveness. Been coming of age 
for a while now I think — still, 
it’s hard to let go. I want to clutch 
the fleshy heart of this place, feel it pulse, 
flicker into tender existence, flame 
on a beaker. How I can’t stand to be alone. 

On Friday a tram was taking me out of Fitzroy 
and for a moment the sudden sensation 
of moving backwards, disorienting 
like the telltale rush of dizziness 
a minute before fainting. How a strike 
of lightning flashes as a warning 
before thunder crosses the same 
distance and if you count between 
you can tell how far away the storm is. 

Seafoam skies this week, double rainbow 
after afternoon sunshower, full moon 
bright against a night the colour of Lorde’s 
Homemade Dynamite. How being on an airplane 
can feel like not moving at all, something about 
relativity maybe or the fact that air is nothing 
like the road or the railway, gives nothing away. 
Soon I could be across oceans or I could stay 
to see summer steal over a city 
so generous and sometimes even forgiving
and always a river slipping away. 

Learning lately that transition is constant, 
for me and the seasons and the moon 
and the tides and the friends I call mine 
and the ones I don't call anymore and for 
my mother too, it seems. How some moments 
are gleaming and graceless and monumental 
and others fall away into just another week 
until suddenly you’re on the platform 
asking where to go from here. Trying 
to let yourself feel. Trying to find — something. 
What the fuck are perfect places, anyway?

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Hi. I wanted to do something re: fifth anniversary of Lorde’s pop masterpiece Melodrama (2017). This ended up being about my specific place in life / conflicted feelings in the past fortnight, which is kind of irrelevant to when this album was most important to me (circa 2017-2019). But then I’m the same but not. It’s strange to think about the seventeen-year-old who first listened to the album, strange to think about being nineteen and on fire. I’m still waiting for every perfect summer, and looking back summer 2018-19 filled me with all sorts of emotion, which really was my final summer before the pandemic given I only experienced a few days of Australian summer 2019-20. Always, always thinking about the note Lorde wrote on facebook a few months ahead of Melodrama and the phrase ‘I was reckless and graceless and terrifying and tender’. Favourite songs are The Louvre / Supercut / Perfect Places, forever + I just remembered my which melodrama song are you quiz from very early 2020, which is probably still quite fun. <3

I strongly dislike that substack doesn’t have text alignment options, I decided to enter some linebreaks and actually like this better however I still dislike the text alignment thing and lines may be wonky on mobile but what can you do about that. Written in about eighty minutes very early in the morning and then refined. Also I googled seafoam and there are more green results than blue which doesn’t actually work this ISN’T A METAPHOR I meant THE SHADE OF BLUE THAT THE SKY GETS WITH WINTER SUN and the original was SAPPHIRE which is the vibe but very much not the colour just imagine it okay. Stunning insight into my process here. Obviously Melodrama influenced and borrows from ‘Perfect Places’ in ‘I can’t stand to be alone’ and the final line. I actually do not know what inspired anybody to subscribe to this newsletter but now you get silly lines about my crises hehe.

— gemini at the beginning of cancer szn

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double rainbow over lygon street, 15/6/2022 with nessa :)