My 2025 playlist is DONE.
Fifty-two songs. No analysis. No liner notes. Just the year, as it sounded.
It was a shit year, but we got there in the end. I managed to make something warm and sustaining out of it.
And also there were potatoes.
Tag Archives: Connection
Pull me from the Upside Down
On music as memory, misdirection, and rescue
In another life I would have been a rock star. All ego and wild wardrobe choices, making an artistic choice to stain my fingers black à la Michèle Lamy, and crying at the end of every concert.
But the closest I ever got was being a radio producer, and occasionally hosting some lunchtime shows. We won’t talk about the disastrous time I had to read the news. Local radio really used to be all hands on deck.
I miss the radio show, the playlists, the variety of niche music programmes. I don’t get that much any more.
I love music.
Mixtapes Were a Language
I grew up in the era of mixtapes.
Actual tapes. Hours spent deciding what went where, which song opened, which one closed, what you were saying by putting that track after this one. You couldn’t skip casually. You had to commit. Making a mixtape for someone meant effort, attention, intention.
It was a way of saying this is how I feel, without having to say it out loud.
I was good at making them too. Handing one over with no track list, keeping you guessing with each pause between tracks. Could you pick out the theme before the end?
Why Covers Hit Harder
Cover songs were clutch at keeping folks guessing, but also making them listen, really listen, to the lyrics.
Hurt.
Nine Inch Nails? Melancholic. Empty. A song of absence. A quiet, furious piece that closed Trent Reznor’s live shows like a final fuck you.
Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt.
Ooft.
Tears.
Sinéad O’Connor — Nothing Compares 2 U
Faith No More — Easy
Yael Naim — Toxic
Muse — Feeling Good
I Fight Dragons — The Power of Love
I could go on, but I’ll save the Patrick Bateman monologue for another time.
I love music.
And I think that’s why the Upside Down idea lodged itself in my brain.
In Stranger Things, when one of the characters gets taken away, and they’re panicked, hurt, untethered from the real world, their friends don’t argue them back to safety. Nobody explains. Nobody instructs.
They play the song that knows them.
And they find their own way out.
Music as a tether.
Music as a way home.
What I loved most wasn’t the drama of it, but the simplicity. The idea that you don’t have to be clever in the moment you’re overwhelmed. You don’t have to articulate anything. You just need the right sound to pull you back into yourself.
And maybe after all this year’s therapy, a grown-up realisation: you’re allowed to choose that song in advance. You’re allowed to tell people what will reach you. You don’t have to hope they guess.
How You Find Me
So when I’m lost. When I’m untethered, overwhelmed, and unable to ask for help. When I’m upside down, this is how you pull me back.
You’ve Got the Love — Florence + the Machine.
I suppose it makes sense that it’s a cover.
I’ve always been better at saying things with other people’s songs.
Six Months of Quiet Company
This week marks six months of living alone… well not exactly, but also kinda.
I share a house with five other people. We cross paths in the kitchen, politely ignore each other’s laundry, and share an unspoken agreement that we don’t discuss the quality of bathroom singing.
It’s not solitude exactly, more like a soft coexistence.
The Middle Ground
After nearly twenty years of living with partners and kids and noise, this has been my quiet middle ground. I still hear footsteps, laughter, the occasional blender. It’s reassuring. There’s life here, just not mine to manage.
I’m probably the oldest person in the house by a good stretch. Everyone else has energy that hums, it’s just a different frequency. One I can admire from a time worn path.
I joke that I’m the household cryptid: sightings are rare, but the evidence of my existence (mugs, tea, the occasional scent of toast) is undeniable. But I make the joke only to myself, gods forbid I engage in conversation… I have a spooky reputation to maintain.
The Comfort
It’s oddly comforting. I can be social on my own terms and vanish without explanation. There’s no loneliness in it, just the small luxury of choosing my own volume.
Six months in, I’ve realised this is the kind of independence that suits me. Not isolation, not reinvention, just steady, ordinary living.
The Aggressively Peaceful Bit
There’s something deeply satisfying about being a quiet part of other people’s world. The house hums. The lights shift. Someone else’s playlist seeps through the walls. And I’m here making coffee, answering messages from my people, and feeling, finally, at home.
Because peace doesn’t always come with silence. Sometimes it’s the sound of someone else’s blender at 7 a.m. and the soft, defiant joy of knowing you’re building a life that’s aggressively peaceful.
Sometimes the coffee. Sometimes the axe.
On favourite cafes, small rituals and the quests that begin with a cup in hand.
The Nearest Cup
My favourite coffee shop isn’t just the closest, though that helps. It’s genuinely good. It sits a few minutes from my front door, right by the train station, perfectly placed between home and the town centre. I like to think I chose it for the beans or the vibe, but the truth is simpler: it’s on the way, and it’s there when I need it.
The Atmosphere
From the outside, it doesn’t look like much. A handful of tables, a cute mirror sign, the steady shuffle of people coming and going. But it has its own rhythm. You hear the roll of suitcase wheels on the pavement, the chatter of office staff escaping their cubicles, the run club on some Saturday morning. The hiss of the steam wand cutting through it all, like they’re trying to take us back to the golden age of train travel. And inside, time does slow down just enough. Long enough to take a breath, to sip, to watch the world hurry past without you.
The Coffee Itself
And the coffee? It’s good. Not just good-for-a-train-station, but actually good. Smooth espresso shots, that taste like someone cared about getting it right. It’s the kind of place you could recommend to a friend and not have to apologize afterwards. Which makes it even better that it’s mine: close enough to be casual, but good enough to feel like a treat.
And then there are the pastries. Real pastries, not the sad shrink-wrapped kind that taste like regret. I’m talking about almond croissants dusted with sugar, the kind that leave a little trail of flakes across the table like edible confetti. Pair one with a cup and suddenly errands feel like indulgence. Coffee in one hand, pastry in the other and even I will concede the day doesn’t look half as daunting.
The Ritual
What I love most is that this place has become my starting line. The stop that marks the beginning of whatever comes next. Some days it’s just errands, other days it’s train journeys or something bigger, but the coffee is always the ritual that kicks it off.
It’s my Rivendell of coffee: a pause before the quest. Sometimes I’m off to the Undying Lands, sometimes I’m trudging toward Mordor, but either way, I start here . A cup in hand and the sense that at least I’m equipped for whatever’s coming. And sometimes it’s not just me. Sometimes there’s a council. A friend across the table, a small circle of confidence before we set off. Not quite the Council of Elrond, but close enough. Plans are made, jokes are shared, and for a moment the world feels steady. And when it doesn’t? Well, someone will loan me an axe.
Closing Sip
It’s not the best coffee I’ve ever had, that title still belongs to some rainy day in Wellington, memory-polished and unreachable, but it’s the best coffee I can get today. And that matters more. Because this place doesn’t just hand me caffeine; it hands me a beginning. A reason to keep moving.
A Rivendell in a paper cup.
And honestly? That’s magic.