Earphones for two

broke a million hearts in mono

The first time I shared earphones I understood what love meant. It was the winter of 2009 and I was in middle school riding the bus back home after PE class. I was sitting in the back on one of the right-hand aisle seats, thirty centimeters away from my then-crush who suddenly - to my absolute surprise - handed me an earphone so we could listen to music on the same iPod Nano (matte silver, 4 Go). We spent the whole bus ride back without saying a word or looking at each other, listening to Kid Cudi’s Pursuit of Happiness on loop (it was the only downloaded song), connected by the white wire split across the corridor. I felt so grown up. Do you remember me?

I’m on the pursuit of happiness and I know
Everything that shine ain’t always gonna be gold

Hey, I’ll be fine once I get it

I’ll be good

Although my guilt is never pleasurable (as famous poet Jemima Kirke once said), there are a few songs that I do not advertise publicly as being my favorites, because they sound a little bit out of character. Let me change that. One of my favorite guilty pleasure songs - that I’ve cried to multiple times - is Come On Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners. I have no idea where I first heard it, but some of the lyrics have stuck with me strongly. The opening lines especially :

Poor old Johnny Ray
Sounded sad upon the radio
Moved a million hearts in mono

A couple of years ago I shared yet another pair of wired earphones with (sigh) yet another crush slash friend with benefits slash big Miss Steak ™. It was hot summer nights, mid-July, and we were on a train going back to Paris listening to Frank Ocean’s Ivy.

I thought that I was dreaming when you said you loved me
The start of nothing
(…) I ain’t a kid no more
We’ll never be those kids again

I thought I was dreaming when they said they loved me for the first (and only) time. As we sat together my head resting on their shoulder, I understood it was the end. I stopped being a kid right there and then, and we did not know it yet but we would never go back to the kids we were before sleeping together ruined everything. I cried silently listening to the lyrics the whole ride. We haven’t talked in years.

Reflecting on those cabled memories, I often mourn the fact that the act of listening to music has become so wireless these days, losing along with its corporality some of its romanticism. Unless you’re on a Lily-Rose Depp indie sleaze revival wavelength, I doubt you’re still carrying and using wired earphones. Although it would be the alternative, there is something almost dystopian about the idea of streaming the same song but with separate bluetooth headphones, each person being securely swallowed in their sound box and enjoying a somewhat isolated - although sonically comfortable - listening experience. Once upon a time, eternities ago in New-York, I went to a ‘silent rave’ on a rooftop, where all the guests were given a headset to listen to a mix at their preferred volume, and encouraged to dance like nobody was watching. People seemed to enjoy it. In a sense, many of them let loose more than usual because they forgot they were surrounded. I could not stop thinking about how strange we must have looked to the eyes of skyline neighbors, a string of disconnected ants swaying in complete silence.

Last weekend in Dublin with my favorite little darling, a soundtrack made its way to us ; god making sure we would enjoy memories written in the same font. Inbetween a girl working early cause she’s a singer covering One Direction’s Little Things on the street, and muffled Amy Winehouse and The Cure songs playing on the speakers as we wolfed down mashed potatoes at the pub, I thought - time and place. The sum of all these little Irish moments will forever be associated with those melodies. After all, maybe the real shared earphones playlist is the songs that we stumbled upon as we were being girls together, and that we heard playing at the same volume.

♬ Music report♭

I won’t bore you with more in-depth recs in this letter since there are already manyyy above and I’m not even sure you crazy kids are even clicking my Spotify links. But if you must know, here’s what I’ve been listening to on repeat :

Yusuf/Cat Stevens - Wild World
Bladee - I DON’T LIKE PEOPLE
The Shacks - Crimson & Clover
Hole - Dying
The Pretty Reckless - Make Me Wanna Die
Lana del Rey - Madly

❦ Movie review ❡

You know what? As a twenty-five-year-old woman and tortured cinephile, I’m not immune to the workings of A24 and actually completely surrender to the fact that I am exactly their target audience. Long story short, I loved Love Lies Bleeding (dir. Rose Glass, 2024) (Rose Glass !! what a name). This review is heavily biased (first typo’ed this as heavenly biased) in the sense that you could sell me a Target cleaning products ad starring Kristen Stewart and I would still rate it five out of five stars. That being said, she’s amazing in the movie. I feel like the plot was really gripping and innovative - I can’t really think of another movie with that same story, especially a queer one, so it was super refreshing. Also love the butch4butch representation. Actually, I was thinking about this movie in regards to what I wrote about Immaculate, because in Love Lies… there for sure is a genre/style twist towards the end, but here I feel like it benefits from a more dexterous approach. The cinematographic tension builds up continuously throughout the movie, and the weird, almost sci-fi, scenes at the end stem harmoniously from a drug use narrative being introduced progressively as the story unfolds.

★Upcoming gigs ☆

17.05.24 - Silencio des Prés (Paris, FR)
25.05.24 - Boiler Room (Paris, FR)