I
One afternoon in 2010
I was lounging around, listening to the radio
When out poured the most sublime song I'd ever heard
I did not understand the words
But the melody was enchanting
I was drawn to it like no song I’d heard before
I felt at one with the music
Felt it strum the chords of my soul
My skin hummed with electricity
Needles bristled from my brain
Tickling the inside of my skull
The song captivated me like nothing else
Yet I did not know its name, or who sang it
Not yet at least
*
In 2012, The Voice Australia aired on TV for the first time
There were four coaches
You were one of them
The most mysterious of the four
The one I knew the least about
The network pulled out all the stops promoting its new show
The morning show aired a package on each coach
Introducing each of them in turn
When it was your turn
They played a clip of 'Crazy'
The only song of yours I recognised
Followed by a second song, the song that was sublime
I froze: it was the song that had haunted me for ages
And you were its demiurge
*
*
That afternoon I rushed home from school
And looked up your discography
At the top of the list was Crazy
And beneath it was a four word poem:
'Kiss From a Rose'
I had a hunch, searched the song on Youtube
And immediately fell back under its spell
The song from my dreams
Haunting from its first note
I spent the next week playing the song on repeat
Imbibing every sound, absorbing every mysterious lyric
It was a revelation
I had found my favorite song in the world
*
What made Kiss From a Rose even better
Is that it was on the soundtrack to Batman Forever
I saw scenes of the film
Intercut with scenes of Seal, clad in a black cape
Crooning from the top of a gothic, Gotham skyscraper
The Bat-signal lighting up the midnight sky
So moody, so atmospheric
So deliciously 90s
The song made me nostalgic for an era
I was almost too young to remember
When clips from famous films and of famous singers
Were spliced together
To make masterpieces
*
*
II
With that, my eyes became large to Seal's genius
And his works slowly revealed themselves to me
I learned to recognize his voice
Like I recognised no one else’s
Often in unexpected places
Like when I watched one of my favorite romantic comedies
50 First Dates
For the fiftieth time
As Drew Barrymore’s Lucy drove along Hawai'i's rugged coastline
I heard the opening lines of 'Lips Like Sugar'
I sprung up and pointed at the screen in wide-eyed recognition
That’s Seal!
I’d seen the film so many times
And never picked his voice hidden within
The song was originally by Echo & the Bunnymen
But Seal's voice was unmistakable
With that cover (featuring Mikey Dread)
He made that song his own
An upbeat song, yet one tinged with sadness
Chosen for a film where a man falls in love
With a girl who loses all memory of days gone by
No memory of her lover’s smile, his kiss
Of intimacy shared
Love can last forever
Or it may last but a single day
*
*
The whole song is a comfort to those
Who loved someone who doesn’t love them back
And just when you think that she’s yours
She’s flown to another man’s shores
To laugh when you’re breaking
Your world she’s forsaking
For a woman to forget her love each day is tragic
And helping her to remember each day is an ordeal
And maybe it works, and maybe it doesn’t
But at the end of the day, there’s always tomorrow
But for a woman who remembers, there are no second chances:
She either remembers that she loves you
Or remembers that she doesn’t
*
At the chocolate café
I sat across from a doe-eyed girl
As we both drank hot chocolate
She lowered the mug from her face
Leaving chocolate on the bridge of her nose
And chocolate on her lips
Lips like sugar
Sugar kisses
A careless compliment startled her
I changed the subject to something less controversial:
Politics
(Idiot, what were you thinking?)
We passionlessly exchanged thoughts for a while
Then I walked her to the station
Making small talk until we reached her platform
Where we hugged each other goodbye
A hug that said thank you for the date
(Even though neither of us would ever call it that)
I like you too, but not in that way
We are friends, that’s all we’ll ever be
*
A man who speaks loosely to a woman
Can lose her for a lifetime
In my dreams, I watched her gaze into a pool of water
Waiting for her to leave
Then once she’d gone, I rush to the water’s edge
To steal a kiss from her reflection
Before she disappeared
Mirror kisses, mirror kisses
*
III
But when all is said and done
The song that proved most important
Is a song from Seal's sixth album
Called 'The Weight of My Mistakes'
*
*
I found this song at a difficult time
In the depths of the pandemic
Six years of university had come and gone
And all I had to show for it was a piece of paper
All my job applications had been rejected
We were told over and over again
That receiving offers was not what defined us
That it had no bearing on our worth as human beings
But seeing so many of my peers
Launch into their careers
I couldn’t help but feel like I'd been left behind
*
2020 was a difficult year for me
A lost year, a year without work
But not for lack of trying
"Keep trying," people would say. "Keep applying."
"You have to be in it to win it."
Such a tired old phrase
One I thought I’d be happy not to hear again
*
I started to question everything
That had led me to this point:
*
Maybe I shouldn’t have gone on that study tour
Then I would have had more time to write applications
Maybe that would have been the difference
*
What if I had submitted just one more application?
Maybe that would have been the difference
*
What if I had been involved in more extra-curricular activities?
Maybe that would have been the difference
*
What if I had started studying for exams just one week earlier?
Maybe that would have been the difference
*
The doubts began to gnaw away at me
Until I was reduced to sobbing on my bedroom floor
Feeling rejected and defeated
*
Until one morning, listening to a random Youtube mix, I heard it:
The weight of my mistakes
Depends on how I feel
Don’t let it bring me down
And with that, the weight I had carried on my shoulders
Suddenly felt a lot lighter
But what was even better
Was how you gave voice to my frustrations
From fruitlessly submitting so many job applications
I hear you say you gotta be in it to win it
Well, I don't know what this means
Well, I don't know what this means
For the first time in ages, I felt heard
I felt seen
I was less alone
And I could see a path out of the darkness
*
IV
I may have lost my faith
Seal's music helped me to find it again
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