As The Love Continues

I’m writing this on the morning of my final therapy session. I’m not concluding the service by choice, more that there’s only so many resources available and I’ve been availing of a free platform since last June — following a long time on a waiting list — and now it’s someone else’s turn. Hey, I get it.

I’m not scared of taking the break. I’ve lost count of the amount of therapists or counsellors or prescriptions I’ve encountered over the past 20 years or so. The process can’t last forever and that’s okay. I liked this one, though, I think. I’m not so great at self-assessment, especially in real-time. But yeah, this one felt like a connection, a two-way conversation, even exclusively via Zoom.

I guess I’m starting this way because I’m feeling nervous. I don’t much like goodbyes and I know I’m going to tear up on a video call in approximately four hours’ time. Like I say, I’m good with a break for a bit, even though if I’m honest I haven’t been feeling so good lately. I know it’s a difficult time for literally everybody in the world right now and I know I can physically sense a very specific hopeless sensation in the air in the past few weeks but I can only ever speak confidently on my own situation and the truth is I’ve crashed hard recently and I’d be lying if I said that an exit hasn’t been playing on my mind.

Much like my belief that everybody in the entire world should have access and avail of that access to therapy, I believe that it is okay to discuss that most taboo subject without people instantly panicking, alarming as it may be. Intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideation are complex things and they can become casually commonplace when you’re deep down in the pit, even if you manage to retain a fairly firm logical grasp on reality and defensive agency. Years on the clock and life experience don’t necessarily make it go away forever, either. Everything is contextual, everything is ongoing, everything is some form of progress, good and bad, in control and out of it.

There’s a line in a review that has stayed with me now for about a year-and-a-half, a review that is in and of itself a short story, one that deals with tragic loss and seemingly insurmountable grief, written so gracefully and personally that I remain in awe of the words. But the line that I keep coming back to is:

“Depression is a terrible liar, and sometimes it speaks so loud it drowns out everything else.”

Most times when I think of this, it is a mantra, a weapon to overcome that awful, corrosive noise. Sometimes it doesn’t work because nothing really works then, including the warmth of friends — one hates to sound ungrateful, trust me, it’s a shame/guilt thing — of those who truly love you and would be heartbroken if you were suddenly unable to register as two blue ticks on their screen. I don’t mean to be dismissive here, nor do I wish to really delve too deep into such harrowing subject matter, just to say that lately I find myself declaring myself worthless, telling myself that I have no purpose, insisting that I am, have never been and never will be “good enough”. Loneliness hits as a physical ache, whether it’s in the base of my throat or the pit of my stomach.

I’ve fallen out of love with writing and I doubt myself so strongly in this regard. I feel like I’ve ‘had my run’ and nobody could possibly care what I have to say anymore, if they ever did. I haven’t written/published anything, certainly not this personal in nature, in almost a year. I want to finish this one.

These thoughts exist during, but are not exclusive to the current state of the world. The grueling pandemic and the endless restrictions on life certainly do not help and PTSD may prove our collective reward if and when this thing becomes a chapter in a history book. Still, these feelings, these dormant-until-erupting core beliefs of mine, are a constant. They are part of me since my earliest memory of life, itself a moment of violent self-rejection. You cannot conquer depression, cannot consign anxiety to the scrap heap. You can only manage as best you can and sometimes you simply will not win that day, or week, or month. I think, generally, I actually fare quite well. I am a highly sensitive, empathetic person and where once that was labelled a weakness, I have come to trust in it as my greatest strength. I can be surprisingly resilient. Yet, every now and then, I have no choice but to let the noise win.

And it does overwhelm. It does consume. It takes so much. And it can be so very difficult, almost impossible, for light to burrow in. Music has so often been a healer for me. I’ve written at length about how the Kanye West/Kid Cudi project KIDS SEE GHOSTS gave me so much charge at a time when I felt quite destroyed, but there are so many examples. It’s an incredibly intimate, exceptionally powerful thing when you find these frequencies. They feel like they were constructed just for you. It is the most beautiful thing.

I’ve been a fan of revered Scottish don’t-call-them-post-rock titans Mogwai for a good while now, probably 15 years or more. ‘Auto Rock’ remains one of those moments in music that makes my jaw drop, my heart swell, my eyes widen. They have so many of those. They have a new album, too, and even its name — As The Love Continues — feels deeply significant to me right now.

I saw a fan say that the album made them feel “less alone” and once I had enough listens to realise that this is clearly Mogwai’s strongest collection of new material in about a decade and one of their most considered narratives overall, I realised that no 1000-word review could hope to match that sentiment. Sometimes it’s just that simple. It must be exceedingly difficult for a band that operate in Mogwai’s predominantly lyric-less field to craft something original 26 years in and while I’m sure many will hear Just Another Mogwai Album here, I keep finding new pathways to get lost on.

We have a strange relationship with culture in 2021, the void that much more visible for artists of any creative discipline. Maybe it makes the things that do hit matter a bit more. I’m always seeking out this kind of physical reaction to music but it’s rare enough. You cherish it when you find it. I don’t think that this album is particularly revolutionary or necessarily perfect (nothing is!), but like the others that have had this stunning effect, it feels uniquely mine. And yours, should you need it, too.

I’ve interviewed guitarist and primary band spokesperson Stuart Braithwaite twice before, once over the phone and once in front of a crowd. He’s a friendly, insightful human being though he has a habit of taking about 30 seconds to come up with an answer to your question — a genuinely tense moment when you have an audience before you — and sometimes that answer is a fairly indifferent “Not really” or, in the case of when I quickly ran out of my prepared questions in that second chat, a bemused “Yes?” when I asked if he still hated Blur. Good to have that clarity, in any case. Those days were rarely perfect yet I miss them ferociously right now. I miss interviews. I miss writing. I miss feeling maybe just a little bit cool and vaguely important sometimes. I miss taking all of that for granted. I miss closing 25 tabs when I’ve finally put a piece to bed. I miss people telling me how wrong my opinions are.

I like Braithwaite and not just because of his interview candour, his contributions to Mogwai and our seemingly shared belief that Cornershop are a criminally underrated band. He just seems like a good dude armed with the courage of convictions, one who is still finding worthwhile things to say in an outfit that don’t opt to share much dialogue and yet create entire immersive worlds that I and many others need to visit quite often.

The music that has the most powerful effect on me tends to be music that I trip over myself trying to describe. I’ve never been one for technical essays or mathematical equations. One, I have no idea how to write or talk that way. Two, I feel it in my bones. ‘Intrinsic’ is the word that keeps flashing into my brain if I try and make sense of it. If you know, you know. I carry around my favourite songs and albums as if we are in conversation together. I don’t need to explain it because it’s coursing through my bloodstream. We are united.

Lately, I find myself clutching onto singular branches, hoisting myself up a bit. A line in my current favourite new discovery; ‘ALL FUTURES’ by The Armed — “I’m coming around / I’m feeling okay” — delivered in desert-dry ironic tones but I hear the purity of those words and I want to wear them like armour, scream them in defiant triumph. Jeff Rosenstock’s bruised, throat-tearing angst. One of the most relentlessly perfect pop anthems of all time, courtesy of Tynchy Stryder. The kick-in on Sébastian Tellier’s dream-maze ‘La Ritournelle’. The intoxicating otherworldliness of The Blaze’s ‘Territory’. A poignant knockout of a Horrors track.

This is the part where I neatly wrap things up, tie it all together, only that’s not how this works. It’s not how it ever works. It’s about appreciating little hard-earned victories and trying to battle back the flood when it crashes in. It’s about accepting that you might not be able to that day, or the following one. It’s about personal escape.

When it comes to an album like As The Love Continues and a band like Mogwai, they are designed for good headphones, purpose-built for isolation and contemplation, perfect for long and winding walks within or beyond a five-kilometre limit. And yet, that fan is very much correct. Tuning in, turning off this world in favour of finding a more magical one, I do feel less alone.

I missed my appointment in the end. Got the time wrong. Rescheduled for another week, with this one having been rescheduled once already. Nobody’s fault, just one of those things. Goodbyes are hard, after all. To my left, the sun is out and the sky is so very blue today. I’m going to go and look at it up close.