Remember that mixed cassette tape you made a friend in the 90s, before there was a Kate Bush renaissance inspired by Stranger Things, and no self-respecting teen would listen to that much electronic synthesiser in one song. Remember when you sat beside your old Sony Stereo in 1998 and recorded Kate Bush anyway, so your friend would have something to which she could laugh and listen, when she travelled to the back woods of Oregon. Because at 16 on the South Coast of Australia, you weren’t quite sure where Oregon was situated and whether they even had music there.
Remember the dreams you wrote with a friend, scrawled onto lined A4 paper, about the art gallery you would open and the cats you would own and the veranda upon which the two of you would sit, growing old. Remember another friend’s art school photography, and the collection you apparently inspired, where she photographed Henna tattoos on a belly dancer’s soft chest and muscular back.
And actually, you don’t remember, not really. Not until they send you screen shots of the letters written, of the black and white photography, taken on a Hasselblad and processed in a photographic dark room in a time before smart phones and Instagram filters. And you still don’t remember these actual moments, but you remember how you made each other feel.
Hopeful. Inspired. Seen.
Remember friendship not merely as little moments, but also as feelings looped together on a mixed cassette tape. Today you’re celebrating friendship, not as a concept or a series of analogue remnants to be placed in a time capsule, but as feelings recorded and archived in the spirit.
And you’re thinking of memory, over pizza with two friends, one of whom is prematurely losing her mind.
This is not a metaphor.
You try not to think about the autopsy, that Alzheimer’s can only be truly confirmed after death, when an autopsy reveals a shrunken brain, filled with tangled proteins.
Today is a good day. Your friend remembers you. There will be a time when she won’t, but today over margherita pizza and fries, she remembers you, and there is laughter and, in your soul, there is a portable Sony stereo and a 90-minute cassette tape, and you remember to press record.
Word upon Word 