Voice Note #2 - If You Let Me // On ‘90s romcoms and holiday blues
I'm already sold on this high
Hullo,
In this week’s letter: an essay about Christmas blues, ‘90s romantic comedies, and sad holiday songs. Plus, a playlist and a little poem at the very end. (I wanted to add stills from some of my favorite Christmas-themed ‘90s romantic comedies, but Substack said my letter would be too long and Google wouldn’t let you see it).
Today’s song is a new one (I’m very excited about it!) — I’ve never played it in front of an audience or recorded it in full, though I did post a tiny part of it on Instagram once. It first came to me in the pantry of the office where I used to work, exactly a year ago (the melody popped in my head while I was microwaving my lunch). I held on to that snippet and wrote the rest in the shower—in several showers, really, over the span of a few months. From the very first moment, I’ve always known exactly how I want it to sound, and it both thrills and frustrates me to no end that I have yet to figure out the skills (or find the collaborators) to make that happen. This song is meant to be a glistening, euphoric pop track. I was inspired by artists like St. Vincent, Perfume Genius, Sky Ferreira, Robyn, Charli XCX, Young Fathers, Caroline Polachek, Bleachers, and Lorde (of course). Even Grimes a little bit! I recorded it to the best of my abilities. Imagine alt-pop vibes while you listen <3
- Niki xx
If You Let Me
When you’re around I lose myself
High on your fumes like nothing else
Crawl through my window
Take a shiner for you
Wanna get out of here?
You know what to doI’d catch lightning for you, baby
Oh I could spend my whole life
Wasting time by your side if you let me
When you look at me, I come undone
You don’t even have to try
I’m already sold on this high
‘Cause you get me
To a place I’ll never come down fromYour hands on me, it feels so easy
Cards on the table, you see me clearly
Take your shot
I’d pull the trigger for you
Let’s drive away fast
Tell me what you wanna doYou run through me electric
Oh I could spend my whole life
Wasting time by your side if you let me
When you look at me, I come undone
You don’t even have to try
I’m already sold on this high
‘Cause you get me
To a place I’ll never come down fromWe could, we could talk for hours (all, all, all I wanna)
I could, I could spend it all with you (all, all, all I wanna)
We could, we could talk for hours (all, all, all I wanna do)
I’d start a fire to be with you
You’ve got me right here, burningOh I could spend my whole life
Wasting time by your side if you let me
When you look at me, I come undone
You don’t even have to try
I’m already sold on this high
‘Cause you get me
To a place I’ll never come down fromTo a place I’ll never come down from (I’m on fire)
To a place I’ll never come down from (All I want to)
To a place I’ll never come down from (I’m on fire)
To a place I’ll never come down from (All I want to)
In case the embed on top doesn’t work, try clicking on the title, above the lyrics. Shoot me an email if you encounter any issues.
Listen to the entire Voice Notes secret playlist here.
Tinsel and Rust
Our building has a funny little tradition of gathering everyone in the lobby on the last weekend of November, to commemorate the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony. There’s always a potluck buffet, and the furniture is moved away to make space for cocktail tables. We all dress up and go downstairs to congregate around the tree, the room in complete darkness for dramatic effect. There’s usually a priest present, and some sort of blessing or prayer. Everybody says amen and then the Christmas tree is lit, tiny bulbs twinkling, brilliance bouncing off of the ornaments so that they shine. There’s a collective gasp, and gracious clapping. And then the rest of the lights in the room are switched on and we shuffle over to the buffet tables to get dinner.
These functions make me feel like I’m on the set of some 90s romantic comedy (the best kind there is). Christmas, in these movies, always feels like actual magic. I apologize for the hackneyed term, but how else can I describe the wonder that shimmers in the air, so vibrant it’s almost palpable? That soaring sense of promise and sheer unadulterated joy, right at the precipice of heartbreak, coming inside to a warm fireplace just as the cold starts to bite. The endearingly clumsy declarations drowned out by loud music at the scintillating height of the soiree. The fateful meeting on the last train. The jumbled seats at the wedding. The lost phone number that flutters through the pages of a book you almost didn’t get as a present, but you did, and look, now’s your chance. Maybe the plotlines differ, but in every story there’s always just the tiniest sliver of an opening for you to make it, and you will, right at the most crucial flickering instant. Everything is a festive gamble up until this very last moment, and then fortune whizzes by just in time for you to clap your hands around it, so close it grazes at everything else.
Christmas in old romantic comedies makes you feel like it’s all possible--everything clicks into place for the one split second you look up, you can fall in love here and everything is beautiful, even you. In these movies, December seems gloriously cozy in a near-visceral way, from the soft scarves draped over bulky coats to the muted yellow glow of a bedside lamp. It’s all steaming mugs held in gently cupped hands. Even panic is jubilant, a rush through a toy shop or a department store gilded with fairy lights and holly. Velvet ribbons adorn countertops, setting the scene perfectly for a chance encounter. More recent films try to emulate this, but it’s just not the same. Maybe the magic lies in the nostalgia, too.
I’d forgotten about the Christmas tree lighting ceremony this year (I didn’t think they’d decorate at all, what with everything going on). No letters were sent to our apartment units, no announcements made. I figured it was kind of a given. Our elevators, like many elevators around the city, still have built-in alcohol dispensers and little tape-marked squares on each corner, to indicate where you’re supposed to stand if it stops on another floor and someone else steps in to head down with you. Residents still aren’t allowed to have guests over, which I personally find to be kind of a relief, safety-wise.
I went downstairs the other day to pick up a package and was instantly struck to see a row of Christmas ornaments strung across the lobby hallway. Something in my heart twinged. I’d forgotten it was almost December.
I turned a corner and saw the building staff setting up the Christmas tree. Quietly, with all the lights on. No pomp, no grandeur. Not this year. It felt a bit strange to witness, like catching a mall Santa take off his fake beard. Like, this is supposed to be magic. We’re not supposed to see how the sausage gets made. At the same time, it felt even more strange to realize that the building staff had gone through all the trouble to decorate in the first place. Somehow it seemed both touching and frivolous. I was reminded of that scene in Titanic, when the ship is sinking and the musicians go out on the deck to play as all the passengers scramble towards the lifeboats. I was struck with an uncomfortable mix of guilt and wonder and sheepish gratitude, like when someone is so nice to you it makes you kind of sad. Ultimately, though, I felt moved that they had put in the effort.
I wish I could say that I had paid attention, that I watched intently as they rolled aside carts and hauled off cardboard boxes filled with tinsel. But I didn’t—I’d really only caught all that from the corner of my eye. Chalk it up to my ADHD, and my inability to remain still when there’s more than one thing in front of me that demands immediate attention. I was busy unwrapping my package: a tube of lip gloss and a poetry anthology from a friend. One of her poems had been published in this collection, which she had sold to raise funds for Typhoon Ulysses survivors. I had a feeling it might be her only copy and, though I found it admirable, the thought was a little melancholic. I made a silent promise to myself that I’d take extra care of it just in case. True to her ever-thoughtful nature, my friend threw in the lip gloss, a small surprise nestled at the bottom of the shopping bag. Her note read, Here’s something I think would look good on you and I remembered a short story by Emily Sundberg, from her newsletter Feed Me. Told in the voice of a party host speaking to a guest, the story takes place before the pandemic, or in an alternate world where it didn’t happen to begin with. You, the guest, are taken by the hand through a booming at-home get-together. The host pulls you into her room, gives you a hug, licks a cotton swab to fix your eyeshadow. Do you want me to do your makeup? she says, Here, I just got this new lipgloss, try it. You gossip about who’s making out with who and sip each other’s drinks. Items of clothing are casually borrowed, you lean in close for photos without a second thought, share a cigarette just as the night comes to a close. All the small, casual intimacies we’ve lost. All the warmth and connection that safety allowed us, the normalcy we took for granted. In a reality where groceries are individually sanitized before they’re brought into the kitchen, to top a cake with unwashed strawberries feels like a luxury. One you didn’t even realize you would miss.
Around me, people were carting away ornament wrappers and excess trimmings. There was glistening dust everywhere, like at the end of a party. The lobby couch was speckled in glitter. I wanted to stay for a bit, just to leaf through the poetry collection and soak in the weird atmosphere of the Christmas tree being set up. For some reason, it felt sort of sacrilegious to leave. Like I’d accidentally walked in on a consecrated ritual and now I had to wait until it was done, out of respect. But I was hesitant to stay for too long, at the risk of contracting germs and getting glitter on my clothes. And my mask loops were chafing on my ears besides. Still, I sat, perched at the very edge of the couch, where I once slept the night after a boy I liked very much took me home late and I stumbled up to my unit to find the door had been double locked from the inside, my key rendered useless. I had hemmed and hawed over calling a locksmith, knowing it would be expensive, and that my parents would probably have me change the locks if I did. There were only a couple hours left until sunrise, anyway, so I curled up and closed my eyes, nodding off to the sounds of other people staggering home. It was Halloween. The night of a party, the night of all the parties. The kind of night that sparkled darkly with a sense of promise, some kind of illicit thrill. Like the half-frightened, half-euphoric feeling you get when you jump a turnstile or climb over a locked gate or go in any way past the limits of where you should, like I’m not supposed to be here but here you are and oh how delicious it feels. You know, that Disneyland-after-hours delight, when the movie ends after the mall closes, and you walk out of the cinema just in time to see the last shuddering lights of the building power down. I’d spent the evening at a celebration I wasn’t entirely sure I’d really been invited to, so I could hang out with a new friend and maybe spend time with that boy, the one I liked very much.
At some point, I awoke to the sound of a girl’s voice, and a guy speaking to her in cooing, hushed tones. She was wailing sort of loudly and it seemed like he was trying to comfort her, but also like he was saying, okay, I’m sorry, I can’t stay anymore, I’ve really got to go, too. I opened one eye and saw her feet from the other side of a partition, each clad in a different kind of shoe: a large men’s boot on one and a sandal (possibly Croc) on the other. She clomped around in circles as another pair of feet—her friend’s, I presumed—dashed off towards the building doors and out of the lobby.
I got up to check if the girl was okay. She was drunk and dazed and incredibly friendly, and as we introduced ourselves—me in a half-lucid stupor and her, well, hammered—I realized I knew who she was. I’d heard her name so many times before, but we’d never properly met. (A very Manila sort of thing to happen). I said that we had a lot of acquaintances in common, that if I ever mentioned where I lived, they would ask if I knew her. When she found out that I was sleeping on the lobby couch because I’d been locked out of my own home, she gasped, seeming almost offended on my behalf. She urged me to sleep over at her place. I laughed, said no thank you, and helped her to her unit. Upstairs, she offered me a glass of water and in her dark kitchen she yelled it’s you! because she’d heard my name before too, and had just remembered it all of a sudden. She said she liked my music, and that she’d tried to get me to perform for some benefit gigs she’d organized in the past but for whatever reason, things never panned out. We started giggling uncontrollably at the unbelievable string of coincidences. I thanked her for the water and told her I had to go call a locksmith.
She insisted again that I sleep over and for half a second I considered it, but then I thought about how awkward it would be to wake up in a drunk neighbor’s apartment, and what, meet her family in my day-old Halloween costume? Get asked to stay for breakfast and try not to look nauseous over corned beef and eggs? (She was so hospitable, I wouldn’t have put it past her). I did feel a budding sense of camaraderie forming over the bizarreness of this whole encounter, but still, we were practically strangers. There was a likelihood she wouldn’t remember any of this tomorrow, and I didn’t want to risk making an already weird night even weirder. The frightened half of the euphoric feeling threatened to spill over; I’d jumped enough turnstiles for the evening and it was time to go home.
Meanwhile, the boy and I had been texting all night, from the moment I had gone up to my unit and told him I’d been locked out and he said Oh no we could have hung out for longer but he had already arrived home, a long stretch of highway and a tollbooth away. He said he’d keep me company over the phone. I asked him not to because I had no idea what time I’d be able to get my door open but he brushed it off and said he wasn’t sleepy anyway, he would probably be up regardless. So we just talked and talked, all through the early morning, until half-past five when the locksmith finally arrived and jiggered open the lock and I burst into the apartment, exhausted and elated, and he said, Okay I’m going to go sleep now and I realized, stupidly, that he had stayed up with me on purpose, that he had really just been waiting for me to get home safely the entire time.
The details of last year’s tree lighting ceremony are a little blurry to me now, though it must have been about a month after that Halloween. I know that I was alone, and that I’d been relieved to find the event in full swing after arriving home from a day of social affairs. Earlier, I’d gone to a friend’s birthday lunch, another friend’s birthday dinner, and a botched blind coffee date in between. I’d been going on all these first dates that never warranted a second, convincing myself that none of it bothered me, that all the constant exposure to rejection and tepid disappointment was good for me. I claimed it was only making me tougher. Less affected, more resilient. Truth be told, I was only getting more and more disillusioned. It had been exciting at first, sure, to be going on a new first date almost every week, but at some point I began to question how people fell in love at all.
So it was comforting, the blaring cacophony of the party, hitting me in a flare of light and sound as soon as I walked into the lobby doors. I was tired but lonely and there was something I was looking for, something to blunt all the immense yearning I felt for a sensation or maybe even just an experience I couldn’t quite put a name to. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was, except that I’d been looking for it for a long time and the red-and-green glimmer of the holidays had brought that desire bubbling back up to the surface.
Maybe my search was futile, maybe what I was looking for was some kind of magic. The Christmas-in-90s-romantic-comedies kind. The kind you sometimes get to touch in little snatches of time around this season, when the world feels like an unwrapped dessert and everything gleams. Even sadness, even the tentative threads of old friendships unraveling and new romance fizzling out as quickly as it jolts into frame. I was in a red dress that rippled down the front like the edges of a petal, flitting in and out of the lobby buffet. I wandered aimlessly throughout the outside garden, incredibly alone and unsure of what I was supposed to do with my hands. So I took Instagram stories of a large inflatable Spongebob that had been set up for the kids by the pool, his cavernous mouth wide open, the gap between his teeth like upside-down turrets of a blow-up castle. Inside, a live jazz band played Christmas music. Melted ice pooled inside coolers that held bottles of wine and cans of soda.
It was shaping up to be a blue Christmas already. When I was younger, I used to think that blue Christmases were never really sad, that there was a sort of glamour to being forlorn around the holidays. In her essay, “Heart Museum,” Durga Chew-Bose writes about a similar feeling, as she rushes to a dinner while a beloved’s potential indiscretion begins to dawn on her. She describes “feeling somehow lovely because I was in a hurry”. Her then-boyfriend slips to carelessly reveal something that hints at a betrayal. A foreboding sense of alone-ness slams into her, unforeseen, just before she walks out the door. “Even then,” she writes, “when I felt tremendously sad in my lovely dress, my heart did not stop.”
For as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt lonely during this time of the year, so perhaps my tendency to romanticize stemmed from a subconscious defense mechanism of sorts. Drifting through that huge party in my red dress and no one to dance with, I too was feeling lovely and tragic. I guess in the back of my mind I thought, maybe if I can imagine some sense of poetry to this aching emptiness then it doesn’t have to be so sad.
My favorite Christmas songs are, undeniably, the classic jazzy standards from the mid-20th century. Like “The Christmas Song” by Nat King Cole. Frank Sinatra’s “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”. Or even “Jingle Bell Rock,” its jaunty melody never failing to immerse me in such a strong wave of nostalgic sensation it’s like I’m physically being transported back in time—I’m six years old again and I can just smell the Majestic Ham and the fresh-cut grass by my grandma’s patio as the nighttime crickets begin to chirp. But I find that I gravitate more frequently towards despondent holiday tracks about wistfully-remembered lost love amidst snow and glistering lights and frosted-over windows. They ring truest to the way Christmas actually feels to me now.
These songs feel like standing outside in a flurry. Loneliness is made romantic. Everything that’s pathetic about it just melts away. You hear it in Rostam’s cover of “Fairytale of New York,” as his voice echoes, somehow both warm as steam and clear as cold water. I turned my face away and dreamed about you, he warbles. The jovial tin whistle tinged with sadness, its merry tune veiled in the hue of remembering. It’s all throughout “2000 Miles,” but especially the chorus: Two thousand miles is very far through the snow, I’ll think of you wherever you go. It’s Joni Mitchell singing about being so hard to handle, she’s gone and lost the best baby she’s ever had. The first time I felt it, I was seventeen and heartsick, already dreading the impending end of an affair that hadn’t even truly begun, that from the start was probably never going to amount to anything anyway. In Durga Chew-Bose’s words, again, “Having a hunch is, like many female facets, both misery and boon.” Already I knew the curtains were closing, the credits about to roll. I caught my own morose reflection in the living room window as Bruce Springsteen’s “Secret Garden” began to play in the middle of a movie scene that happened to be on television, the screen flickering at our empty sofa. I couldn’t even call it an affair really, but I couldn’t say it was mere flirtation either. I couldn’t call it anything, maybe that was what made me so sad. It wasn’t tangible. It was more than a dalliance and less than a courtship. It lived in the space between. In the film Before Sunrise, Celine talks to Jesse about magic, that if it exists, “it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there’s any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something.” I used to believe that, but now I’m not so sure. If you can’t call it a name, is it still real?
There’s a part of me that bristles against this cynicism. My middle school English teacher once mentioned, almost in passing, that words are the most limited thing in the world. She was aware of the irony of her statement, and so was I. We grasp towards words because they fit all that’s messy into neat little boxes we can label and understand. Some things are too big for that. Even when I’m at my most pessimistic, I know.
Across the reception desk, where my package waited, was a trio of small columns wreathed in holly, lit up in gold. The security guard at the door saw me stop and gasp. I told him how beautiful they were, as if to explain myself. He laughed and thanked me. Maybe to ask what good is this, what good is magic? is like asking what good is a small good thing? What good is anything remotely wonderful, fleeting as it may be? What good is a tiny surprise from a friend at the bottom of a shopping bag? What good is a connection you’ll never find the words to define with someone you’ll never be able to forget?
When the last of the debris had been swept and boxed and carried away, I looked up from my friend’s poem and took one last glance at the Christmas tree. It towered so high, its foil-wrapped star nearly touched the ceiling. I went back up to my floor, the kitchen smelling like fried pork and coconut milk. I sprayed the book and the lip gloss with alcohol, then took a shower. I felt the warm water stream over the grime of the day, every last fleck of glitter running down the drain. After dinner I listened to a holiday playlist as I wrapped gifts. And then I figured it would be nice to put a Christmas movie on instead, just for atmosphere. I searched for all my usual favorites. None of them were available. I settled on The Holiday, and continued to cut and fold and tape as it played in the background. I longed for the fleecy golden glow of something a little bit older, a little more familiar. The Holiday would have to do for now. It wasn’t the same. But it was good enough.
Virtual stocking stuffers 🎅🏻
(Sorry if that title makes it sound like there are so many, there are really just two)
(But they were made with love)
🎧 A playlist: Blue Christmas
I put together this playlist of holiday songs, including the ones mentioned in the essay. I’ve been going back to these songs pretty constantly over the past several years, and only realized while writing this week’s letter that I had never put them together in a playlist before.
Also, I believe that every themed playlist has a heart song—a song that is at the core of the roster, something that connects all the tracks—and for this one, I can’t decide if it’s “Christmas Lights”, “Fairytale of New York”, or “2000 Miles”. (Let me know which one you like most in the comments.)
📝 A poem: “When shouting from rooftops is not allowed”
Worked on this one earlier this week, when I was feeling stuck and absolutely certain I wouldn’t be able to write an essay at all. I took a walk to clear my head and was suddenly struck by a memory. It turned into this poem.
When shouting from rooftops is not allowed
I went out for a walk to get
some sunshine and found
myself curving into this little
street that struck me, all of
a sudden, as all too familiar and I
thought, The thing is I’ve
been down this road
before I’ve let you take my hand in the
back of a taxi sat heart thumping
outside the bar early morning
tugged a lock of your hair to wake
you left the party laughed as you showed off
for me waited in the bathroom for you to
text I’m here I’ve stood
on a curb half past two nighttime wind
whooshing because you said
you’d take me home almost kissed
in the middle of a punchline we were
done joking and had
arrived at my place but you
had a flight to catch and I didn’t think
I could wait, or that I should
made you zip up my back because
I couldn’t reach and pretended I didn’t
feel your knuckle graze
up my spine the last time I went
down this road it was in a car
with you and I remember
it clearly now you ask me for a story but
there’s so many, pick a favorite(for you, I’d run through all the parks in the city)
NIKI ❤❤ i adore your playlists and please know "big city feeling" is right next to "blue christmas" because alphabetical order!! however i was wondering if you intended to put the Treasure Planet track in blue christmas? it's an interesting addition but feels a bit out of place BUT IF YOU DID that's cool!! i will continue to play the fk out of it this christmas ❤❤
This is great, Niki! :( (sorry for only getting to comment now!) I'd just like to share, too, that we don't even have our decorations up yet at home and I have no idea if we're going to put much effort into the tree this year, which does make me sad. But what's heartening for me is seeing how many of my relatives (especially the younger ones!) are thinking of ways to celebrate remotely. Since we're definitely not going to our lola's house for noche buena this year, one of my cousins (based in California now) organized a Zoom call for all of us and taught as how to dance the choreography to the chorus of Dynamite HAHA. My mom has constantly been trying to think of an online routine we can do, too. And I'm still trying to draft the children's story that I plan to "gift" to my entire extended family via a reading or something hahaha.
It's definitely not the year for a rom-com Christmas, though. And I relate so painfully to the tendency to romanticize this time of year, in the hopes of making it seem less sad. Thank you for your words and your sincerity. I hope the tree shines extra bright for you this year!
(I can totally hear the St. Vincent in the new song, by the way hehe I can almost make out the crazier production that I'm sure you'd want it to have!! I have little to contribute by way of music, but if you haven't heard this one before, please enjoy my favorite (a cappella!) secular Christmas song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfmBuIA6frE)