Cause you're always on my mind It's been such a dark night Boy, I know you've been grieving
On Friday, the Bat For Lashes album 'Lost Girls' will be 5 years old.
This album changed me in ways I cannot even begin to fully unpack.
2019 was a strange and terrible year for me that was basically an unending Rat-related panic attack. 2019 was an interesting year, because it was RIGHT before the whole world shut down and we really had no idea that it was all going to be that bad. We really lived HARD in 2019, and we had no idea that in a matter of a few months that it would all be a good thing that we did because we'd be able to do nothing.
In 2019, my friend Joanne (hi, Joanne!) returned home from living abroad in Korea for a few years. I had lost so much of myself over the several years prior, and after my nervous breakdown in 2017 I really struggled to find my footing. I had lost almost my entire friend circle, my entire identity was on the rocks, and I felt isolated and alone. Joanne coming home from Korea would be a personal homecoming for me. It was the same feeling as being on Splash Mountain in 2017 after years of being away from Disneyland because I was too busy trying to be someone I wasn't. It was the same "welcome home" feeling.
I had waited to desperately for 2019 to end and 2020 to begin because it would mean the Rat Circus had ended and the RAT would slither back home and leave-- finally. When January 6th of 2020, and Joanne and I celebrated with matcha Taiyaki ice creams. It was a new decade. Everything felt possible.
Within weeks, the entire world shuttered. In fact, seeing Bat For Lashes play 'Lost Girls' live was the last thing I did before the shut down.
But, let's get back to 2019 and 'Lost Girls.'
As a multi-decades long Bat For Lashes fan, I lapped up every teaser, every new song, trying to solve the new album's puzzle. The full album came out on September 6th, 2019, just in time for autumn and for Halloween. And it was absolutely perfect.
Every time I listen to the opening notes of "Kids in the Dark," it makes me feel exactly the same way that it did the first time I heard it. 'Lost Girls' is absolutely perfect Nachtmusik, perfect for driving around at night during the waning autumnal days whilst the wind swirls the leaves around.
One of the nights Joanne and I were driving home (incredibly late) from Kowloon Tong Dessert Café, and I asked if we could "take the Cutty Way" home and listen to 'Lost Girls.' (The "Cutty Way" being the other half of 7th Avenue, through Laguna Honda and Forest Hills.) I asked her to play 'Lost Girls,' and told her, "this album reminds me of you." In 2019, we had many late night drives through the Cutty Way back from Kowloon Tong--sometimes listening to 'Lost Girls,' sometimes not--but usually with this gnawing sense of longing from me. Not quite as bad as driving through downtown San Mateo at night, but very similar in the sense of feeling haunted and hunted, somewhere where anxiety meets grief. Sometimes it would be late enough at night to be 3am--the anxiety hour, where my mind would be the least at ease and be racing the most.
But let it be known, that despite all of that, those nights in 2019 remain some of my most treasured memories and I still felt a sense of home in the person next to me driving.
'Lost Girls' was (and is) a perfect 10/10 album, with 10 immaculately perfect tracks that check off all of the pleasure centre boxes in my brain. Of all of the albums that she's done, it is the one I've listen to the most, by far.
Although in 2019 when a lot of wounds were still festering, the album has been difficult to listen to in places and I have found myself having to skip songs.
One of those songs was "Safe Tonight." It was only recently, only within the last year, that I could listen to it without feelings of anxiety, heart sickness, and unsurmountable loss. Listening to it was physically unbearable. Earlier this year, I opened myself to the possibility of love--any and all kinds of love. Suddenly a song that had once made my physically sick to listen to became a Kintsugi for my heart. I could feel the cracks fill up with this song. I always struggle with feeling safe, and this song speaks to never feeling safe, never feeling whole, always feeling broken, but letting someone in despite all of that, and healing through that. Some of us can't afford to be vulnerable because we have so much to lose. What's a minor setback for another person is absolutely devastating for us. I have never in my life been able to feel safe, my nervous system is never regulated, I am never at ease. I have never had anyone make me feel as though I was now safe. I keep thinking of that internetism, "when you protect yourself from pain, don't also protect yourself from love." (Or something like that, whatever the actual one is.)
It took this album 5 years of avid listening to finally arrive at its full fruition of personal meaning for me. Love songs about being scared and vulnerable--but doing it anyway--finally have meaning for me. They're now the songs I listen to over and over again for healing, instead of skipping out of grief.
We finally have our "summer" weather now that the "-ber" months have hit, which is traditional and expected around here, but nonetheless pumping the breaks on my autumnal spirits. I lost my entire summer to chaos, but I am looking at a delightfully stacked Fall, and hopefully some more late night driving shenanigans.
It's worth noting that Joanne and I driving around at night listening to 'Lost Girls' (and subsequent adventures) was actually the impetus behind "Late Nite Drive."
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