Do you believe in life after love?
50 things I’ve done to try and “live in the moment and let it go”.
Real Talk by Holiday Sidewinder.
1. Cry me a river. I was born with blocked tears ducts and ever since the doctors opened those bad boys up, that river flows freely!!
2. Tequila, Tequila, Tequila Sunrise.
3. Salsa dancing at El Floridita. Cuban cigars. Guava and Cheese Pies.
4. Hike Runyon Canyon, feel like Piggy from Lord of The Flies, trail way behind my friends as they look back at me with pity and disgust.
5. Offer to rip up weeds in my friend’s mother’s yard thinking gardening and a selfless act would be good for my soul. Give up twenty minutes in, spade in hand, dripping in sweat. Was imagining a glamorous wide brim hat, slow movements, pink secateurs and roses.
6. Make a truly miserable playlist.
7. Think about Sinead O’Connor and Britney, consider shaving my head… Get a haircut. New Beginnings. Everybody does it.
8. Horoscopes, crystals and sage. Everybody does it… well, middle class atheists in California at least.
9. Book in Vipassana. Never go. Never stop talking to people about how I’m going to do it. No, I actually never did that, but I know so many people who did, so maybe that’s a bright idea.
10. Engage in negotiations with a personal trainer I can’t afford. Flirt in free session hoping I’ll never have to pay. End up dating him for 4 years. End up co-running the gym. Never had to pay.
11. Start frequenting Ronnie Scotts after midnight. Get lost in it. Obsess over characters and players. Drink espressos all night from Bar Italia. Pauly and Dorian – the night shift baristas there become the best friends I have in London. Eat breakfast at Ballans, 24hr restaurant. Write this song…
12. Have a naked make-out session with a beautiful woman in the Chateau Marmont pool. Enjoy breasts. Seriously entertain the idea that becoming a lesbian might be the answer and the future before she laughs and says “it’s funny ‘cause we’re both so straight!” … then her boyfriend shows up.
13. Develop an unhealthy attraction to gay guys and men with Fabio length hair instead. Dan Sells says in his beautiful British accent “Darling, you’ve got to stop doing that” and I do.
14. Get Taro Cards read by the great King Khan, laugh off and ignore the results – very nervously. Never stop thinking about it. Everything came true. Chicken or the egg?
15. Get a Thai oil massage, feel sad that I have to pay someone to touch me.
16. Pour a bubble bath, intend to enjoy it and relax, but spend the whole time precariously trying to take sexy bubbled up selfies, posting them with fuck you pride, hoping my ex will see and then deleting them moments later in absolute shame and self-disgust.
17. Start out with Denise Austin Workout videos. “Life isn’t a dress rehearsal guys”. Switch to her relaxing new age stretch & flex videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yRdNcH0BV0
18. Ask a stranger if I can play with his baby. Proceed to do so. Make it laugh, and squeeze its chumpy little cheeks. Think about the beautiful baby I could’ve had with any one of my exes. Console myself thinking that the reality would be torturous and untenable. Feel immediate relief and immense freedom and then a niggling sense that I’m potentially wrong. Never ending battle.
19. Write out the Desiderata at least twice. Memorise it. Cling to it like a life raft.
20. Spend quality time with family -“Reconnect”… Remember exactly why you kept your healthy distance in the first place. Remember why you’re a fucking nut job, fully realise you never had a chance with these loonies raising you. Love them for it. Embrace the madness.
21. Sit alone in an arabic coffee shop in Edgeware Road, buy a garish and enormous slice of pink cake, pretend to read Albert Camus. Watch the first snow fall outside the window, feel nostalgic. Smoke an expensive apple hookah curbside. Cough and splutter and pretend to enjoy it. Have an existential crisis.
22. Go to Brompton Oratory (the catholic church from the Nick Cave song). Easter Mass. Take the body of christ. Didn’t realise I had to be baptised for that. Feel guilty. It kind of turned me on. Pray to a god I want so badly to exist, but don’t feel at all. Hedge my bets. Feel like an ant, why would a greater greatness bother with petty little ant wishes like mine? Tell Nick Cave I found God. He laughs and says “great, now you have to lose him”.
23. Watch TED talk from young Indian boy speaking fluent english from DuoLingo. If he can do it I can do it. Spend an hour a day learning Italian. Go to Italy and my brain explodes! I can actually understand, read and speak this thing. Not well, but by god, when we were stuck in a traffic jam and the driver said “fiesta de la pizza!”, I heard him loud and clear, and “Pizza Party” may be the only phrase you ever truly need to know in Italian.
24. Go to The Woseley or The Ritz and order the cheapest thing on the menu – fresh Mint Tea usually, pretend I’m fancy, take my sweet ass time. “The blues are because you’re getting fat and maybe it’s been raining too long, you’re just sad that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling? Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump in a cab and go to Tiffany’s. Calms me down right away. The quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there. If I could find a real-life place that’d make me feel like Tiffany’s, then – then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name!” Holly Golightly. I was named after her (It’s ‘Holiday’ in the Capote novel), I like to take a leaf out of her book.
25. Start renting row boats at The Serpentine, rowing alone, feeding the swans.
26. Write and record a bitter song on a cheap airline long haul flight with no in-flight entertainment. Do vocals in the cubicle. DGAF.
https://soundcloud.com/holiday-carmen-sparks/dumb-bitch-19618-817-am
27. Spaghetti. Lots of Spaghetti. Especially at lunch. Nothing more luxurious than a home cooked hot lunch. Use fresh cherry or plum tomatoes. Grate lemon zest. Sophia Loren’s Puttanesca recipe is ace.
28. Quit my job on a Sunday with 5 shifts in the diary for the week ahead. Use my last £50 to get on a one way flight to Barcelona. Got my phone stolen while I was salsa dancing. Somehow survived and thrived, ended up drinking Pina Coladas on the Costa Brava. Mum nearly reported me a missing person.
29. Got stoned and ran down the corridors of the Salvador Dali Museum in Figueres at midnight. Blew my mind.
30. Go to a real bookstore and buy real physical copies. Sex At Dawn, Sex & Rage, Testosterone Rex, Why We Sleep, Homo Deus, Lost Connections, Chasing The Scream… self-help via pop-psych + New-Science. Struggle with fiction these days. Watch Esther Perel videos…
31. Watch every Eartha Kitt interview ever.
32. Look into buying a Nokia 3310. I could play snake again. I could make arrangements and stick to them. Delete social media apps, stop reading the news. See people in real life, learn to shut up and listen. Be a real person again. I don’t want to be a cyborg anymore…
33. Lay in the sun, dip toes in the ocean or any body of water wherever you find it.
34. Get OCD, rearrange furniture. Colour code wardrobe. Give up, sell everything I own for £1. Get out of the country. Live out of a suitcase, sleeping in hotels, a different city every night. Before I know it a year has passed and Norwegian Airways has lost my suitcase. Start with nothing, end with nothing.
35. Listen to Millie Jackson ‘This Is It’.
36. Listen to Betty Davis ‘It’s My Life’.
37. Watch the sunset from Mullholland Drive.
38. Flaming Margaritas, live Mariachis and Nachos at El Compadre.
39. Watch The Birdcage again. Watch Priscilla Queen of The Desert on Christmas Day.
40. Make another playlist, hustle hustle hustle. RAW POWER HUSTLE
41. Speak to strangers, be ballsy, STOP CRINGING when service people are overly friendly – it’s normal. Nothing wrong with it. They’re totally genuine. Stop being such a cynical asshole. People are different here. Maybe try it. Fake it, till you make it? Maybe if you practice being extra friendly (for tips initially), you will just become extra friendly, and therefore a happier person?
42. Start writing your memoirs. You can’t afford a therapist. You can’t keep burdening your friends with the endless drone of complaints and insane stories. Lump your laptop with that shit. It deserves it. See, you’ve lived all this drama before, many, many times. It’s cyclical. “Everything passes, everything changes, just do what you think you should do, and who knows baby, someday maybe, ill come and be crying to you” Bob Dylan, To Ramona.
43. Let my gay fairy godfathers treat me like a doll, dress me up, do face masks, brush my hair, watch Will & Grace, play grand piano, sing musicals.
44. Stare at the ceiling. Be bored for fuck’s sake. No one’s allowed to be bored these days. Whatever happened to sitting at a bus stop for 20 minutes with nothing to do but wait, eavesdrop, watch the aggressive junkies on their mid-morning hustle – holler and stalk. Whatever happened to thinking and letting the mind drift and wander?
45. Can’t sleep. Do a Richard Freeman Ashtanga Yoga video at 3am. Drive band mates nuts with attempted throat breathing and intermittent sobs.
46. Made a conscious effort not to say their name for at least a day.
47. Made love wherever I could find it, backstage bathrooms, alleyways, cars, fancy hotels…
48. 15 years old. First love. Pre-smart phones. Find every little note and photograph put it in a brown paper bag and file it away in a cupboard. Write a song about it. Always write a song about it. Thats the only gift, the only silver lining, the only revenge, from hurt, pain, sadness, longing and loss. Music is the eternal unconditional companion you can always rely on.
49. Print out Bob Dylan’s ‘Letter To Woody Guthrie’ in 16pt font across 13 x A4 pages and stick them to my wall. Read it every morning.
50. Write this song…
Go to Sex & Love Addicts Anonymous… Well maybe next week, ‘cause I feel pretty good right now!
…
Words by Holiday Sidewinder. Photo by Thom Kerr.
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