It's Alive!

This week has been my second week as a Torontonian, and it’s been a weird one. It’s as if, on Monday, I split with myself, letting one version of me go and do her thing, participate and work and meet people, while the rest of me idly wandered around in some sort of disembodied state. Now, at the end of the week, I have reunited my selves. I’m putting the kettle on while rubbing my hands and leaning my back against the kitchen counter, asking me what I’ve been up to this week. Cor blimey! Seems that I’ve been doing a lot, apparently. I started my job? Did another open mic? Edited and geared up for an online magazine release? And other stuff!? Jesus, no wonder I’ve not been able to get out of bed until 3pm this Saturday.

I started work on the Tuesday. I was terrified the night before - I tried to think back to my feelings when I started my job at The Restaurant, but when I cast my mind back (to what seemed like another lifetime), I could only picture an abundance of work friends waving me goodbye, rather than the fear that gripped me the day I first donned my uniform. I couldn’t sleep, I had those regular pre-first-day worries: what if they realised that they hired me by accident!? I mean, surely, that’s the only way that I could’ve gotten into this job. The next morning I woke up at 6am, which was entirely non-intentional. I had way too much time before I had to be in at the office, so spent the whole morning taking my time getting ready, while dedicating too much brainpower to worrying about what my first day was going to be like. I listened to one of my favourite power-songs, an important song that I keep with me for any occasion: celebration, a much-needed jolt of bravery, cheering oneself up, etc.

I tried to keep the energy of David Byrne’s Miss America with me while I walked to work - a ridiculously short ten minutes away from my front door. When I got in, I had an induction, and then it was, “ok, go get set up over there with your laptop!” And I thought…  but, you haven’t given me any work to do…? I opened up my laptop and plugged it in, and fiddled about on the keyboard, every so often looking over my shoulder at the rest of the office to see what everyone else was doing. Then I got a “ping!” on my laptop: it was an e-mail from my supervisor asking me to draft a press release. So I started to write said press release. I felt a bit like I was somebody on The Sims: I was a little person with a green diamond hovering over my head, waiting for my electronic masters’ commands - what should I do next? Of course, as peculiar as I found the fact that I had to IM somebody who was sitting less than a couple of metres away from me, I enjoyed my first day of work. Turns out I had a knack for writing good copy. 

On both working days, after I’d come home and slugged off my boots, I’d sit for another few hours on my laptop, doing my other job, which was the role of magazine editor. Some of you may be vaguely aware, but I work with a team of people, most of whom are based in Nashville, TN, on an online publication called Unrooted. So when I came home from days of writing copy, I’d then have to sit and edit through online content for a few more hours, as our third issue was dropping on March 1st.

(p.s. - I'm on pages 38 & 70!)

I was busy, but I didn’t even realise I was being busy. Editing the magazine felt like fun, not work. But, at the end of the day, it was still work. I had also planned another evening of “not-work”, doing an open mic at another small cafe in Kensington on Thursday night. At the venue, it was almost as deathly cold as it was outside. I turned up with my guitar in hand and reluctantly crossed the threshold into a totally empty cafe. I was early, but, surely at least somebody would be here? The guy in charge was setting up the amp and microphone, and gave me a nod. I said hi and sat down. “You can start anytime you want,” he said. I told him I’d be ok for a few minutes, didn’t have to start straight away. Especially since there’s no-one else here but you and me, I thought. If I wanted to play to myself and one other guy I could have just told my flatmate back at home to meet me in the living room for a private concert. 

After a couple of minutes, two more people entered the cafe. The guy was planning on singing tonight, bringing his friend along for moral support, oh, and apparently three more of his friends were coming, and so were his aunt and uncle. What a posse! We chatted and he told me about how he used to model for Next agency (which, I don’t know if you know, is kinda one of the biggest modelling agencies in the world). He told me about how he travelled all over the world, and how he ‘found himself’ in Cape Town and decided that he had to pursue music, he couldn’t possibly do anything else. “We’re the same,” he said to me, “you’re determined, just like me! You know exactly what you want, and you’re going out to get it!” I’m determined!? I know exactly what I want!? I must be sending off some vibes, I thought.

Eventually I got my guitar out, and as I started to play, the cafe started to fill up. I played four songs, and gave it my all, even though I was in this tiny, cold cafe on a dark Thursday night. When I was done, my ex-model pal went up and gave a performance, using his iPod as backing. I want to share with you one of his songs, so you can imagine what he sounded like:

And then the rest of the night was the regular open mic mixed bag, which I always love. The bouncy Japanese guy from my previous open mic at Supermarket had come along to this one too, and performed several songs with the same amount of energy, to my delight. We had an older guy sing a song about dinosaur bones (I’m not gonna lie, there seemed to be a lot of ‘artistic dissonance’ which did not do anything for my eardrums, especially at the parts where he would sing/yell “I AM A DINOSAAAAUUUURRR!”), and then an old Asian man with the most serene expression on his face did a cover of the Foo Fighter’s Everlong. He finger-picked the first half of the song, and then, halfway through, he gently turned to the table on his right hand side and picked up a plectrum, as calmly as one could possibly pick up a plectrum before powering through the last several bars of an alt rock song. He seemed like the kind of guy who had the capacity to kill a man without batting an eyelash. I liked that.

Anyway, the end of my week sizzled and fizzled with coffee meets and pints and tacos and then, on the weekend, I was hit by a wave of homesickness. I’d had a night out the evening before to see a comedian with a Scottish friend, but by midnight I was ready for my bed. I was so tired, trying to keep my eyes open and my head upright as the streetcar rattled homewards down Queen Street. I had to listen out for “Next stop: Landsdowne.” I felt shaky and scared, and I wished with every bone in my body that I wasn’t a whole several thousand miles away from everyone I loved - that I could come home to my darling Edinburgh flatmates and have a comforting hug, or I could call up my Mum with a worried voice and say, “I don’t feel so good,” (which was my catchphrase as a neurotic pre-teen, Mum said it should be inscribed on my gravestone: “Olivia Rafferty: ‘I don’t feel so good’”).

Saturday morning, I sat in my bed, under the covers, homesick, dreaming about hugs. Oh, man. I miss hugs. It sounds so terrible, doesn’t it? It sounds like I’m some kind of loveless puppy that’s been kicked to the kerb and is unwittingly the star of a new Disney musical. It’s true, though. I miss hugs! Nobody hugs me here. The only person that opens their arms to me is Mr. Swipey when we part ways, and even that lacks the quality that I’m really craving. I miss resting my head on others’ shoulders. I miss the smells of home, or the feel of my friend’s wool cardigans which were so soft, because she actually put the effort in to hand wash them (whereas I stuck everything in the washing machine because I was lazy, but, oh, she was careful and organised enough to actually hand wash their clothes like a real, caring person). I miss being able to walk into my kitchen and approach someone with arms outstretched and they would immediately reciprocate. We all like that sort of human contact. Hugs when you’re sad, hugs when you’re happy, hugs when the kettle is boiling and you have nothing else to do but just put your arms around the nearest person, just because you can.

I whimpered for a while before my Dad called me up to check in. We talked and I felt a little better, “seems like the positives are outweighing the negatives for you right now,” he observed. And he was right: I had my flat, my job, some friends, my open mics, the magazine…

But there is one other small thing which has been putting me on edge lately. I’ve come to the conclusion that my apartment is plotting to kill me. The electrical appliances and systems have been intriguing with my bed in a conspiracy to end me via brutal electrocution. Something about the metal of my bed’s framework, combined with the cotton/satin blend of my sheets, seems to charge me every time I sit or lie down on it. It started off with little things, like the occasional snap when I touched the metal of my doorknob, and then soon escalated to an audible ‘ping’ and a sharp jolt every time I got off the bed, or accidentally touched the wrong part of my lightswitch. Then, eventually the lamp - oh boy, the lamp! - tried to send me off with a voltage worthy of a felon on death row when I tried to turn it on, with an actual shard of light that sparked between my sizzling fingertips and the switch. It’s a cruel turn of events - half the time I'm expecting one of my flatmates to jump out after one of my regular shocks dressed up in Mad Scientist garb and yell, '"It's alliiiiiiiiiiveeee!"

I am alive, I promise! And yes, I'll admit, yesterday was a lie-in-bed, Pizza-Pizza day. But, as you can see, I am alive and busy. And, overall, I'm happy.