Radio Nostalgia EP 01
Today on Radio Nostalgia: Love Lost by The Temper Trap.
There’s a festive atmosphere, and you can breathe it everywhere thanks to the commercialization of the December celebration: Kendall Jenner dressed as Santa’s devotee, Charlotte Tilbury advent calendars, to McDonald’s Winter Days. But Christmas is much more than that. December is the month of mood swings: I never particularly liked holidays, especially when I was a child – but Christmas was different; it had something special. Paradoxically, I learned to love them as I grew up, but I still have that bittersweet feeling inside me that “forces” me every year to try to understand, to try to understand myself. There are some thoughts that you only feel with your eyes closed, and you’re afraid to open them because they can slip away. Of my ten years, I remember, with my eyes closed, how stressful it was to tidy up the room and make the bed for a whole month, but at least that way I would end up on Santa’s nice list. With my eyes closed, I remember that decorating the tree with my dad was a fantastic feeling – oh, to be a child climbing his dad’s shoulders to put the star on top of the Christmas tree. We chose the dominant color and decorated everything accordingly, and the whole house became an explosion of colors. And it was beautiful: it was cold outside, but at the end of the day, you came back, and the house was lit, a few squares still closed on the advent calendar, and hot chocolate in the making, in the spasmodic waiting of the morning of the 25th when who knows if Santa will drink the milk and eat the cookies I’ll leave for him. Then, all of a sudden, you’re almost thirty. An office job and a salary, and you no longer spend entire days at the mall with your mom, hand in hand, to buy Christmas gifts. Instead, you ask your friends days in advance what they might need so that you can give them a more useful gift. But still, you buy some useless stuff they don’t know about just to laugh together again as if you were thirteen. And while you decorate the room of the house you’re living in now (because over time, this happens too: you get hired for the job of your dreams, but you have to move miles away from where you grew up), you realize that during the trips you take inside your head, there’s always something you leave pending.
Photography Johnny Dufort, styling Celestine Cooney
When I was a child, to the question: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I always answered "a marine biologist" - I thought I had a world to discover. Then, by force of circumstances, I hit the ground with my face and to this question, I started answering "I want to narrate to people what I have inside" - I actually had more than one world to discover. For me, the future, despite everything, was there. It was enough to have myself, to build myself, to feel myself, and leave many things to chance. And it works. You deliberately leave it pending every year, wanting to see the world through the eyes of a child. Today when they ask me "What do you do for a living?" I always answer "When I grow up, I want to narrate to people what I have inside". Which in the meantime has become louder, insistent, stomping and hitting me. I've accumulated sleep debt, smiles through tears, and bitter awareness. The future today is a mountain of missed trains, caught trains, unwanted rides back, and obligatory skincare because dark circles weigh on me. But the future today is also tidying up the room, making the bed for a whole month, and doing the laundry (because now you have a few more responsibilities), so you end up on Santa's nice list. The future today is making the advent calendar, but as a final date, instead of December 25th, the date of returning home, because seeing your grandmother cooking for Christmas dinner makes you feel again part of something beautiful. The future today is going back into your mother's arms, giving her an IKEA card, and furnishing the house together, the same one you no longer live in but is always, inevitably, and forever will be your home. The future today is a starting point. So Christmas, for me and for everyone, is probably just a sweet dichotomy, which is a bit of the leitmotif of everyday life: wanting to look ahead but with the head that inevitably turns first to look back with a bit of saudade for everything and nothing.
