the magician
“Love is a verb. Love is a doing word.”
It was one of those blustery days in Melbourne, the wind surprisingly sharp to the bone and curtains of rain that sprayed sideways unexpectedly across an otherwise sunny sky. I had moved down here from the desert less than a year ago and I still felt a stranger to this city of drab grey buildings rising up into the sky - their corridors stretching on in angled lines in all directions. I had taken a tram into Carlton and was meeting a friend later for lunch but I couldn’t quite shake this heavy feeling I’d woken with. I’d been feeling it a lot lately.
I had broken up with the fella I’d been dating. Just as I was getting excited about this new affair, he ended things. Another encounter that ended before it had even properly begun. Then my car broke down. My beloved car that had taken me from Alice Springs to Melbourne, listening to a Tracy Chapman cassette on repeat for most of the way. To rub salt in the wound, I had to pay someone to take it to the wreckers. I had moved down here for a change. I had started studying a therapeutic arts course that I loved and I’d picked up some casual work in mental health. But otherwise I was feeling pretty lonely and somewhat lost in this (comparatively) big city. I wasn’t even playing or writing that much music. To be honest, I couldn’t move past this feeling of being stuck on not meeting someone, not finding a partner, someone to settle with. Would I ever find this? Or would it escape me altogether?
I had just stepped down off a tram when my mum and dad called. When they asked how I was, something unexpected happened. It felt like an unravelling, a tightly wrapped ball of wool coming apart, leaving me to answer honestly. Not just brush it away, like I usually would, with an “oh I’m fine, I’ve been studying, busy doing this and that …” An answer akin to skimming rocks on the surface. Instead, I blurted something out about how I’m 35 and my relationships never work out, and what if I never meet anyone? I can’t remember exactly what I said, it all came unravelling out of me, along with tears. There must’ve been people walking by me, as people do in cities, hurriedly, dressed in black, off to their important meetings.
And I’m not even sure what my mum and dad said in response. Poor things, what do you say to a daughter in her mid 30s who’s distressed and wants to know if she’ll ever meet someone, ever settle down, ever have kids? For me, it wasn’t important what they said or didn’t say in response. What was important was that in that moment I felt like I could be totally honest with them, sharing my distressed state, showing them the truth of what was happening for me at the time. Momentarily unmasked. They just wanted me to be happy, they didn’t want to see me suffering in this way, they could see how much I wanted to meet someone, how much I wanted to find love. But this isn’t something a parent, or anyone for that matter, can guarantee for a loved one.
“To know love we have to tell the truth to ourselves and to others…. Commitment to truth telling lays the groundwork for the openness and honesty that is the heartbeat of love.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but it would take another four years, another couple of heart breaks before meeting someone at the right time, someone who wanted the same things as me in a relationship. Over those four years I did a lot of soul searching through reading books, writing poetry, I was lucky enough to reap the therapeutic benefits of studying Therapeutic Arts, and I even moved back to the desert. And of course, some of this soul searching came through music.
I wrote The Magician when I was feeling completely and utterly at sea in terms of finding love. I did at the time feel like the sailor who’s lost her way pleading to be made found again. But in time I discovered that approaching love as something mystifying and beyond reach was unhelpful, and really it was in myself that I needed to reclaim a sense of love and purpose in my life, in order to feel found again.
“We need a map to guide us on our journey to love – starting with the place where we know what we mean when we speak of love.”
I don’t know how to reach you
But if I could
I would say nothing
You don’t already know
For I, I am the doubter
You, you are the good
I am the questions
You, the understood
You may not return to me
But if you do
You’ll say that you never left
But I’ll have this song for you
For you, you are the water
Always you are bound
I am the sailor
Who’s lost her way
Please make me found
You, you’re the magician
I, I am the fool
Yes you, you’re the magician
And I, I am your fool
