Notes From Management

On "Steady Hands" - 16-12-2020

It started when Spotify spit up Yiruma's "Wait There" in one of the daily mixes they tailor to the listener, as if the music application's algorithm knew I had been missing you for some time, deep in my subconscious. Of course, this immediately sent me hunting through albums for pictures of you (any pictures) before I realised that any and all photos I'd had of you were saved to the memory card of a phone that had been stolen and on the server of a social media network that no longer existed. I did find a shitty old poem I'd written about you my very first year without you, though, so I guess that's a win? It weirdly inspired "Steady Hands", and no, not just the name.

It wasn't until the song had ended it's ninth replay (why would I stop at one when the nostalgia was such a sweet distraction?) that I realised I hadn't spoken to or about you in... seven, maybe eight years. And yet here I am, missing you as if we were high schoolers again with the new school year having just started and our schedules clashing too much to spare more than a quick 'hello' when we're passing each other's houses. Quite the impression you made, buddy. Having said that it's been a while, why don't we catch up?

Dear Friend,

It's been so long, are you well? Nothing much has really changed with me, so I think you can probably guess how I am. I'm writing to you because I recently heard that Yiruma song you played me when you tried to convince me that the piano is the best string instrument (I remain of the opinion that while it is beautiful, it has a snobbish and pretentious sound to it, so the guitar remains the superior string instrument where I'm concerned; also, the piano is a percussion instrument, you twat) and began to wonder about you, where and how you were. That's an outright lie. It made me miss you and the stability you offered. You were an unshakeable, unbendable, unbreakable tree. Whatever "emotional turmoil and distress" curveball I threw at you, you always managed to hit it. Was that analogy correct? Do you even still have any interest in cricket?

I'm only now realising that it's just a little over two weeks after your birthday. You would be, what? Twenty-six, twenty-seven-years-old? My memory is getting worse with age (ha! I'm not even a quarter century old yet!) so forgive me for forgetting both the birthday boy's special day and his actual age. Was it a good birthday? Do you miss celebrating both our birthdays in the middle of the week that stretched between them? I kind of do. Talking through our regrets of the past year and hopes for the new one while we eat shitty KFC ice cream cones at the park in front of the police flats and sneak sips of whatever spirits you managed to steal from the liquor cabinet from a flask you claimed was an heirloom. I suppose it could be an heirloom now, if you pass it down to your kid.

Do you have any children yet? Every time I asked you how many children you wanted, you'd pause, pretend to count, then shrug and tell me "I dunno, a cricket team?" and laugh at my horrified expression. I remember you saying again and again how the second you graduated med school as a surgeon (you never had an answer for me when I asked what kind of surgeon, did you finally settle on something?), you'd propose to the prettiest social sciences major you could con into dating you, and start a family. Did you even decide on med school? Or were you intimidated by the several large textbooks you would have to read? You were a natural talent and a notorious procrastinator (and I think that's partly why we got along so well) so the prospect of actual hard work could have put you off of it entirely. Maybe you ended up the pretty humanities graduate?

Amazing how I can remember such specific little details about you to miss, but for the life of me, I can't remember your face. Not properly. It's all hazy. Brown hair, brown/hazel eyes, medium skin tone, freckles and moles on your nose and cheeks... Did I just describe you, or the ambiguously ethnic supporting character of a Netflix drama? I can't remember what you sounded like either. Imagine that. Voice clip (Jesus, we were friends in the time of voice clips) after voice clip, some of them clips of your laughter, some speech, a wealth of little bits of you singing or rapping your favourite verses of songs to me, and I can't remember what you sounded like.