In this You Are Here commission, Arran Mara takes us for a tense walk through the past, exploring the things we remember and the things we wish we could forget.
You Are Here – peer to peer survivor writing – was Jet Moon’s second survivor writer’s platform; building on the first: Playing With Fire, which took place in 2021. You Are Here offers an expanded series of workshops, a survivor writer’s group, via Spread The Word, and a series of interviews for the Wellcome Collection archives.
Content warnings: reference to mild hoarding, general trauma memory themes
Listen along as you read
Music (C) Arran Mara 2024
I was a teenager in the 2000s, and just like your average teen girl in the noughties I was really into etymology and mid 20th century American subcultures. These interests collided when I learned of the supposed origins of the term groovy. I say supposed because now I’m more of an advanced nerd I think it seems like it might be more of a folk etymology, because the origins of slang terms never have such a direct path as people really want them to. It’s a very human thing to create neat narratives for things that are inconveniently messy in reality.
Having said that, just because I know fact checking exists now doesn’t mean I can be bothered to do it. It doesn’t matter anyway, what is truth in the face of belief? I remember reading that groovy started with those hep cats in Greenwich village who smoked reefer while listening to jazz records. Vinyl records have these physical grooves in the material that act as the information for the needle to read and then turn into emotion. I knew this because when I entered my hipster not-like-other girls era, my mother let me raid her old record collection that had been largely untouched for years. All those records up til then in my childhood home had been just yet more old stuff gathering dust, things upon things that functioned as little more than the matte painting backdrop to my life until that point. There was a whole world of undiscovered mysteries amongst The Stuff I’d long since learned to just navigate around by then.
Most of the records were classical or what might be lumped under the label of world music now, but I managed to find a Joan Baez concert recording and “best of” compilations of Simon and Garfunkel and Janis Joplin, and I quickly became obsessed. But with some songs more than others. I soon cottoned on that the pattern of rings on the disc corresponded to the beginning and end of tracks so I could pick up the needle and drop it straight to a favourite. Or just pick the needle up to drop it back to the beginning of a favourite when it ended. Again and again and again. And that’s apparently what groovy referred to: to get into the grooves of the track. To feel the music like a tangible thing. I always pictured it like the music was big and you were so small you could fall into its grooves like falling into a giant mountain crevasse or something. You can only submit to its all-engulfing powers. You are returned to something greater than yourself, just as your physical body will return to the earth and feed new life until it dies to feed another life ad infinitum until you are forgotten and the world continues as though you never existed.
Apparently if you play the same song over and over enough on a vinyl record you can damage it, even though the needle seems to barely glide over the surface there’s still friction occurring. And over time that incremental friction damage can dig even deeper grooves with the needle and end up ruining the physical imprint of the music until it can’t play properly any more. I never got bad enough to find out if that’s true for myself, but I’ve played some songs so many times during certain times in my life it’s like they’ve left a physical groove in my brain. Now when I play them it’s like a needle dropping into place into my head, it’s fitting into place and treading its well-worn path. The satisfying feeling of slipping a tape into a deck, something slotting just right into a space that was made for it. But a cigarette after a shag is satisfying too, doesn’t mean it’s good for me to indulge in.
I read recently that the more you revisit a memory the more it will warp over time, a memory you don’t think of often will stay more true to what actually occurred. It’s like your brain making a little game of telephone with itself, something little changing each time it’s brought back. Like the needle on the stylus imperceptibly damaging the record every time it’s played until it’s too warped to play right. I don’t want to look up if this is true or not, it seems plausible but I don’t think I’d be able to cope if I ever had it confirmed to me. I already can’t stand feeling like I don’t know what was real or not. I can’t stand thinking about how I’ll never know for sure.
About the author
Arran Mara: I am a queer changeling on wheels, charging full-speed into self-exploration through the lens of Madness, gender, disability, history, mythology and the intangible.
Growing up in an environment where I knew what I said didn’t matter, and that talking wouldn’t help; I relied on writing diaries. Writing was a way to cope with the intense isolation of being housebound, out of mainstream education, and in an abusive and neglectful household throughout my adolescence.
My writing is an honouring and an evolution of my teenage diary-writing years, a way for me to chronicle my life and to remake connections; lost from years of chronic dissociation.
The writer’s group held up a mirror for me to see I had a unique voice and a talent worth pursuing. I’m currently working on a collection of short prose pieces that weave together the absurd and tragic; as naturally as they intertwine in life.