I’ve Never Been To Me?

There’s a song I listen to from time to time. It’s very late ‘70s or early ‘80s depending on which of its two releases you prefer. It’s incredibly cheesy. There are parts of it that make me cringe. There’s a hideous talky bit. I want to cover my ears. I’m not sure I want to be caught listening to it. It is a marmite song, people either love it or hate it. I’m intrigued by it, about what point it is trying to make. It has a bit of a chequered history. It was recorded fairly unsuccessfully by a number of different artists but became a one-hit wonder for the US singer Charlene when a DJ at a Florida radio station began playing her original 1977 recording again in 1982. It got such a positive response from listeners that Charlene had to be coaxed out of retirement to facilitate the re-release. She had left the music industry, discouraged by the poor performance of her first album and her label’s decision not to release a second one. She had married and moved to the UK. She was now working in a sweetshop in Essex. In the video, she is wearing her own wedding dress. She is both old life and new life.

The song is full of unsolicited advice. It’s a stark message from one woman to another. “Hey lady, you, lady, cursing at your life. You’re a discontented mother and a regimented wife,” it says, “I’ve no doubt you dream about the things you’ll never do. But I wish someone had talked to me. Like I wanna talk to you”. The narrator has had a jet setting lifestyle. She alludes to her various hedonistic experiences. She’s been to Nice and the isle of Greece. She’s sipped champagne on a yacht and moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo. But none of it has brought her any fulfilment. She concludes she’s been to paradise, but she’s never been to me. She tells the housewife that she has made the wrong choices because she had to be free, that paradise is a lie, a fantasy of people and places as we’d like them to be. She tells her that sometimes she cries for the unborn children that might have made her complete, that truth is that little baby she’s holding, the man she fought with this morning. She tells her it can only be one life or the other, a big life or a small life, travel or home, Nice or nappies, discovery or domesticity, gratification or grit, being undressed by kings or undone by kids. She is a tad passive-aggressive, preachy about not moaning about your lot and getting on with loving some traditional version of womanhood. She says that it can’t be both/and. But she makes a lot of assumptions. She doesn’t know what that other woman dreams of. She doesn’t know what her paradise is. She just thinks she envies her life.

I’ve been doing a lot of book writing this week. In fact, I wasn’t planning to write this but sometimes you just have to go with the flow and when a song pops on to your playlist and an idea pops into your head and you fancy a bit of an interlude, it would be rude not to respond. I’ve been processing more of my leaving. I’ve questioned whether I may have commitment issues, may have rushed into some decisions, why I am so reluctant to write about motherhood because I don’t know where to start with what it’s done to me. I’m thinking of naming my chapters after songs even though this may be slightly copyright problematic. I’ve got to the ‘take me to church and losing my religion’ chapter and I’m incredibly proud of at least one line. It goes something like “my Pilates instructor said I was like a wound-up spring, and I said it was because I was a Presbyterian”. I’m finding the processing surprisingly exhausting. It’s like counselling only minus someone qualified to listen to me. But what is becoming clearer and clearer as I exhume the last three years is that I have to be careful. I have to be careful not to condemn those who are living a different life from mine, telling them somehow my creative path is infinitely better than their corporate one. I have to remember that just because I found no satisfaction in a career in higher education doesn’t mean that others shouldn’t, that just because I will never be promoted to anything doesn’t mean others can’t make a promotion to something part of their five-year plan, that just because I’ve seen the vacuousness of a title doesn’t mean that others can’t be validated by theirs, that just because I left a system doesn’t mean that others can’t continue to remain happily part of one, that just because I found my something else doesn’t mean there is a something else for everyone else. I have to remember that just because I have made choices doesn’t mean that others should make the same ones, that it can be both/and.

The basis of both/and is that multiple things can be true at the same time and that everybody has a right to their experience, regardless of what somebody else is experiencing¹.

All that matters is that I’ve made the right choices for me. All that matters is that I never find myself saying “I’ve never been to me”.

I’ve been watching the third season of The Bear. It has been ripped apart by the critics. It has become too clever, they say. It feels rushed. It is as dysfunctional as its characters. It is a reminder that no matter how high you rise, whether you reach the pinnacle of a profession, or are an award-winning FX on Hulu or HBO series, or achieve the top marks, or lift the trophy, the expectations on you will rise too and there will always be someone watching and waiting to bring you down. Somehow you just have to keep believing in what you are doing, develop your inner core, disregard the success measures of others and hope that the right people get it. In the opening episode, head chef Carmy draws up his list of non-negotiables, things he and his team must do consistently to achieve greatness. The list lurches from “no repeat ingredients” to “less is more” to “vibrant collaboration” to “know your shit”. None of them are particularly practical. No repeat ingredients means the waiting staff can never remember the menu. When a photographer arrives to photograph the duck dish a critic ate for a magazine, no one has any idea what was in it. At times, the restaurant descends into chaos, one individual’s non-negotiables threatening to override the needs of others. In episode four, manager Richie retaliates with his non-negotiables - “trim nails”, “accommodate dietary restrictions”, “basic manners”, “an environment that embraces and encourages razzle-dazzle and the dream weave”, “joy, just in general”. The test of the restaurant is whether it can accommodate the two sets of non-negotiables, whether two experiences can co-exist, whether it can be both/and.

I came across an anecdote from Pam in Plymouth. “Whenever I hear this song²” she said, “I remember the great BBC Radio 2 DJ Terry Wogan playing it on his morning show. He would fade it out just after ‘and I’ve seen some things that a woman ain’t supposed to see’ and interject with ‘What things? What things ain’t a woman supposed to see?’”… I hoped she got to see everything, both/and.

P.S. Hope you are all having a good summer, whatever choices you are making about it. I will be writing intermittently over the next few weeks and there won’t be something from me every Friday afternoon as I am travelling quite a bit plus working on that book I keep mentioning. If you want to stay in touch, feel free to connect with me on Instagram.

And I’ll leave you with Charlene.

1. What is Both/And Thinking?

2. I’ve Never Been To Me.