Broken Record

Mango trench
Sezane cardigan
Mavi jeans (c/o)
Dune London mules
Chanel handbag
& Other Stories sunglasses
Stella & Dot necklace
Mejuri earrings (c/o) (similar)
Location: The Winnipeg Art Gallery – Winnipeg, Manitoba

This week, Spotify releasted their 2020 statistics for users, letting listeners know important things like their most played songs for the year, the types of music they listened to and the number of hours they spent with music playing. There were no surprises in my round-up – I knew exactly what my top five songs would be. I can recite them all word for word, start to finish. And that’s because I’ve played them all year like they were the only five songs on my very own broken record.

Maybe it makes sense that in a year of endless repetition – wake up, exercise, work, sleep, repeat – that I’ve allowed repetition to take over my life. Maybe I’ve found some kind of subconscious comfort in playing the same songs in the background of the same activities, wearing the same trench coat with almost all my outfits, keeping up contact with the same people day in and day out. I loved routine, before the pandemic. But I loved it because it was a safe place to come back to after I’d been on an adventure. I’m not sure that I still love it – at least not in the same way. But I can’t deny there’s still comfort in it, maybe more than ever, because while I’m not out exploring the world every other week, I’ve learned to live with a whole new kind of excitement chaos this year.

No one alive has experienced anything like 2020. The reality of learning the basics of epidemology, sorting out the ever-changing safety regulations, while trying to adapt to varying degrees of social isolation isn’t easy for anyone. Change can be hard, even when it’s positive. This much change can leave the most adaptable person reeling. I like change, normally – new scenery, new geography, new challenges. But this is something different. It’s made me hate routine but lean into it even harder, because when everything around me is constantly changing, at least I know what to expect within the walls of my apartment from the time I wake up until I go to bed again. I’ve become a living broken record.

So I play the same songs over and over again. I reach for the same coat, curl up under the same blanket, prepare the same meals. The funny thing is, I grew up with the expression broken record, but not with records themselves. As a kid, I played most of my music on casettes, while in my teens, I listened to CDs on a clunky Discman. My parents owned a record player, and we do now, too. But I’ve never actually played a record that was broken in a way that made it repetitive. And yet I imagine that if those vinyl discs have feelings, they are feelings I can empathise with this year.

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