August 28, 2021

Dearest Kimya,

Touring has been a lonely venture. The crowds are welcoming and the revenue is steady, but I am relieved to be back in Ottawa. I headlined the National Arts Centre Fourth Stage last night. The audience demanded two encores of “Passionfruit,” so it was past midnight by the time I got home and felt a grief-stricken need to write to you. I took my shoes off at the front door, joints creaking as I made my way upstairs. The oakwood staircase responded in tune, moonlit and fatigued by the weight of my shapely carrying-on. I’ve visited over a dozen cities in every province west of Ontario; no attraction has rivaled the seductive grass beds at Major’s Hill Park, the liveliness of Rideau Street when university students flood the ByWard market for afternoon drinks on the patio or if a new dispensary opens its doors.

We’re staying at a different airbnb. The one Fitness recommended wasn’t available, so Wendy, my manager, found us something in the suburbs of Kanata at the last minute. It isn’t exactly the Pullman Kinshasa Grand Hotel. I could complain about the muggy kitchen, the dirty glass table under this sheet of paper. Though, you wouldn’t experience this place like I do, and I wouldn’t resent you any less. It would only make things awkward between us, if anything, and then I’d have to invite you over. You would say, “what a lovely neighbourhood this is,” and I would say, “Thank you, the neighbours are very nice.” You would ask me about the strong smell coming from the kitchen, I’d retort, “Can I take your jacket?” I show you to the living room. You compliment the paint colour, the portrait of the River Congo hanging over the sofa. I imagine putting you up next to it as our conversation permeates the walls. When we build each other up, it is an echo chamber.

In the master bedroom, a Hawaiian spider plant, which I named Patrice, sits by the windowsill. Long narrow leaves reveal a glossy sheen, champagne-coloured streaks running down the middle. I got it earlier this afternoon, before the concert, at a plant giveaway for Black and Indigenous folk held at Dundonald Park on Somerset. A feel-good initiative intended to take some of the edge off, accentuate the ‘pending’ in impending doom. My attempts at socializing ached with a kind of half-baked intimacy — a side-effect of social distancing. Like an itch that cannot be scratched. A freshly-scraped knee. Small talk escaped my mask-clad face, artless elbow bumps for handshakes. The sunshine, in its boisterous zeal, handed kisses out for free, while onlookers peered gingerly at us, berries of the bushes, skin-deep is the summer shade under poplar trees. Black Lives do Matter, they seemed to be thinking, but from a distance, of course, we mustn’t be too careful with being sick of these niggas.

Anyway, I named my new spider plant after Patrice Lumumba, to echo worn-out clichés about life being greener on the other side, contingent upon us sticking to familiar waters. The most ingenious plant root systems are not immune to the rotting of that same fruitful foliage. When it rains, it pours.

In the six months since being on tour, I’ve accumulated three additional plants — Patrice, a pothos called Paloma, and Langston the crassula. Crassula plants are a type of money tree; their bulbous leaves aggregate into bouquets of plump green tokens. They can go weeks without water, but that doesn’t mean they won’t lose a few leaves in waiting, that I won’t pick one out of the dirt and wonder about its shape on my tongue; crassulas are succulents, after all. Langston has a knack for words, like his namesake. He’s the one who suggested I should write to you about plants. Did you know they communicate with each other by releasing compounds into the air? Create root networks through the soil to warn one another about hungry aphids — an essential characteristic for collective survival. You see, a tight-lipped plant could end up with root rot, leaves browning at the tip, nose deep in the wrong pheromones, six feet beneath the moon.

Last October, after you and I broke up, and Fitness and I moved into the first floor of the three-storey duplex on Lisgar, I asked him about the prolificity of his green thumb.
“You get any since the pandemic started?”
He pointed to the collection of plants on the floor by the window. A baby snake plant, two golden barrel cacti, “Hayley (after Paramore), Aang, Groot.”
“Which one is your favourite, and why?”
“None,” he paused, “I love my babies equally.” He placed an incense stick in the holder by the tv and lit it. “Are you playing a gig on the night of my birthday?”
I checked my planner for November. At the time, because of COVID, me and a few other local musicians organized live-streamed showcases on a biweekly basis to make up for in-person concerts. “Nope.”
“Lovely,” he said, “we are doing a shroom trip.”

Fit’s birthday fell on a Wednesday. A day steeped in late autumnal misery, where puddles take too long to seep into the soil the night after it rains; naked tree branches grieve fallen leaves once crowing in the face of the wind, now laying faceless in discolored apathy. I was abruptly awakened to the reality of summer mourning. That it had been a year since the last time you and I spoke, the night we all went to dinner, and you got too drunk and kissed Fit in front of my parents. On the stovetop, a brown liquid simmered. Fit lowered the heat.

“Contrary to popular belief, mushrooms aren’t plants, but fungus just like yeast, molds and cheese. Psychedelic mushrooms attribute their hallucinogenic effect to the compound psilocybin. It gets broken down by the liver into psilocin and causes the onset of psychedelic effects within twenty minutes which lasts up to six hours. I like to grind the caps into a powder. Drinking it as a tea will make it absorb quicker in your gut. That, and it’s less irritating to my stomach.”

It looked like orange pekoe. The honey we added to it turned the bitterness to magic. I abruptly noticed the lack of curtains in front of our windows, the six o’clock sunset, dirt under my fingernails. Fitness turned up the music. Solange has quite the texture to her voice, I said, I like the way it tickles the inside of my skull. Do you see how my temporal lobes sway? As if they were caught in a tidal wave. It’s like my eardrums are wrapped in cellophane. Can you hear it? The copper-toned film. Light strokes coating my cortex.

Later that night, Fitness rolled a spliff as we sat on the couch.
“Tropic Thunder is our most popular strain at the ‘spencer. That’s the one with undertones of mango and papaya. Though it doesn’t compare to the stuff my grandmother grows back home — nothing like a little Congolese wizardry to get people lifted.”
“So, you admit it, you do practice witchcraft.”
He ignored me. A puff from the spliff. The smoke clouded Fit’s starter locs.
“Would you ever shave your head?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “without my hair, I would go blind.”

I’ll be starting on my album once I’m done with this tour. Wendy wants to get me in the studio come November. We’ve received several offers from record labels, but I’d like to stay on the road and build my fanbase for at least another year before I consider anything seriously. I’m selling out just about every tour stop these days, and seeing a profit. Once I record it, Wendy says “Passionfruit” will likely get added to popular Canadian R&B playlists on Spotify. I’m about to crack 50,000 monthly listeners. Wendy thinks I am squandering our momentum by not moving to Toronto, because it made things happen faster for up-and-coming singers managed by her colleagues. You remember Aminata, the gapped-toothed Senegalese girl? She moved to a newly built high-rise on Spadina last winter. One time she ran into a well-known social media influencer in the elevator — or maybe she did OnlyFans; Wendy has told me this story a few different ways — and now her EP has over a million streams. Shit, don’t ask me what’s to love about a voice like Chaka Khan if she swallowed a trumpet and wailed like a lost canary. You know what they say: comparison is the thief of joy, attachment, the killer of all promise. Maybe Wendy is right, and I am self-sabotaging.

But what if this tour, this level of recognition, fame, and stability, is as good as it gets? And what if, by signing a recording contract, I am embarking on the path to becoming the next sellout — sexy and seductive, soulful yet soulless? I’m not quite ready to leave this life, or Fitness, or you, behind.

I never planned to write back to you. I figured I would let bygones be bygones. Fitness maintains you did not deserve me calling your mother, when we ended, telling her you were halfway to Toronto with a strange man who gambled and gave you the occasional free coke. That whether I acted out of spite, concern, or any mixture of the two is neither here nor there. When I got your letter, (my mother brought it with her when she came to the show in Vancouver back in June), the validation that your actions were in fact eroding your conscience, the liberatory feeling of you living with the consequences (blame-spotted tears, you called them?), seemed far more appetizing than making amends. Your letter sat unopened until this morning. I had anticipated your remorse; never that you would romanticize it. Reading the lyrics to “Passionfruit” was like eating cobwebs for breakfast.

I stepped on stage tonight feeling like a hometown heroine. The prodigal daughter who returns after she’s acquired tone and has lived to experience texture, has transmuted them into woeful, melancholy ballads characterized as “cathartic” and “transgressive” by music critics. Every night, no matter the stage, my songs rise with the scent of untended wounds; a chorus of repentance answers. I began to understand things from all angles, how distance heals by shedding vivacity onto our wounds, by paving the streets with obligation.

When I had performed the last song on my setlist; something told me I should sing “Passionfruit.” We hadn’t rehearsed it with the band, so I quickly hummed the chorus so Ian could improvise on the guitar. It ended up feeling more intimate that way, without the drums or piano. Only my voice, the strumming of your pain. I watched the audience become a receptacle for your guilt, accidental conspirators in the erasure of your grievances.

When did you decide to give it to me, and how did Fitness respond, now that you two are together? I’m doing a radio interview with the CBC tomorrow, and when they ask me about it, I’ll make up a story about an unrequited love between some doe-eyed songstress and a heartthrob starving artist. I’ll give you credit as the lyricist, under your pseudonym, mention how you and I both attended the University of Ottawa, and, to display my sense of humour as Wendy suggested, how neither of us feature amongst its promising alumni. (At least not yet, and certainly not in any academic capacity).

Fitness tells me your novel is well underway. Shall I expect similarities between myself and a love interest? Perhaps a deuteragonist who falls in love with the main character until she learns he has a complicated history with a bosom friend! I am only teasing. We do not have to rehash our old shit, but let’s not pretend it doesn’t stink. In any case, I look forward to the day you fully embrace your talents, Kimya. Journalist, novelist-in-the-making, songwriter extraordinaire. I would love for you to sing background for me one day on tour.

Langston is unwell. He’s lost most of his leaves, so I thought maybe I wasn’t watering him enough. After a quick Google search, I realized I stupidly forgot to drill through the three little holes on the bottom of his pot. Give the water somewhere to drain instead of gathering at the base. It’s too early to tell if he’ll survive. Have you ever seen a crassula plant on the brink of death? The bare stems winnowed by a soft wind effervescent; the heat succumbing to her silent hue?

Yours Truly,
Kainene

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Kate Darmody on Unsplash