A joy that has stuck with me for as long as I can remember is the feeling when you see your suitcases arrive at baggage claim after a flight. In an almost always state of delirium, you see the tag, the shade, the definitive thing along the conveyor belt that makes your suitcase yours and tells you it has arrived, just as you have, to your destination. When I was small my Dido tied strips of frayed yellow rope around the top handle of each of our suitcases so we would be able to find them faster and truth be told, they are always the first thing I can see, brightly dangling through the trenches of people waiting at baggage claim. These strips of rope brought me an overwhelming sense of relief I had when my 3 suitcases - one a soft red, one a dusty black with slow, sticky wheels, and one, my own, a hardshell blue - arrived with me in London on this day 3 years ago.
On a day to day basis I am asked many questions about this:
Why did you move here?
How much stuff did you bring with you?
Which do you prefer, London or New York?
Surely not London?
But New York has so much more, doesn’t it?
Can you do a New York accent? Can you say CAWFEE?
You probably can’t do an English accent can you?
Why do you want to stay?
It can feel, at times, like I’ve never stepped off the conveyor belt when I answer these questions, in whatever configuration. I, too, feel tied to my suitcases with frayed yellow rope, looking for ways to justify my being here. The short answer is I did a degree and I knew quickly I wanted to stay, that something felt right, the energy and vitality of playing and opportunities to play seemed like a no-brainer. But how does one even attempt to sum up these 3 years of my life in the vivid detail that they live in my mind, how do I tell them what do they not know, the deep knowing and understanding of how we find ourselves within a place?
When I moved here, to my tiny student accommodation in Shepherd’s Bush, each of my suitcases were bursting at the seams. I unpacked all my belongings in 2 hours - clothes, books, sheet music - and deliriously ate an almond croissant that was larger than my head from a coffee shop down the road. This was my first day in London.
My mom didn’t want me to forget anything, stuffing extra wires and cables and face masks and umbrellas and medications I could only get in the US into every nook and cranny of my luggage - Mucinex, Claritin, Lactaid - even an American hairdryer. Everything since then has been lost or used, or replenished in some cases, like the running prescription on my inhalers, minus 2 phone chargers, the rest forgotten in pubs or on buses or the USBs splitting from the end of the cable. The hairdryer exploded at the beginning of September, a few days after me moving in, smoking up my room. I remember the subtle panic I had of not knowing which store to go to to buy one, unfamiliar with my surroundings, but even moreso with the brands around me.
In the weeks of settling in, starting my Masters, I felt calm. I went to museums and concerts, practiced and met with friends of friends. I felt a resurgence of youth as this was the first time I was truly on my own. Maybe it was the haze of being in an entirely unfamiliar place, not knowing what was ahead except for me in this moment in this place, but I felt something within me that said, ‘home’. And not with an overwhelming, in-your-face level of arrogance, but a warm invitation to explore what could lie here in London.
I got used to the idea of Big Tesco and Sainsbury Local and M&S Food Hall. Meal deals to this day blow my mind as a concept, though remind me of 16-hour days during my Masters, eating while walking to the next rehearsal. I tried all the flavours of Cadbury and Walker’s crisps. The map of London in my head has expanded in detail, in colour, the routes I’ve crossed many times over etched deeply, littered with the places I’ve gone to. Origin Coffee, just south of Tate Modern, Cafe Oto and Voodoo Rays, the dirt trails along Hammersmith Bridge, Foyles on Charing Cross Road near my old work, Monmouth Coffee, Howarth of London, puttering along the canals in East London, Magaza, The Shacklewell Arms. I know, almost perfectly, how to get where I’m going, what part of the Overground to sit on if I am getting off at High & I (the back), what bus to take to get to London Bridge (the 149). My head turns seamlessly, almost forgetting that I previously lived for 22 years walking, driving, crossing the street on the other side of the road. I told myself London ‘wasn’t that grey’ but have come to realise that it is, indeed, that grey.
I made friends within the first few weeks of my Masters, bonding over long days and sitting on the steps of the Albert Hall. I discovered experimental music for the first time. The heavens opened up for me. I learned to use x’s at the end of my messages and abbreviate things: tube stations, turns of phrase, appy spizzo, Viccy line, tacky c, menty b. I started saying ‘aubergine’ instead of ‘eggplant’, at first on purpose to not be teased but it has now become second nature. I danced around my kitchen, in disbelief of this new, all-encompassing freedom, and then my feet would fall to the ground, reminding me that I spent way too much money on pints the night before after a clarinet class. I moved around thinking that I would do my Masters and ‘make it’, attached to the idea of figuring it all out in one-felt swoop, proving to my family on the other side of the pond that I could ‘do it’ - do ‘this’, ‘this’ being be something.
This is to say that my time has also come with my own museum of failures, reminiscent of a collage I made in 1st grade within a shoebox showcasing all the things I had learned about myself over the year. I passed out on the tube within a month of living here and had to go to A&E. I, without a doubt, always go the wrong way after going to the Barbican Cinema with my boyfriend Sidney, turning left instead of right, and always thinking I’ve got it right this time. I will probably never go back to Stratford. I became aware of my loudness as a New Yorker and made every effort to be quiet. I got rejected for so many things I applied for - funding bodies, young artists schemes, orchestral auditions. I made mistakes, hurting some of the people I care about most in the world. I cut off my relationship with my dad and rebuilt my relationship with playing within a matter of weeks. I felt lost, and heartbroken, and grieved in ways I never imagined I would. But I sat, and I listened. I found space within myself. I read aloud to myself in the bath in Highgate. I wanted to throw away the idea of ‘making it’ and skip to a point in my life where I played, and read, and wrote, and cooked for my friends, and called my mom, and felt like myself. And then I did just that.
I have moved twice since living here, the contents of my suitcases slowing pouring out to also fill boxes and crates. Since then I have allowed myself to acquire cookware and vases, a fold-up desk and a tent, new clothing, to build a home. Because London is beyond a place where I did my Masters but its own home, a place that has held me so vulnerably and asked what the way forward is, a part of me that cannot be stripped a way, a choice. A choice in how I have chosen my friends, family, those who have supported me in one of the most tumultuous years of my life, yet one of the best.
This is not ‘London-specific’ - the idea of finding yourself within a place, finding yourself and accepting them wholly, developing a learning and loving relationship with oneself, but for me, it is. My other homes have other shadows that I have lived within, both comfortably and uncomfortably. London, though has its faults, was and is a sense of light in a grey place, a place I have allowed myself the chance to be decisive, releasing myself from the ticking time bomb I used to hold myself under to prove that I was doing ‘the thing’, existing without its weight, as my own person. ‘Making it’ - I have already made it, and I will continue to make it.
I knew within about two weeks of being here that I wanted to stay, a similar intuition that I had when I started playing clarinet, a quiet knowing, a calm that brings you this love letter to my 3 years in London. I remember walking around Kensington Palace after being here a full week, challenging myself to walk with slow, heavy steps to take it all in. It was a sunny week even though I wore jeans and a thin sweater from Uniqlo. But I knew. I crossed the path into Hyde Park and stopped for a moment and knew, this was where I needed to be right now, the sun beating down my neck. I sometimes look back to her, Michelle on August 29th, 2021, wearing an Old Navy denim jacket and terrified beyond words. I look back with gleeful disbelief that I have built such a fruitful life, with immense gratitude for all that is to come, and all that is coming. To London, to everyone, I love you, here’s to many more.
So beautiful! Love you ❤️