Bond, broken

Grillin', reflecting on my circus days and an audio essay that will make you cry

Thank you for reading this issue of The Middle. I hope you enjoy this selection of my thoughts, feelings, etc. Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss a single sentence. Sian x

Thoughts

• Jessica Gunning winning the Emmy for her performance as Martha in Baby Reindeer is my dream come true.

• Red carpet fashion is a snooze fest lately. Can’t even bring myself to engage in a dash of fawning or snark except to ask why the wet hair looks are everywhere again?? Is it still sexy to have a bottle of Taft hair gel dumped over and combed through your hair? And now it’s being paired with a rag dress (see: Paris Hilton and Katy Perry)?? 

• Okay I have more to say and that it to ask why Taylor Swift (or her stylist) ruined her incredible Dior tartan with those hideous gloves.

• Have hit my elder millennial years because I’ve switched from protecting my books and cook books from dog-earing and notations at all costs to absolutely massacring them with my scrawl and folded pages. Or maybe it’s from lowering my expectations of shit staying ‘nice’ because I have a toddler.

• Need to save some money so I’m going to cancel half my streaming subscriptions but won’t tell my brothers so they don’t do the same in retaliation. 

• Got my grill on last week and cooked whole fish on the BBQ two nights in a row and quickly realised the allure of being a grill boss. So much uninterrupted time alone away from hungry family members (large and small) because of the Very Important Grilling I needed to do. Will be repeating frequently. 

Feelings

Bond, broken

I watch, mesmerised, at the performance in Cirque du Soleil’s Luzia show unfolding before me. I’m sitting in an uncomfortable plastic fold-down chair in the front section of the tent, the good seats, perfectly positioned to take in the acrobatic hand-to-hand routine unfolding. The performance, called an adagio, consists of a ‘flier’ (the one being thrown around) and a ‘base’ (the one doing the throwing). This is one of my favourite acts to watch because the physical prowess of the performers is undeniable. It’s not as showy as others, there is no high flying or insane swinging or shaking, perspiring strongman-ing going on here. It’s a dance between bodies and the limits of trust and power. 

The adagio is set as a dance between a woman and three other men in a bar. It echoes the patter of a tango, the tension brimming between slow, gliding movements pulled against a burst of power. The flier pirouettes, lands in the arms of one base, is thrust into a back flip, caught by another, dipped low and launched into the next move. The precision and grace is intoxicating.

Much of the crowd might not have seen anything like this before but I know intimately how this goes. I’ve done it before, albeit on a far more amateur scale, let’s be clear. I still gasp involuntarily with the rest of them when the flier is swung between two of the men, each brawny dude gripping a wrist and an ankle, throwing their colleague like a fucking shot-put, two metres across the stage where she is simply caught overhead by the third guy. Plucked out of the air as if the woman was but a frisbee sailing gracefully across a university green. It’s an explosive and well-practised trick, coinciding with a crescendo in the music.

I know the spectators love it for the strength of the men, effortlessly throwing and catching, their movements fluid and precise. But I love it for the flier, the impeccably timed folding of her body from parachute to cannonball, her limbs held tight to make the bases jobs easier. For the serenity on her face as she flies through the air, the trust she exudes in that moment, knowing she will be caught. 

It’s what this sort of performance is all about: trust and power. It’s the element that lies between all acts. The power in those small seconds of time is extreme, it’s potency a physical thing. A spectator can sense it but a performer tastes it. It forms a band, a tether, a bond.

My mind is thrown backwards and snares amongst my own memories of performing in similar routines. My body tingles with the flood of adrenaline as I watch them, my ribcage sawing in, out with my shallow breaths. I can feel the rush of the next trick, taste the salt of sweat and the tang of chalk in the air, the whisper of strands of loose hair across my cheek as strong, firm hands manoeuvre my body into a different position. 

I thought about a particular performance with a specific partner and the broken bond between us. How I walked out onto the stage, nervous and angry and betrayed and ashamed, and performed as if I trusted him unconditionally. Which I did, in a way. When my foot slipped from where it was meant to be around the side of his neck, he’d adjusted quickly, gripped my thigh harder, ensuring I didn’t fall on my face and making it look like a normal transition to the audience. 

I had smiled at the rapt crowd, eyes tightening in frustration that my body would chose that night, out of countless performances of that routine, to fuck something up with him of all people. It’s a small, stupid error that I shouldn’t have made and I mentally braced myself to be berated. For him to take the tattered threads of what remained between us and to suffocate me with them, to lash me with his criticism. But he picked up a different remnant, a jagged edge. It cut me like he intended when his honeyed voice whispered a compliment in my ear, an endearment, words of praise. I turned and our eyes met as we stood face-to-face to prepare the next manoeuvre and I frowned at him. He smirked and it enraged me, made me want to punch him in the face in front of all the guests, my colleagues, my boss. 

He knew what he was doing, lashing at me with a different cord, manipulating my performance in a new way. The anger made me better, my body moving through the routine with more power and grace. After we finished, I stood off-stage, panting through the emotion and I hated myself for it. For letting him pull at the ragged edges of that broken between us, for responding to it. 

I’m living in parallel in these short minutes, completely absorbed by the adagio before me while I move through my own in my head. The final trick is thrown, the music fades and I keep staring at the flier’s face. I already know she isn’t as stupid as I was, that she tastes the power of the performance caressing her and doesn’t feel strangled by it. She is held, kept safe in that liminal space between catch and release. She feels only freedom where I tasted ruin.

Etc

LISTEN - Glass by Shameless Media

This audio essay by Michelle Andrews from Shameless Media is so raw and beautiful and heart wrenching in its honesty. Michelle tells the story, in three episodes, of her experience finding out she had lost an ovary and the resulting medical fuckery of exploratory tests, reckoning with her fertility and her mental health. This covers so much ground, it’s actually harder to sum up than I thought. It feels a lot like an episode of This American Life with really good production, but the real winner is the storytelling and writing. This is such a real description of the female experience and I think it will resonate with so many, maybe even provide some comfort from knowing their thoughts and experiences align. I was scrubbing my kitchen, crying, as I listened to it and I want to listen again. It’s that good. 

COOK - Rao’s Meatballs with Marinara Sauce

You know when you decide to cook something and you think you should make more so you can freeze extra and you’re already going to all the effort anyway so it won’t take that much longer? I was that idiot when I decided to double the meatball recipe which resulted in roughly three hours of shallow frying (wtf) but it will pay off in forty million sighs of happiness. This recipe was gifted to me from an old colleague and when he told me it was the best meatball recipe, I was very skeptical but six years later, I’m still making it. The recipe comes from the famous Rao’s restaurant in New York (feels like the American equivalent of Lucia’s) and the only thing I omit is the salted pork in the sauce - it doesn’t need it. Make a single batch to save your lower back and your sanity.

BUY - The Clementine Bag by The Horse

My lovely friend

Brittney Rigby

mentioned this bag in her newsletter

Top Shelf by Brittney Rigby

last week and it reminded me that I really should share how good it is. The designers at The Horse (remember the watches?) have nailed this design and the colours, and they keep selling out and going on pre-order with every release. The Clementine is a dupe of the Loewe puzzle bag ($5,300 for the small one), is 100% leather and is so well made. I bought it in desperation to leave my baby-bag-tote era behind me and it fits all my essentials plus a few snacks for my son. I love that there is a long strap to throw it over my shoulder that I can whip off to take out to dinner unlike the ridiculous micro bags of our time (don’t get me started). The hardest part is choosing a colour, they all slap.

Next week: Medium, for a big chat about a controversial book