A New Case of You

I cannot tell you how much I despise celebrating New Years’. It’s the banality of annually celebrating a date that has no defined cultural meaning. Coupled with how new years always feels like an emergency  like – oh shit panic, the year is nearly up oh shit. An emergency that is causing more people than you knew existed in your city to come out of their lives, offices and homes and crush themselves shoulder to shoulder to celebrate the annulment of a figurative measure of time.

Part of my contempt for the holiday is muddled with the first time I’d celebrated it outside. I was 15, mono-browed and awkward. My parents were in another room, leaving me unattended. The karaoke rodeo at the Kinabalu Yacht Club sent me a folded note:

“Howdy, apa nama?”

He looked about 20ish. This was back in my pubescence when I could barely tell the difference between a high school senior and a senior citizen. I was young, everyone past puberty was older than me and therefore an adult so really, I had no idea how old he was. An older man was coming onto me. Later in the night, a balding, pot-bellied senior would horrify me by telling me I was “sexy”.

That was the first time in my life that anyone had ever hit on me. I had unwillingly lost my flirt virginity and the karaoke man said “howdy”. Standing on an empty dance floor, with fairy lights glinting off my thick spectacles – I felt like naked cattle on a dude ranch, just trying to shake his gaze off.

Almost 10 years later and having powered through more – let’s say – grown up experiences. That moment is still as dull, creepy and wildly exaggerated as I’d remembered.

After I got home that night I wrote myself a contract and signed it at the bottom,

“I, Nadira Ilana, hereby swear to never celebrate New Years ever again.

sincerely,
Nadira Ilana“

And sealed it in a book that only I can find. I’ve broken that oath since and regretted it every time.

Every time I make an attempt it’s a disappointment. I’ll never get it. What is it about the New Year that is so special? Another excuse to party, get stuck in traffic jams and be suffocated in a club full of drunk people who are feeling like they are at the peak of their philosophical selves? Oh hell no.

Why is the new year a time to reflect when I reflect all the time? My life could start and end at any time. No ticking clock, torn calendar date, over-enthusiastic countdown nor party cracker changes the fact that time moves forward constantly. Nostalgia is just the feeling of being left behind. Let’s party together because no one wants to get left behind alone.

Those instances throughout the year that I am grateful for are worth celebrating however they cannot be summed by a year. A lifetime is perhaps more fitting but not a year. I could make promises to myself as to what I am to do in 2012 but I can’t predict the future except that there will be curve balls. How am I to know what will take place next year when I can barely recall what happened this year?

I can’t find a date for when I met such-and-such, took a stage, wrote a film or went to Berlin. I merely remember these things in anecdotes, not numbers. At best, in pictures.

I cannot count the amount of times we cut things off. I don’t even remember our anniversary. I don’t think we’ll ever know when things really ended or began and suddenly I’m meant to be measuring a chunk of my life based on a calendar I barely ever noticed. There were days would melt into each other. Events would cut across midnight and time zones. For all I know I might have had 342 days out of the year.

So why am I governed by a calendar cutting me off from me, from you, from the auld lang syne. That calendar that was only ever going to leave. I could ring in the new one, but I know it’s not going to stay, so I’d like to proceed with my life as per normal and leave the rara for when I really do have something to cheer about.

It’s just that this is one holiday that seems to have no regard for the fact that some things will always stay the same.

But in case you, the reader, finds any pleasure in celebrating this holiday than that is well too. I will leave you with a James Blake cover of my favourite Joni Mitchell song.

With that, be filled with good food, wine and music. Have a pleasant evening and a good year, if you like.

“You’re in my blood like holy wine,
your taste so bitter and so sweet
I could drink a case of you

And I would still be on my feet,
I will still be on my feet.”

Tags: James Blake, Joni Mitchell, New Year