FATE

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Finally reunited in Sydney after the long, hot, boring summer break spent in our respective country towns, my uni mates and I decided this was reason to celebrate. So we headed straight for the iconic Lansdowne Hotel for a few quiet beers. Those few quiet beers turned into quite a few quiet beers, which progressed into a few stiff vodkas. I could tell it was going to be one of those nights, so I gave the signal and we headed out the door. It was time to step things up a notch, and there was only one option: Sidebar.

Energised by that merry buzz that is familiar to many on a Friday night, we trotted off down the hill towards the city; singing, jesting and joking until we came within view of the bouncers; watching and waiting outside our targeted establishment. Like sleeper-cells triggered by their code word, we all snapped on our sober faces in record-time, prepared our I.D.'s and practiced our answers to the inevitable pass/fail question: “Just 2 beers tonight, mate". With a look of skepticism usually reserved for your mother when she knows you’re up to no good, the bouncer (who later that year was to ban all of us for 6 months), hesitantly let us in. The night was young...

Like kids on Christmas, we ran down the cider-soaked stairs to the club below; summoned by the nostalgic mix of R&B classics and the summer’s anthems. As expected, the place was rammed from one wall to the next with people from all corners of the world; packed like sardines into the dark, loud, sweaty, beautiful converted basement of the backpackers hostel above. Noting the sheer number of thirsty travellers before us, we opted for the 'divide and conquer’ strategy: some of us b-lined for the bar to order as many drinks as we could carry while the rest went to find a table. #teamwork

We threw back drink after drink and then, like clockwork, my toes began to tingle just before the stroke of midnight. The feeling spread throughout my body until I could no longer resist the urge and headed for the dance floor… but there was a problem. See, back in those days I was a crazy dancer, and required at least a 2 meter radius to make sure I didn't decapitate someone with a flailing limb. So with scarcely enough room to slut-drop, I settled for a spot beside the pool tables and commenced my warm-up procedure.

With the grace of a swan, I transitioned from one killer move to the next; entranced in a flawless state of flow, completely at one with the universe. Then as I approached the crescendo of my routine, immortality just seconds away, I was struck by the sense that someone was watching me. My focus was shattered and my moves ground to a halt. 

In a state of rage and utter disbelief, I scanned the club in search of the knave who had the nerve to interrupt me. As I stood and glared around the room, fists clenched and blood boiling, I was met with an unexpected sight: a girl. A very tanned girl. A very tanned girl with mousey brown hair and blue eyes to match the cheekiest grin I had ever seen. She was gorgeous, but that is not what rocked me. The thing that I couldn’t quite get my head around was that she appeared to be looking in my direction. This was virtually unheard of. I wasn’t fat or ugly or anything, but I had orthodontic braces at the time, so I had just become resigned to the fact that girls were off the cards for a year or two. 

Despite this the girl held her gaze, like someone aiming a double-barrel shotgun… at me? Surely not. I checked over my shoulder to make sure - nobody there. Not really knowing what to do, I pretended not to notice and went back to the bar. Girls were (and still are) very, very scary natural anomalies with which I had very little experience. This meant that I basically never attempted to court the fairer sex, but for some mysterious reason I just knew that if I let this girl walk away without even trying, I may well regret it for the rest of my life.

So I reached deep within, mustering all the courage I could find, and after rehearsing a hundred opening lines in my head, I went for it. I stood before her, adrenaline pumping through my veins, heart thumping in my chest, and before I could open my mouth she broke the ice with "Ello!”. Her cute British accent caught me off-guard. I was completely spellbound so I’ll never be exactly sure what I said, but I think I blurted out something like “Why aren't you dancing with me yet?”. 

Admittedly, my choice of words was a bit unconventional but they seemed to do the trick. She laughed and leaned in to respond: “Can you show me how?”. In that moment my nerves suddenly vanished, replaced by a strange sense of calm. I forgot about my friends, I forgot about the music, I forgot about dancing and I offered my name. She said hers was... 

I did my best to teach her to move like a maniac, but she had her own style and stopped to laugh at me every 5 seconds because she obviously (and with good reason) thought I was ridiculous. For some unknown reason, she hung around. We drank raspberry vodkas until our lips turned red, sang until we lost our voices, danced until our legs gave way and stumbled out onto the street. 

Still in completely uncharted waters, I then did what I thought one was supposed to do next: I tried desperately to persuade the girl to come back to my place. I pulled every trick in the book, but it didn’t matter what I said, she wasn’t having a bar of it - and I’m kind of glad because I’ve never really understood how people can place enough trust in someone they’ve only just met to follow them to somewhere they’ve never been, to do something so intimate. 

In all honestly, I didn’t care much for what “my place” would have likely entailed, I simply wanted to spend as much time with this girl as I could because I was convinced that when we said goodnight I’d never see her again. Embarrassingly, I divulged my fears to the British beauty. Again she chuckled, gave me her number with a kiss on the lips and walked away. 

* * *

My first song, titled ‘Fate’, is based on the events of that night. The verses attempt to capture the chronology, the things that were said, and felt, and thought. Not just by me, but by both parties, and possibly by anyone who has ever been hit by Cupid’s arrow in some random bar on some random night. 

At the time of writing I was trying to expand my songwriting subject matter to something other than girls, so the chorus deviates from the song’s central theme for me to share my views on a few things I thought were wrong with the world: our reliance on the internet, lies, broken promises and missed opportunities. 

For most of this song’s life, which would be getting close to 10 years, the last line of the chorus and the title was “this earth was always gonna quake”. But over time I began to think that the underlying message of that line was too cryptic, and it also had little relevance to the rest of the song. So I changed it to “You call it luck, I call it fate”. Which is a much better fit, if you ask me.

In both variations, I was basically trying to say “what will be, will be”. That even though things go wrong, and we ruminate on them as if we could have done differently, or things go right and we take credit for serendipity, in truth, we are never really in control of anything. Even when we think we have a tight grip of the reins, and make certain decisions “consciously”, we have no say over the subconscious processes used to arrive at the decision, or the degree to which our thoughts, words and actions are determined by our unique combination nature, nurture and experiences.

But rather than electing to look at life through nihilistic lenses, drown in despair or write it all off as mere “luck”, it feels like it is sometimes more appropriate to affix a different label to happenstance: fate. And for reasons that will become more apparent to you as I share the rest of this story over the next few months, you’d have a hard time convincing me that the night I met this girl was not one of those times.