Saying Goodbye

Learning how and when to end

I'm terrible at goodbyes. To start, I barely even register the slow change of a good thing - a relationship, a project, an event - into something stale. Only later does the realisation that it may be ossifying, becoming sticky and sour register in my mind. But even then making the call to put it to an end - to consciously put a friendship aside, to give up on a piece of work that is no longer useful - requires giving up of all the emotional energy you invested in it. There is doubt, a fear of missing out in what could happen if things change for the better again. And then of course there is a feeling of failure, the lost venture. If something isn’t salvageable in some form, then what was it for. And in many cases goodbyes don’t just require owning up to failure to oneself, they mean admitting it to others. And thereby causing disappointment, or anger in others. There is something awkward and troubling to me in the positive act of letting something go. Goodbyes are difficult to notice, to time, to enact and to take care of.

Last Goodbye - Jeff Buckley

All the drama of the goodbye is contained in this 4 minute track. The pain of realising a love is dead, the awkward and paradoxical last consummation of an ending friendship, the tragic longing to overcome the problems and the doubt that arises: if something is ending, was it truly the relationship that I thought it was to begin with?

Don’t Think Twice, it’s alright - Bob Dylan

There is wonderful tension in this song. On the one hand, there’s the effort to underplay the feelings of the moment - don’t think twice about it, it’s alright, don’t give it a second thought. The relationship in which they didn’t talk to each other, or call out each other’s names doesn’t seem to be so great as to warrant mourning - ‘goodbye is too good a word’. On the other, there is an undercurrent of feeling: of wasted precious time, of doubt and wondering walking and blame: ‘you’re the reason’. The protagonist’s efforts at saving face by a displaying a mature detachment claiming the moral high ground hang precariously in the balance.

The End - The Doors

The Doors mark the moment at the precipice. Imagining the unknown to come - limitless and free and desperate and alone. A goodbye is a liminal and maddening point of passage - and while one might choose it for oneself, a goodbye sets in motion an array of uncontrollable effects - it’s a self-banishment, into a wilderness. The end means upturning the conventions that were propping us up - unleashing an unsavoury oedipal rage unsettling and frightening but perhaps the hurt will set you free and an escape from the soft lies.

It Must Change - ANHONI

We and the world we inhabit are made up of our relationships and projects. Endings collapse our sense of separation and individuality from the world because we are made up of it. And this makes endings so scary and so sad. Ordinary ways of thinking are disrupted - the cities in our heads fall. We’re not getting out of here because a goodbye will transform us into something else.

Change - Big Thief

Change is of course the natural thing. The sense of permanence is the artificial. This is the bleak comfort of Big Thief. Change is wind, it’s water, it’s skin and leaves. Would you want things to last forever? This comfort is an uneasy and doubtful one, but a comfort nonetheless.