The scraps that bind us

January, February 2025 (+ Sam Fender)

I am driving on a busy highway, fleeing from a workshop I’ve just facilitated at the Gold Coast. On an overpass between two petrol stations, there’s a single pedestrian: a man clad in orange high-vis, playing a bagpipe. I can’t hear it from the car, but he occupies my mind for the rest of the drive home.

How ingenious and lonely - for where else do you practice an instrument like the bagpipe, apart from as many humans as you can imagine? And also what tragedy, that the gentleman has no rolling, empty hills to play his instrument. Easier instead to stroll along vast concrete bridges, gazing out into peak hour traffic, playing the soundtrack that once heralded invaders across a lush, green landscape, now gone.

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Sam Fender is a musician out of Northern England. He’s big and about to get bigger. I stumbled onto his hit Seventeen Going Under and thought it was a song I’d already heard, but couldn’t place the decade. Late 80’s? 90’s?

There’s something about Fender that I can’t articulate. He’s nostalgic and new: part Bruce Springsteen, part late George Harrison, part beat poet. There’s also something deeply heartbreaking in his voice.

Seventeen Going Under is a rock tune with a dark underbelly: an anthem of a man looking back on his younger self and realising how sad he was as a boy.

I’ve been listening to his latest single, People Watching, on repeat. It’s set in a similar universe to Seventeen Going Under. The bright rhythm guitar could fool you into thinking it was a simple pop song. It’s a story about someone returning home to farewell a dying relative.

I can’t watch the music video (starring beautiful Andrew Scott, it’s at the end of this e-mail) without becoming emotional for a reason I can’t explain.

A YouTube comment sums it all up beautifully: Sam’s music says: everything’s fucked. but it’ll all b ok.

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I am in line for a coffee with a young girl and her mother in front of me. The girl would be the same age as my daughters. She is pale, and her head is almost bald save for a few thin strands. On the back of her scalp is a long, scarlet scar, no wider than a fingernail.

I order my coffee and stand and wait. I have headphones in and am surprised when a stranger speaks to me - so uncommon in my suburban shopping mall. He is a tall gentleman with a thick Nigerian accent, about my age.

Did you see that girl? With cancer? Sad, isn’t it?

Yeah, I reply, makes you think.

I’m just….

He’s speechless. He holds out his arm. His hair is standing up.

Yeah, I know, I say. I’ve got two girls about that age.

Me too.

Turns out we have daughters the same age.

I don’t know what I’d do…

He is so sincere in his inability to finish the sentence.

I nod. Yes.

Our conversation widens. We are both between jobs, it turns out. I am managing to thread a few bits and pieces from free-lancing, but it’s hard. I say I’m in the Arts. He says he’s driving for Uber, which he doesn’t like, but he’s an engineer, and the market has a massive over-saturation. Loads of unemployed engineers about.

I’m stunned. In high school, engineering was the safest choice imaginable. How have I ended up more employed than this gentleman? It seems ridiculous.

His coffee is called. And then mine. And I could walk further with him but I didn’t. We had reached a natural conclusion and so I accepted it. But we stood for a minute, two full grown men. His name was Daniel. I should’ve asked his number. Or even just opened my arms and hugged him.

Yes, it is hard. It’s all fucked up. But we are lucky, and we will be okay.