I was down in the West Country (Bath, to be more precise) for my dad’s 80th when I got the call. It was someone I hadn’t expected to hear from; he was annoyed and sure I’d known more than I’d said. I had known, but it affected me too, and I was dealing with my own side of it. With the rough ride we’d had this year, I didn’t feel it was my place to say anything. I told him so, and the call left me unsettled.
I’m straight with people, and I don’t enjoy being asked to shade things, even gently. It always catches up with you. What stung most was that the conversation that needed to happen never did. A really good friend, someone I’d seen only days before, was close to it too, though she’s since told me she didn’t know enough to say anything. Nobody sat down and talked it through, so it landed on me anyway.
By early evening we’d talked some of it through, and apologies had come in. It wasn’t resolved, and I was still carrying the hurt, so I went for a run to clear my head.
Kankyo, the brilliant Tokyo shop that stocks our cassettes, sent me the album. Lifeflows is a collaboration between Aiko Takahashi, who lives between Italy and Slovenia, and Rhucle in Tokyo. They made it over a long stretch of time by sending recordings back and forth, each slowly rebuilding what the other had sent. It’s felt piano, field recordings and synths that shift like weather: two people at a distance, careful with what they handed over.
I headed out of the city towards Lansdown as the light began to go, six kilometres with Autumn just starting to kick in. The opening tracks asked for nothing, which helped, because I was still replaying the call. I was so deep in it that I ran straight into a bollard, and I have the bruise on my knee to show for it.
That was when I stopped replaying it and started listening.
A felt piano has a layer of felt between the hammer and the string, so every note arrives softened. It brings everything closer and quieter, with nothing loud enough to hide behind. The album holds that softness throughout, and that softness is what makes it fragile. Somewhere on the climb, it started doing the same to the day.
Relationships work a bit like that. The ones that matter most are the soft ones, built slowly from small exchanges, like how Aiko and Rhucle built this record by passing pieces back and forth across a long distance. That emotional resonance is what makes them so beautiful; it’s also what leaves them exposed. The press release talks about the fragility that sits beneath intimacy, and I think that’s why this hurt more than I expected. Something left unsaid between strangers barely registers. Between friends, it goes straight through.
Nobody meant any harm, and that was what came to me near the top of Lansdown. The bruise on my knee was carelessness in its smallest form: my head elsewhere for a split second, and nothing anyone intended. Carelessness rarely feels like much to the person doing it. A message not sent. A conversation left for another day. Small at one end, and much deeper at the other. I’d made the same call myself, staying quiet because it didn’t feel like my place, and from the other side it must have looked like apathy.
That’s the real lesson in all of this. None of it needed to blow up. A difficult conversation doesn’t get easier when you put it off or pass it along: each time it waits or changes hands, it drifts further from the facts, and by the time it arrives, it’s usually grown. I’m as guilty of it as anyone. The kind thing is to have the conversation yourself, early, while it’s still small.
There’s an older thread in it too. In therapy, I’ve spent time on a childhood feeling of being left out. My dad is a good man, and he carried plenty from his own childhood. Growing up, there were times when I wanted more from him than he knew how to give, and some of that stayed with me. None of it was meant, we’ve talked about it since, and we’re good now. Back in Bath for his birthday, I could see my hurt wasn’t only about this. An older feeling had been touched again. He gave us a scare recently and ended up in hospital, which made this birthday feel like something not to take for granted. He turned 80 that week, and I was glad to be there for it.
By “Correspondence”, which sounds like an unfinished letter, Bath was twinkling below me. The press release says the scattered fragments gradually begin to connect on that track, and I thought about how long that takes. Aiko and Rhucle made this record slowly, each rebuilding what the other sent, then waiting for a reply. A friendship that’s been knocked can be mended the same way, a little at a time, with room for the other person to answer. In my experience, the sooner you start, the less there is to rebuild.
What I wanted from all of this was simple: to talk about it early, before it had time to grow.
“Gratitude Gravitates” closes the record with a gentle pull, gathering back what has passed. The title stayed with me on the way down. Gratitude has its own gravity, and it draws you towards what’s good: a friend who apologised, a dad turning 80, a hill, some light left in the sky. It sits alongside the hurt without cancelling it.
My mum believed that fairies lived at the top of the garden, and in plenty of other wonderful things. I’m grateful for that, and I still draw a lot from her energy. When you lose someone, you can stew in it, and I did for a while, or you can take what was brilliant about them and carry it forward. I try to carry that fire and energy from my mum forward. I think the same goes for the smaller losses, the days when people you love let you down a little. I wasn’t there yet with this one, but I knew which way I wanted to go.
I came down the hill lighter than I went up…
A few days later I saw my friend in person, in a small group. I’d tried to get us talking beforehand, but she couldn’t find the time, so we arrived with it still sitting between us. When it came out, it was louder than I meant it to be, even though she’d already told me she didn’t have the full picture, and another close friend of ours got caught in the crossfire. I’m not proud of that. It was the whole point of this piece in miniature: the conversation we hadn’t managed to have found its way out anyway, at the wrong moment and in front of other people.
We talked properly afterwards, about how protective I can be of the people I care about, and it was easier than I’d expected. When it doesn’t seem to come back, it stings more than it should. It does come back.
That’s the other half of it. The things that get said, even clumsily, tend to settle. A friendship that gets knocked and then sorted out quickly often comes back stronger, because you both know it can take the weight. The ones that get quietly left are the ones that drift.
Some of this is me, coming up to fifty and taking stock of who I want around me, and how I want to be with them. I’ve got less patience than I used to for things left unsaid. She looks out for me in the same way, and always has. Like Aiko and Rhucle sending recordings back and forth, it only works when both sides answer.
Run to this one start to finish as the light goes, and let it soften whatever you’re carrying up the hill.
Happy 80th, Dad. I’m grateful for you.
Lifeflows 命の流れ by Aiko Takahashi & Rhucle is Out Now