Back in December 2022, Hua Hsu published a beautiful zine called Listening To Music With Friends as part of a fundraiser for the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Hua has long been one of my favorite writers — his ear is exceptional and his observations sharp yet tender. I knew I was going to love his memoir Stay True, but I didn’t know it would be such a potent reminder of the point of writing about music, or even writing at all. Listening To Music With Friends, which was the working title of Hua’s book, is a firefly filled bottle of a zine, full of shining memories that highlight that reminder a hundred times over. I was lucky to be one of the contributors. This is what I shared. A big thank you to Hua for the ask and the reminder.
Ashley was a ballet dancer, all height and limbs and grace until he opened his mouth and his thick Leeds accent fell out. We met in the club — drawn to one another’s enthusiasm for dancing and appetite for excess — and for several years club was all we did. There’s a pair of photos of us, posed as bookends, in which we wear the same black beanie and flat expression. It was our morning-after-the-night-before look, when our usual exuberance had been knocked out of us by hours of ecstatic dancing and barely any sleep. As we nursed aches and pains with newsagent snacks, makeup creeping down our faces, we brought ourselves back to life with MTV Base.
One such blurry morning in early 2002, we were sharing a blanket on the sofa when Brandy delivered a monumental wake-up call. Ashley swung around to gape at me. I was his mirror. The warped sounds seeping out of the TV screen reminded my skin of last night’s sweat. His shoulders started jerking and he screwed up his face at the funk of it all. I immediately knew “What About Us?” was our song.
Listening with Ash amplified everything. In the club, he always tilted his head when the DJ started to tease one of his favorites, just daring them to drop it. Heaven forbid anyone disturb him in that moment. That one time our darling Matt touched his shoulder in the run up to a breakdown, he exploded in frustration. It was funny but I understood. Sometimes the music reaches so deep inside that every tendon syncs with its electricity, turning emotion into effortless motion. That’s what it felt like every time we danced.
Ruth Saxelby 