And your writer's block—it don't mean shit

Saudade for Sagres, sunsets, and simpler times.

I started this newsletter with the loose aim of writing about sports, music, and anything else that caught my attention from one week to the next. With that hastily-crafted origin story acting as a reluctant North Star, I stumbled from one discarded draft to another these past few months in an effort to conquer the most millennial of literary challenges: the difficult second post.

Two-and-a-half paragraphs were spent exploring a potentially insightful but ultimately tenuous link between Jack Charlton and Mariah Carey. This idea was aborted in favour of a deep-dive into the NBA’s return (and subsequent completion), which was in turn binned (after a measly 237 words) for an overly-ambitious analysis of Mayor Tommy Carcetti circa Season 3 of The Wire.

It was only after It’s A Hit came on my Spotify Repeat Rewind Playlist last week while perusing the frozen fish options in my local Portuguese supermarket that a new idea began to percolate—and I think I’m sharing this story because it reminded me of a time and place that now feels very familiar. Você fala Saudade?

Rilo Kiley reminds me of Lisbon. But only some of Rilo Kiley and definitely not all of Lisbon. Specifically, about seven of their songs and one particularly steep hill near Jardim do Alto de Santa Catarina in Bairro Alto. A steep hill where, in 2012, I would sit and drink cool Sagres (or Super Bock), and eat cheese sandwiches (or apples), and listen to the 25 minutes of Rilo Kiley music I had stored (is that what people say?) on my iPod.

Lisbon has many steep hills and Rilo Kiley have many great pop songs, but, for better or worse, this hodgepodge of their top hits and these specific inclines are so intertwined in my mind that no amount of new perspectives will untangle them.

The truth is that I struggle to discern very much from my brief time in Lisbon—it’s hard to accurately recollect where one day spent walking around Alfama ended and another one began. However, when I reflect back on the three-and-a-half months I lived there, Jenny Lewis, cold beer, and soaring sunsets are the three constants I can count on.

I have yet to return to Lisbon since I left eight years ago but having spoken to friends who have visited in the interim, I am led to believe that quite a lot has changed—more Macbook Pros and fewer malodorous fish places seems to be the most striking takeaway.

In the past few years, the city has established itself as one of the most visited capital cities in Europe and, prior to the C-word, was the poster-child for European capital cities that bootstrapped their way to the top tier of Instagram-inspired city break locations. But enough with the “I prefer their early stuff” predictability.

In 2012, youth unemployment in Portugal stood at 38% and over 100,000 people emigrated from the country that year. These figures combined with the general sense of social unrest meant that the chances of a recent Political Science graduate with next-to-no Portuguese, and very little professional experience, landing anything remotely resembling gainful employment were pretty slim. However, in many ways, the sheer absurdity of my decision was a form of liberation that allowed me to accept my lot and instead focus my attention elsewhere.

At that time, this elsewhere oscillated between a number of parks in the Graca and Bairro Alto neighbourhoods, and in lieu of a 9-5 to punctuate my day, these hikes became a much-needed distraction from what was going on in my internal and external worlds. More than that though, the freedom of these walks allowed me to explore an alien and deeply beautiful city with the peace of mind of a window shopper with no intention to buy.

Rilo Kiley soundtracked many of these hikes to the cheese sandwiches in the park. I don’t know why this is. Maybe it was that the emo-undertones of Portions for Foxes resonated acutely at that time, or perhaps the prescience of Breaking Up was an attempt by my subconscious to foreshadow the reason for my eventual exit from the Portuguese capital later that summer. Either way, the two things were tied together in perpetuity, like an unhappy married couple that stayed together for the Sagres.

I hadn’t thought of Lisbon or Rilo Kiley very much in recent years, and who knows, if it hadn’t been for 2020 maybe this link would have disappeared forever. But it hasn’t, and amidst the fear and uncertainty that we’re all currently going through, that’s surely a silver lining.