"Where Is The Reason?" / Something About Love & Endurance

& Stevie Nicks

[Image: On YouTube, Stevie Nicks is getting her makeup done in 1981, seated in front of a window. She wears a white spaghetti-strapped tank top, knotted in the front. Her hair is curly and voluminous and there is a white lace bow tied to the side of her head. Her cheekbones are being carved out with heavy bronzer. I can’t fight it anymore, she begins a cappella before a backup singer joins to harmonize, one crossing the frame behind her. This is the one, Stevie says, pointing to the band as they begin to play offscreen, the demo of Wild Heart that sounds very different than the version that would later be recorded. This is the chorus, right, she says. The makeup artist stands between Stevie and the camera, blocking the left side of her face and torso until she’s too committed to the song to continue with her makeup. She takes one step back, but stays close, singing with her. Stevie shakes her head side to side and rocks her shoulders with her arms held loosely open, snapping her fingers to the rhythm. There’s a version of this video on YouTube that’s exactly ten hours and one minute and twenty eight seconds long—the short clip on a loop about 150 times. There was a period of my life, one summer in a computer lab in Ithaca, where I would let this video run as long as I was seated in that rolling desk chair, but I never reached ten hours. In the comments of the ten-hour version, someone writes When I’m arrogant and conceited and full of anger and drama, I run to this song. The camera tips up suddenly, then zooms in closer, zooms back out, and in again. Then slowly pulls all the way back and shows the backup singer in the lower right corner of the frame, she and Stevie spend the last few moments singing to each other.] 

[Image: On TikTok, a mid-thirties couple stands near the doors of a crowded moving subway car. They lean their heads against the pole, not speaking, staring into one another’s eyes. There’s almost a rhythm to the way they take turns blinking, as if the action is contagious, like a yawn. I catch it, too. The overlaid text reads wondering if Silver Springs is playing in their heads—referencing the iconic footage of Stevie Nicks staring daggers into Lindsey Buckingham onstage in May 1997, and he stares right back at her while they sing Silver Springs. Beneath the couple on the train, TikTok’s suggested search reads, 36 questions that lead to love list. When Phil and I had not yet been together for a month, I pulled up the list of “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love” on the NY Times website. We laid head-to-foot across the old brown couch that we would one day smash with hammers (it was the only way we could even begin to get it out of the apartment) and alternated answering each successive question first, as per the instructions. On Twitter someone asks how do people who "hate small talk" plan on being in sustained meaningful relationships? what are you gonna do? "hi honey i'm home. do you think freewill truly exists?" Phil and I ask each other How was work? and sometimes It was work is the full extent of the answer. And then we sit together on the couch and I put my legs over his lap and point to the TV asking What do I know that actor from? And he says I know him from [insert popular action movie] but you probably know him from [insert random TV guest appearance], and I say Ohhh right, and I bend my legs so I can shove my feet in the space between the couch cushion and Phil’s thighs. The last step of The 36 Questions is to gaze silently into each other’s eyes for four straight minutes. I’ve never known if TikTok’s suggested search bar means that this is what people have looked up immediately after watching something—if viewers saw the suggestion that this couple’s intense eye contact indicates the contemplation of the near-or-recent end of their relationship, but instead grasped onto the hope that, no, this could just be the beginning.]