saudade /saʊˈdɑːdə/
noun
- (especially with reference to songs or poetry) a feeling of longing, melancholy, or nostalgia that is supposedly characteristic of the portuguese or brazilian temperament.
‘where are you gonna be in ten years?’
a simple question with endless prospects. fresh-faced, jovial and full of youth, you dream up something seemingly ridiculous and grandiose as your answer, laughing as you do so. you have the world at your feet, a bright future ahead of you.
back then, you were were nothing, but had the potential to be anything. now, you’re something, inevitably heading towards nothing.
frank ocean reminisces often in his songwriting, usually accompanied with feelings of love and longing. golden years that left behind gilded memories. when life was navigated through series of firsts; when the world was still something to be marvelled at. naïve and teenage, you wore your heart on your sleeve. you lied to your parents about where you went at night yet you never intended anything without complete sincerity. you acted as if there was no repercussions, reckless and brave in your endeavours, deciding to deal with the after effects when they’d come. sometimes you escaped with a few cuts and bruises, guaranteed to heal eventually. others times you were cut so deep your heart bled, so much so that to this day you’re left with scarred tissue and are haunted by the ghosts of your past.
and yet, you wouldn’t have it any other way. despite your bruised heart, you choose to love again. even with the ghosts, you choose to let people in. because they feel like first times all over again. because they allow you to feel teenage again. because they make you feel alive, to dive headfirst into something and let yourself feel without restrictions.
to me, frank’s music sounds how nostalgia feels. beautiful, disembodied sounds accompanied by stories of love and loss. crescendos build on declared emotional confessions, mellow and quiet melodies play in the background as he remembers his daydream-like past. ‘blonde’ is like an aged photo album, each track like a collection of pictures that recall a certain memory, captured and immortalised so they can be relived again and again.
TRACK 2: IVY
‘i thought that i was dreaming when you said you love me
the start of nothing
i had no chance to prepare, i couldn’t see you coming
the start of nothing
i could hate you now
it’s quite alright to hate me now
when we both know that deep down
the feeling still deep down is good’
‘ivy’ describes one of frank’s past relationships that didn’t end up working out, yet he looks back on it fondly. it was ‘the start of nothing’, and didn’t seem to end of the best of terms, but he recalls the feeling of being young and in love, though buried in later feelings of bitterness and regret, as something ‘good’. frank sings, ‘if you could see my thoughts, you would see your face is/safe in my rental like an armoured truck back then’: as if the memory of his teenage lover’s face remain safely kept away in his mind like a priceless artefact, under tight security and appreciated like it’s the most precious thing in the world. he recalls his escapades with his lover, highlighting the spontaneity and recklessness of their relationship. their ability to go anywhere they wanted, do anything they desired because they could. he recalls their times together with yearning, because he ‘ain’t a kid no more’ and they’ll ‘never be those kids again’. growing up meant they could no longer be reckless, and could no longer be completely honest and vulnerable with each other. everything had changed too much for that. it all seems so youthful, so naïve when he remembers his past; he describes being in love and the sincerity of it yet he goes on to say, ‘i broke your heart last week/you’ll probably feel better by the weekend’, implying that the romance was short lived and therefore couldn’t have been real enough. it didn’t mean enough for the pain of heartbreak to last longer than a couple of days, and they’d be able to move on with their lives. yet here he is, thinking about it years later. telling his past lover; ‘i’ve been dreaming of you’.
TRACK 3: PINK + WHITE
‘just the same way you showed me
you showed me love
glory from above
regard, my dear
it’s all downhill from here’
‘pink + white’; colours associated with sweetness, romance and innocence, youth and purity. a fitting title for a song that describes the bliss of childhood, of growing up and encountering the world for the first time. frank was shown ‘love’ through the delight of being truly alive, through joy-filled summer days and playing in the aftermath of hurricanes. when everything was beautiful and untainted. those time felt like paradise, almost heavenly, like ‘glory from above’. he tells us ‘regard, my dear’, to appreciate such times while they’re still within our grasp because after this, after growing up, ‘it’s all downhill from here’. frank values youth so greatly, to the extent that he says if there was a chance to relive it, to go through it all over again, you’d ‘kneel down to the dry land’ and ‘kiss the earth that birthed you’. the carefree, utopian temperament of childhood is unparalleled and irreplaceable. a time when you could truly think to yourself, surrounded by the ones you love, ‘this is life’ and wish for immortality. for days like that to last forever.
TRACK 7: SELF CONTROL
‘now and then, you miss it, sounds make you cry
some nights, you dance with tears in your eyes
i came to visit, ’cause you see me like a UFO
that’s like never, ’cause i made you use your self control
and you made me lose my self control’
the track starts with a freestyle, reminiscent of makeshift beats on school desks surrounded by happy young boys as they wax poetic. when making music — making art — was considered to be as natural as breathing. ‘could we make it in? do we have time?’: the words of kids who stayed out later than they were supposed to because they were having too much fun. time is merciless and unreasonable, like a curse, intent on stealing away the moments we feel most alive. and we’ll them chase until our demise, desperately trying to recover them. ‘self-control’ describes love lost due to bad timing, a love that still lingers between lovers because they inspire a lack of restraint in each other. a loss of control. to feel without walls, to let yourself exist in a love without limits is scary, and yet it’s what all of us desire the most. an attraction you can lose yourself in. in a world where control is enforced in every aspect, allowing yourself to love without it is choosing complete exposure, honesty and vulnerability. and it’s the type of love that’s unforgettable. one that you can’t stay away from, one that you find yourself coming back to despite everything. so you ‘give up, just tonight’. just for one night you allow yourself to lose control, and be reminded of a love that feels like ‘summertime’.
TRACK 14: WHITE FERRARI
‘white ferrari, had a good time
(sweet sixteen, how was i supposed to know anything?)
i let you out at central
i didn’t care to state the plain
kept my mouth closed
we’re both so familiar’
home is familiarity. to find that in someone, a person who knows you inside and out, who understands you better than anyone; that’s what it feels like to belong. a secret language, where looks and gestures say more than anything. car rides in comfortable silence. ‘good times’. ‘white ferrari’ also equates familiarity to love, because that’s where home resides. shared memories of better times creates bonds that withstand the passing of time, like the red thread of fate. as time passes, some memories become irretrievable like ‘tattooed eyelids on a facelift’, but you’ll never forget the memories of home. you’ll always remember home. ‘white ferrari’ also talks about impermanence in relation to memory. frank says, ‘mind over matter is magic, i do magic’ telling us that he prefers to think, to remember over prioritising what’s material and temporary, because it’s ‘magic’ to him. because ‘if you think about it, it’ll be over in no time’ just like that car ride, time passes us by before we realise. the last verse divulges into the battle between our simultaneous feelings of greatness and insignificance. ‘i’m sure we’re taller in another dimension/you say we’re small and not worth the mention’: we are, compared to the scale and lifespan of the universe, miniscule, but at the same time feel like the beginning and end, the centre of it all. my favourite line reads, ‘you dream of walls that hold us in prison/it’s just a skull, least that’s what they call it’. that our minds, our spirits, ‘magic’, vast and eternal, have been confined to this physical and temporary state. frank encourages us that in our limited time, instead of focusing entirely on our future and what we can acquire, we should embrace our present because it’s the only thing we truly own. we should live while we can before our life passes us by, and we can’t get it back.
TRACK 17: FUTURA FREE
‘i used to work on my feet for seven dollars a hour
call my mama like, “mama
i ain’t making minimum wage, mama
i’m on, mama, i’m on
now i’m making 400, 600, 800k, mama
to stand on my feet, mama
play these songs, it’s therapy, mama
they paying me, mama
i should be paying them”
i should be paying y’all, honest to god’
it’s ‘futura free’ where frank expresses his gratitude to those who allowed him to pursue his dreams, but also confesses his fears in the light of his newfound fame. he consequently mentions iconic artists such as 2pac and selena quintanilla, who are well-known for passing away at a very young age, during the peak of their careers. while frank has been blessed with the opportunity to make a living with his art, he struggles with this new life of his: being idolised like a ‘god’, ‘the stress’ of constantly being in the public eye and even getting involved in public altercations. frank is now somebody, and whatever that seems to mean brings about daunting expectations of what he’s supposed to be. he reminds us, ‘i’m just a guy, i’m not a god’. that he’s just like the rest of us, mortal and flawed. it seems that despite his current popularity, he longs for, dreams about the times where he could reside in blissful anonymity. where the people around his regarded him as a peer and a friend. where he was allowed to make mistakes, to act on impulse rather than logic. where he could be himself without limitations. it’s in light of this that frank’s want to remember feels more like a need. an urgent desire to recreate his past.
a distorted audio tape completes ‘blonde’.
‘what’s your name?’
‘what’s your first memory?’
‘what’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever witnessed?’ ‘friendship and how it controls the world.’
a makeshift interview between friends, completely unstructured, full of laughter.
‘what three superpowers do you wish you had?’
‘yo, what’s the year 3000 going to look like?’
a discordance of sound; it’s difficult to make out the responses. it has that quality to it anyway, that je ne sais quoi that makes you feel wistful.
‘best thing about being me is… i got a nice set of friends, feel me? … a pretty clear mind, I feel like… sometimes…’
‘blonde’ is an auditory experience that just screams nostalgia, reeks of it. hopelessly sentimental and inherently romantic. an ode to a golden past. those times when you felt larger than life, where your greatest worry was if you were gonna make it home on time, before your parents realised you were out past curfew. you plug in your headphones and are transported to what feels like eternal summertime, bright sunny days with countless escapades and warm white nights under the stars. where, more often than anything, it felt like only you and your friends existed. a projection of his mind on tape, like sifting through an archive of precious memories. a movie reel of hazy aureate memories plays. the most beautiful moments in life.
tearful confessions, declarations of honesty: frank takes pages directly from his heart and displays them, in all their glory. he weaves his words with golden thread, creating a gleaming web as intricate as his own mind. together with him, we look back on the past like relics in a museum. we marvel at the remnants of our past selves, and appreciate how far we’ve come. and as we walk through each moment and remember how things were back then, feeling nostalgic and melancholic, we hope to ourselves we can make more memories like those. until one day our personal museums are decorated with the stories of our lives, and we can assure ourselves we lived well. with intent, and without regrets of what could’ve been.
