I Know Just What You're Thinking...

A story about divorce and karaoke.

Jun 09, 2023

Hello friends! This week’s Friday story comes from our old friend Nick Nessling-Jessup. Nick is something of a veteran of OneTrackMinds, having told stories for us at Omeara London, Wilton’s Music Hall and The Conduit. Nick’s first OneTrackMinds story was featured in our first anthology of stories, published a year ago this week by Unbound, and, in Adam’s absence (he’s swimming 7.5miles across the Lake District!), Nick’s going to be my co-host when we bring the show to Riverside Studios for the Bitesize Festival on Saturday July 15th and Sunday July 16th.

Tickets are only £10, which is a nailed on bargain in anyone’s book! Get yours now, before they sell out.

Tickets to Bitesize Festival

Over to Nick…

As soon as the metal from the microphone touches the palm of my hand, I realise just how much I am sweating.

You maybe wouldn’t describe it as profusely but it is definitely noticeable. Note for future me: drinking alcohol in humid climates results in a full body sweat. My calves? Really? Yes — I have been drinking, but I would argue not enough. I am not drunk enough to feel any of the benefits. I really wish I had a cosy booze blanket surrounding me, offering me some comfort this far out of my comfort zone.

I look up at Sarah, beaming a pearly white smile in my direction. “You’re next, Mick.”

Yes, my name is Nick and not Mick, but I don’t annunciate that well so I won’t bother correcting her. We only met a couple of hours ago and I don’t want to make this more awkward than it already is for me.

For context, I am on a work trip. I met Sarah and the rest of the group I am with a few hours ago, at a “networking cocktail mixer” — less mixologists and tiny umbrellas, more room temperature white wine and dewy cheese — and now I am in a karaoke bar in the centre of Montreal. Just how I have ended up here is a bit of a mystery; my mind too foggy to recall the events of the day thanks to the heady mix of jet lag and social anxiety with a side of aforementioned wine. And did I mention I was sweating? Well, now it’s getting pretty damn profuse.

I can’t sing. I can barely get through a shower without the water turning ice cold in response to my catastrophic crooning. I wish I could sing. I really do love to. Shower be damned. Singing with total abandon is an activity that makes me feel invincible and free.

My favourite place to sing is when I am in the car. For many years I have worked as a TV Camera Operator. While the work itself is varied one thing about the job isn’t — the relentless journeys up and down the motorways of the UK. Often times in the dead of night. In order to keep myself awake on these long drives I blast a playlist of mid 2000s boy band classics and sing at the top of my lungs. I usually hit the M6 Toll Road just as All Or Nothing by O-Town mixes into Freak Me by Another Level, and all seems right with the world. The fact that I can’t hit a single note all drive is fine. There’s no one around to hear me. Right now, though, in Montreal, Sarah and a room full of strangers are very much able to hear me. The glass in the door of our booth does not look strong enough to contain my voice.

People who try to reassure me that “anyone can sing” once they have been taught how to are wrong. I was once cast in a production of the musical Guys And Dolls, in one of the few non-singing parts. I was also understudy to the guy in the lead role, and I’m still haunted by conversations about me lip-syncing to a pre-recorded track should I have to fill in. I would have been the proverbial Milli Vanilli of school theatre.

When I was younger, I absolutely loved the spotlight. I couldn’t get enough of it. I would rush into it, bask in its radiant glow. A lack of talent never held me back from trying anything. As I moved through my teens and into my twenties something in my psyche shifted. A nagging voice of negativity was now all I knew for an internal monologue. I had started to see my feelings as a burden on other people; kidding myself that this was just a side effect of getting older. In reality bottling it up was taking a toll on me. I had become a self-conscious nervous wreck whose desperate fear of failure had left me unwilling to try new things.

Nick (Nirvana shirt) with some of his supportive and most patient school friends.

For me, anxiety is akin to hyper vigilance, but instead of being like Jason Bourne and able to quickly assess every viable exit from a given space in order to make a quick escape, my super power is to work out, almost instantly, every possible way a scenario can go wrong.

It was only recently I felt equipped to talk about this with anyone. And when I first started talking about the feelings I was experiencing, it would frustrate me that I could not make sense of them or solve them immediately. Even now, I find it difficult to open up to friends about the ways in which my mental health can affect me. Largely because I feel powerless to “fix” it. To fix me.

Just how broken am I?

I was first labelled as broken in a classroom at the age of ten. My parents divorce had only been finalised about six months prior, and I was used as a teaching aid to provide an example as coming from a “broken home”. I was used to being picked out in crowds — largely down to the fact that my huge head sticks out like a… well, like a huge head — but this was the first time it had happened so negatively. In a weird way, I suddenly felt very aware of my mortality.

Divorce is not an easy process for anyone. My experience of it was largely sheltered by the efforts of my older siblings who almost certainly bore the brunt of it. Nevertheless, I struggled to deal with it. I ran the full gamut of emotions, desperately searched for a root cause that could be mended or a scape goat to blame. There was nothing that could be done though. I don’t know what conversations my parents had when they were bringing their relationship to an end, but I know they were certain there divorce was the only option.

I hid between my headphones. Using music as an escape from my reality, I could travel to new worlds and experience life through someone else’s point of view. It was as though my Walkman was surgically attached to my hip, my headphones welded onto my ears. I would cycle through the idyllic pastoral landscapes around where I grew up and imagine myself performing in music videos or on stage in front of thousands of people.

I taught myself how to dance by watching music videos and replicating the moves. I was a ball of kinetic energy. Emotions that I could not deal with, or find the words to express properly were finding a way out of me in some form, and more often than not, it was musical.

One album I leant on more than any other at the time was No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom, which featured their hit single Don’t Speak - a song which, I believe, is impervious to overplaying. Moreover, a song that, more than any other, has helped me grow up.

Like a lot of good songs, its meaning revealed itself to me over time. Gwen Stefani, as has been said, is the pop queen of messy emotions, the patron saint of tears, and, for me at least, she resides on a pedestal. With her voice for company, I channeled my energy and emotions into my most powerfully imagined stadium performances.

I still know the album so well I’m able to hum the intro to the next song once the previous one has finished. When I hear the outro to Just A Girl, I immediately start bopping to Happy Now with expectant glee.

The power of the album - and in particular Don’t Speak - lies in the complex emotional journey it took me on. It is a hugely personal journey of course, but over the years, as my interaction with the album has shifted from cassette to CD to miniDisc to mp3 and then to vinyl, I came to accept my parents’ divorce. I garnered an understanding that they were human beings with complex human emotions. The types of people Gwen sings about at the top of her lungs, filled with all of the emotion of the human experience.

Of course, their divorce has framed my life in a certain way. It has caused me to question relationships as they become more serious. It has caused me moments of heightened anxiety. And it forced me to grow up quicker than I would have wanted. Truthfully though, it has afforded me the healthiest possible version of a relationship that I could have with both of them. There is a frankness and honesty I have with my parents, which I am not sure I would have had if we had grown up in a more conventional manner.

Whenever any cracks appeared in my home life, music was the plaster which helped to reseal them. My mum and dad saw in me a love of music they both had earlier in their lives. My friends, who waited so patiently for me to confide in them, became the fresh paint which gave my world its colour back. My home wasn’t broken, and nor was I. It just needed some help finishing off those bloody DIY projects that are sometimes too much to do on your own. End of metaphor.

Back in Montreal, I punch in the four digit code for my song. As I stand up to take centre stage, I whisper to a man I am not certain is called Colin, “I’m absolutely shitting myself, Colin”. He pulls me in for a big bear hug and tells me, “We’ve got your back, dude”.

The opening strums of the guitar move through the speakers and I know I am in a safe space.

As I roar through the “La La Las” near the end of the song, the rest of the room join me for the “Hush, Hush Darlings” and I am embraced from all sides by a group of people who were once strangers and who are now friends.

Don’t Speak not only taught me to understand heartbreak and empathy for my parents and what they were going through. It also showed me the power of expressing your feelings. Music doesn’t just function as a means of escape. It also brings people together, and that is what I believe helps us better understand our place in the world.

Nick on his wedding day surrounded by the friends who have listened to him sing and watched him dance through it all.

Of course, there is no substitute for talking about whatever you might be going through. But if the emotions are too raw, or you don’t understand them yourself, then write it down, dance it out, or sing at the top of your lungs. Whatever outlet you use, it all helps. Sometimes the simple act of admitting that you are scared will lead to the sweaty embrace of someone who is exactly the person you need support from in that moment.

To this day, I return to this song and sing it with total abandon, whether I need to stay awake while driving or whether I am a making myself a lasagne that could feed four after a particularly difficult time.

This song is my entry point to understanding myself and processing my feelings. Then, I speak to someone.

Listen on Apple Music.

Don't Speak

Written by Gwen Stefani and Eric Stefani

Performed by No Doubt

Taken from the album Tragic Kingdom, released on Interscope in 1996.

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