Listening to TMA as a Londoner is weird but not for the reasons you’d think. The victoria line being haunted by the buried? Plausible. A cursed book being in an oxfam? Plausible.
But the idea of Martin living alone in Stockwell? Now that is scary.
Listening to TMA as a Londoner is weird but not for the reasons you’d think. The victoria line being haunted by the buried? Plausible. A cursed book being in an oxfam? Plausible.
But the idea of Martin living alone in Stockwell? Now that is scary.
The appeal of Jon and Martin as a couple is similar to that of Basil Hallward and Dorian Gray… A soft, loving, creative, and their beloved scholar who’s driven into powerful evil by sheer circumstance and perhaps too much hubris…
The problem with couples like this is that one always seems to end up having to kill the other.
I just want to be stabbed by my lover in a desperate bid to save the world from my awful power whilst we both cry over the stupidity of my betrayal (that was inevitably going to happen and we both knew it) and beg the universe to let us wake up someplace better, safer, together! Is that too much to ask?
Don’t imagine Martin visiting Jon in hospital and gently brushing Jon’s hair whilst he talks about work, and what’s going on in his personal life. Don’t imagine Martin replacing wilted flowers, hanging fairy lights, and setting down two cups of tea (one of which he knows will remain untouched).
Don’t think about Martin befriending all the nurses at the hospital and telling them all about Jon and what he’s like when he’s up and about. Don’t imagine him doing an impression of Jon’s idea of a hilarious joke (the joke never made anyone laugh, but the impression did).
Don’t imagine Martin politely and subtly making sure Jon’s being well looked after, and getting the best course of treatment. Don’t think about the tenderness that comes from unconditional care and love with no expectations.
But most importantly, don’t think about Jon’s hair growing tangled, the nurses seeing less and less of Martin. Don’t imagine how dull the hospital room became without Martin’s thoughtful input. Don’t think about the old cup of tea still sitting on the bedside table (it’s behind a ‘get well soon’ card, only Martin would’ve noticed it).
It was Martin who succumbed to the lonely, but in a way it managed to take Jon too.
I like to think about Somewhere Else as much as the next tma listener, but more often I find myself mulling on its absence.
There’s something so morbidly beautiful about complete and total death. Two desperate lovers begging for something better and getting precisely nothing.
All they went through, everything they did being totally pointless. Two beautiful beings of hope and light fighting with all they have against all the odds only to be completely destroyed, gone.
Everything they did meant nothing, and yet still it meant so much. Years of life and love recorded on tapes with nobody left to listen to them. A fleeting existence marked solely by its bleak, sudden ending.
People talk about those they love being taken too soon, “before their time”, but Jon and Martin always had their clocks marked. Whether by otherworldly powers of fear, those that surrounded them, or even the trappings of the narrative, they were always supposed to die then and there. In each others arms, and no amount of effort or exertion could have changed a single thing.
But despite this awful suffocating end that they were always bound to they loved each other. They shared moments that belonged to them and they laughed and they talked about cows and stumbled through misunderstandings and they got to show each other just how much they were worth.
Sometimes, I think, the inevitability of the ending makes those moments all the more beautiful.
Jon is the knuckle cracking boyfriend and Martin is the “STOP CRACKING YOUR KNUCKLES” boyfriend.
The fact that Elias knew about Martin’s feelings for Jon drives me insane. Like how long did he know? Did Martin already have feelings before the archives and Elias just decided that that would work best? Did he choose to give Jon an assistant who would go to any and all lengths to protect him? Maybe. But the real question is, did he ever expect Jon to reciprocate?