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life goes on
Funnily enough, when Nico had made the decision to name his record after his fiancee, nobody had broached the possibility of them breaking up. Maybe they'd been similarly convinced that he and Mava would last forever, or maybe they just didn't want to be the messenger with a gunshot wound, but either way Nico was unjustly annoyed that they hadn't foreseen the day in April 2019 when quits were called. Since they'd broken up – a phrase it took a long time to believe he was using as part of a lived reality – he’d been all around the world singing songs that were happy and fun and dedicated to a future that was no longer his. He’d always talked about how hard it must be for musicians who had to turn out and do that and he’d been brutally right. But it wasn’t just the singing of the happy songs. Steeling himself for journalists asking the obvious question never got easier – it was always a punch to the gut every time they did – and his answers were automatic, mechanical, devoid of playfulness and wit. “Everything seemed so perfect, where did it all go wrong?” “It didn't,” Nico wanted to say. “It did in the sense that we're not together anymore, but it was more that... everything else went too right.” He didn’t say that though. He didn’t say anything, just shrugged and re-routed the conversation back to how much he loved TRNSMT festival and wasn't the weather great for the day, amazing for Scotland, hey, but no offence to Scotland. But that was what it came down to, wasn't it? While they were floating in the realm of decent success, controllable success, they'd been perfect. Respective number one albums and Oscar nominations had thrown their careers into the stratosphere, and suddenly it wasn't as easy to control. They never saw each other. Birthdays and anniversaries were pushed around to the closest days they could be together. The bulk of their communication became a quick text in the morning - her morning, his evening - and all of those things culminated in the end. A blur of a heavy, upsetting, tear-ridden conversation that saw Mava turn to Los Angeles, and Nico return to England, where he had to stand on stage singing about holding a girl he would likely never hold again. Zev didn't help. They'd always had a relationship outside of Nico being Mava's boyfriend, but somehow, now that Nico was no longer having anything to do with Mava, having her uncle planning his entire life was a difficult concept to wrap his head around. The other man was nothing but professional, and Nico would never have asked him to step away, not when it was clear that being part of the music industry with tours and releases and gigs every night was some manifestation of Zev's dream, but sometimes sentences would catch in their throats and the words left unsaid would swoop around in his head all night. He finished up the Staying at Mava’s tour in September 2019 with two nights headlining at the Royal Albert Hall, of all places. (As he confirmed the two performances with the tour manager, the ghost of a conversation swept through him. It was 2016. They were talking about touring. He’d said he had one venue he’d absolutely love to play, the Royal Albert Hall. “That's somewhere I’d like to play at least once. That's the big one, I don't really know any other venues I'd like like that.” She’d said: “That kind of venue is really suited for your style of music, it's intimate and got good acoustics.” She'd been right. He hadn't been able to stop thinking that for every minute of every performance. It was his perfect fucking venue.) It perhaps came as no surprise, then, that as he took off his earpiece and watched the equipment get loaded into a van, he brought it all crashing down in the dressing room at the venue he’d most wanted to reach. “I think I’m going to pause here.” People told him he was crazy. People told him he was just over-emotional, he just needed a few weeks off and he’d be itching to get back. Zoe said he should go and get Mava back, and Ashley said he was just feeling sorry for himself, and Ben called him a first-class arsehole, and Lydia sighed and said she didn’t know where it had all gone wrong. But Zev knew. Zev clapped him on the back and thanked him for the ride, walking into a job with Nico’s long-time collaborator Cam Blackwood to keep him on the music scene for a little while longer. And Nico bought a ticket to Perth, Australia, where he bought a house by the beach and let the world fall to pieces around him. And boy, did it. Less than four months after arriving, there were bushfires across the country he’d sought refuge in, Harry and Meghan were escaping from the royal family, the first impeachment trial began and, you know, something called Covid. Sometimes, if he let himself, he thought about the fact that he and Mava had fallen apart because they didn’t have time for each other anymore, and here the entire world was all of a sudden, with nothing but time. It stretched out in front of him, but didn’t scare him; Nico had chosen to press pause months before a pandemic brought him to a standstill. If he hadn’t been comfortable with the possibility of never performing again, he wouldn’t have even been so far from his old life in the first place. He wasn’t mourning the idea of never taking to the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury again – but he sure wanted somebody to be able to. He’d wanted to see an end his own misery, not the end to everyone else’s joy. Perhaps that was why, when Glastonbury got in touch in 2021 about being part of their live-stream, Nico didn’t say no. He strung them along for a while – Ashley’s FaceTime calls got more and more irate as she hissed “I don’t mind if you tell them no, Nico, you just need to tell them SOMETHING” – but eventually agreed to a one-song appearance. And nothing from Mava’s album. He’d take it back to the very beginning, with Budapest, and he’d come to Worthy Farm to do it. Was it strange being back? Yes. Did he regret it instantly? Funnily enough... no. Nico Sykes spent more than a year off the radar. He soaked up the sun, burnt his skin, adopted a weird twang when he spoke, attempted to surf but discovered he had none of the necessary grace. In therapy – therapy! For Nico Sykes! The famous anti-talker! – he grieved a love lost, discarding the hopes and dreams for the future that he’d held so close for so many years but taking the lessons. Mava had taught him to open up; that people didn’t always leave you, even when they demonstrably did; that there was always some good left behind, even amongst the hurt. The wit came back. He stopped feeling sorry for himself. It wasn’t a punch to the gut every time a memory floated back in – more like a short, sharp pinch. Life went on. Life goes on. Whether that life involves music, or fame, or England, or romance for one Nicholas Sykes – well, it takes a lifetime to build a life, doesn't it? With a suitcase in your hand - it don't matter now |