Centered in the dark room, nine screens spotlighted the five of us melting into each other with the ease of choreography drilled through thirteen years of friendship: it felt natural, thoughtless—the weird entanglement of our arms and bodies. It was intrinsic. 

Within each screen of the nine screens was a musician, seated in separate rooms within one mansion, singing the same song.

Once again I fall into  

My feminine ways   

At five, you don’t think you’ll meet your lifelong friends on the elementary school playground. Even stepping through Sather Gate, the prospect of lifelong friends lingers as a desperate hope my peers grovel to manifest. Yet, in between jump ropes and games of tag, algebra and senior prom, the girls I befriended as a child grew into the women I called my best friends. 

Once again I fall into  

My feminine ways  

Last August, we dropped Olivia off at the airport, the first one of us to go. Standing in the airport terminal, we clung to each other with bitter jabs of tears and hiccups hitched in our throats. 

It was all so nonsensical: we were sending each other off to learn great things when the greatest things of all stood clinging to one another in the San Francisco International Airport.

Once again I fall into  

My feminine ways   

But that was just it. Despite the mansion that isolated the nine individuals from one another, it was the faith that they all sang the same song that reminded me most of the girls that couldn’t let go in the airport; that leaned on me now. 

It is winter break now and we are together, listening to nine people play nine different instruments in nine different rooms, all singing one song. 

There are stars exploding around you 

And there is nothing (nothing, nothing) nothing you can do