Recently Prince’s song ‘1999’ played on the radio. Memories of New Year’s Eve in 1999 came flooding back to me. At the party I was at (I remember a shady club in a basement in Amsterdam) everyone was still afraid of a worldwide failure of computer systems when the magical year 1999 would turn into the even more magical sounding 2000. When that drama didn’t happen, they danced. we raise our hands to Prince’s words: Life is just a party / and parties weren’t meant to last. A truth of two parts, I thought when I heard the song again. The last part – that like parties, life is finite – I am aware of that. I’m getting older, and so are the people around me, and that leads to illness and sometimes death. I see friends bury their parents and we realize that we are lucky to have had them with us for a relatively long time, but looking at the endless sadness on their faces, it seems to me that the loss does not hurt any less.
That first part of wisdom – that life is a party – I have to remind myself of that every now and then. 2024 was a horrible year all things considered. Not for me personally – in that area I have received countless blessings this year, from an award for my latest book, to romantic love that revealed itself to me in ways I never thought possible. But outside the walls of my home, outside the soft embrace of my own skin, the world seemed to fall apart. Entire societies became trapped in a cult of sublime stupidity, in which all forms of progress (scientific, human rights, general civilization) are in danger of being reversed. The world has become a circus, and we are the audience, powerlessly condemned to variations of amazement and horror. I couldn’t have imagined this in 1999.
It must have something to do with growing older, but for me there is a lot of support from the music and films associated with the turn of the century. Maybe that’s why I watched it again yesterday Love Actually. One of the characters in the film says that you have to be honest at Christmas. I thought about how I wanted to run someone over the day before. It was a man on an electric bicycle who scolded me because he thought I should have given him the right of way. To emphasize his words, he kicked the side of my car and then cycled away.
It’s almost Christmas, so I’ll be honest: that kick to my car ignited an anger in me that I haven’t felt often. Before I knew it, I was giving chase, with the sincere intention of running him off his bike. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t shot into a side street. Afterwards I was amazed at the lust for murder that had taken possession of me after a very insignificant reason.
Love Actually starts and ends in the lobby of an airport. The voice-over states that the world is a terrible place, but anyone who looks around a lobby will recognize the emotion with which people embrace each other there. It is an affection of which we are all capable. While watching, I realized that when it comes to love, we are especially good at small things. To feel that love for the other in the larger world – that takes a lot of practice. Before 2025, I wish us all the patience to keep practicing. Over and over again, if necessary until we drop.
Karin Amatmoekrim is a writer and man of letters. She writes a column here every other week.