In a bar, far from home, Ashleigh Young finds a touchstone in Elton John
I'm in a bar in Toronto, jet-lagged and feeling sorry for myself, when Elton John's The Bitch Is Back starts playing. It is a truly demented song – that hectic guitar riff, the dorky trumpets and, worst of all, the saxophone solo, which to me sounds like a loud man yabbering away on a long-haul flight. But somehow The Bitch Is Back makes me feel a bit better.
I am in Toronto for the writers' festival and, although I'm grateful to have the opportunity to come to a big city and maybe sell a copy of my book, for the past couple of days I have been full of nerves because I hate travelling by myself. At airports you have to carry all your stuff into the loo because if you leave it behind it will look like a bomb. As a solo traveller you get selected for random scanning all the time. On the plane you have no one to fall asleep on. Everything is more annoying and confusing.
In the bar I am reading James Brown's book of poems, Favourite Monsters. One of my favourite poems in Favourite Monsters is Loneliness. It describes a scene in which, one autumn afternoon, mid-period Elvis turns up on a university campus and walks across the quad, whistling. "There was a palpable happiness, for once you have seen Elvis, you are never alone."
The song changes to The One. It has a lot of synth and the lyrics have wild horses running around and people with fire flying from their hands. I remember leaping around the living room to this song, and feel even better. I thought I'd left Elton John behind long ago but he's still there.