Other Voices, Other Rooms: "My Love Mine All Mine"
On solitude, good bones, and haunted houses; and a response to Mitski
When I initially invited folks for this project, I told them they could engage with the song/s of their choice any way they wanted, and our next guest writer—essayist, poet, Brooklyn philosopher, and my beloved friend Ashley Ranich—took that prompt and ran with it, sending back a memoir piece that genuinely thrilled me upon my first read: An exercise in radical self-reckoning by way of a literary chamber piece, ensconced in an indirect but layered conversation with Mitski’s gorgeous, alt-ubiquitous “My Love Mine All Mine”.
Every time I read Ashley’s writing, I learn something about myself. That alone makes me excited that I get to share this with y’all.
Here’s the full playlist of the 100 Best Songs of the 2020s (So Far).
In case you missed any of our prior newsletters for this series so far:
Top 10 (all by me): “TLC Cagematch” / “Casual” | “American Teenager” / “People, I’ve been sad” | “Silk Chiffon” / “anything” | “Hard Drive” / “Somewhere Near Marseilles” | “It’s Not Just Me, It’s Everybody” / “Welcome to My Island”
Guests: “Starburned and Unkissed” by Gian Balangue | 3 K-Pop Songs by Justin Nava | “Huwag Muna Tayong Umuwi” / “The Loneliest Time” by Emil Hofileña | “My Love Mine All Mine” by Ashley Ranich | “Billions” by Niki Colet | “party 4 u” / “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” by Currie McKinley
'Cause my love is mine, all mine
I love mine, mine, mine
Nothing in the world belongs to me
But my love, mine, all mine
Nothing in the world is mine for free
But my love…
Mine, all mine. This apartment I was denied five times over for. Mine, all mine. That gray Italian leather couch bought on Facebook Marketplace and shipped in from a Jersey suburb. Mine, all mine. The post modern CB2 coffee table delivered to my doorstep in mint condition costing only a tenth of its retail value. Mine, all mine. The print we bought one snowy Montreal morning, now framed in red tortoiseshell plastic. Mine, all mine.
This solid oak dining table I write from. The one he bought me before it even had a resting place. Stateless. Stained in dreams of domestic delusion, in some near or distant future. Mine, all mine.
Sometimes the crown molding collapses into itself, squinting to get a clearer picture of the manic woman pacing the full length of her apartment. The only time someone’s ever muttered, “It’s too fucking big,” in these five boroughs. Take it. It’s a chaser. A Jolly Rancher to cut the bitterness of your self-prescribed codeine. It’ll fuck your shit up sideways, but it’s all in service of you finally getting free. My love is mine, all mine. The wainscoting betrays its rigidity just to crane its neck for a front-row showing of her intentional undoing of sorts. Even the ceiling sacrifices bits of its plaster ego just to sneak a peek at the potential ruin. Nothing in the world belongs to me. Gingerly they fall, flakes of the year’s first snow. They linger. Then they settle. Within the crevices created from strands of her jet black hair, they’re made safe there.
And in prayer-like ceremony, she repeats: Mine, all, mine.
Couples straight and white as the picket fences that line perimeters of houses like this one, set in a different zip code and propositioned for the highest bidder, bow their heads to hollow ears. “Goooood bones,” they say. It’s a statement. It’s a promise. The unspoken purity ring of the thirty-somethings of middle America. Meant to denote structural sturdiness, it’s a nod to a foundation strong enough to withstand weathering conditions of either natural or manufactured causes.
This garden apartment of mine has good bones. Original flooring, hand-crafted molding. “The rent’s stupid cheap,” they say. But the real value’s in the tenants. Because they’re more like family. Distant cousins, maybe, but it feels like family all the same. I’ve never broken a bone of my own, but recently I’ve been praying that these good bones may finally falter under the weight of my solitude. And maybe then the space will be made new again.
Because sometimes, when the walls start to sprout wallpaper so marigold it resembles dehydrated piss, I’m reminded of the woman who so persistently fought to secure it in the first place. Jobless, steeped in grief, and as dead-as-her-unscattered-mother’s-ashes-sober—she ran game with that broker. Co-signer? Denied. Three months upfront? Denied. Six months upfront? Denied. Nine months upfront? Denied, dejected, and annoyed. And then, a full year upfront. A persistent claim: “But sir, this is my apartment.” I felt it in my gut. This apartment was meant to be mine. Or, rather, I meant for it to be ours. Caudled in the cover of the idyllic Mount Desert Island foliage, the particles of my mother’s untimely death found refuge by settling in my lungs. Within its walls, I relearned the feeling of its pull—steady, sure. So I held onto it, sat in it. Ignoring all conventional wisdom, I followed it down. And after all of that, here this apartment sits.
Mine… all mine.
Three and a half years after black ink penetrated paper on both this apartment’s lease and the domestic partnership certificate—health insurance, power of attorney—I cut the rope. We went “no contact”, but his name’s still on the lease. And until the end of the enrollment period, I’m still on his insurance. Landlords don’t pay much mind to symbolism, and the taxes on my policy aren’t worth the hell of navigating America’s fucked-up healthcare system. I’ve never questioned the sever. Still, I’m learning to either place, claim, pick, abandon, or love the slices it created. How to reconcile this now three-times-over-rearranged, queen-bed-in-the-living-room, books-leaning-lazily-on-the-trash-picked-desk, cigarettes-set-free-on-the-kitchen-island apartment that’s all… mine, mine, mine.
But then, the radiators spit a different hiss in response to my 3AM theatrics. Their snarls egg me on. They remind me sharply: Mine, all mine. As my raccoon hours crawl to a close, this brief window of clarity reveals untidy truths. I throw out all contemporary markers of independence. Smite this shittily specific brand of NYC hyper-individualism. Roll bloodshot eyes at every coupled and cohabitating friend who had taken too much hypocritical pleasure in their, “Roommates? Are you kidding? You’re just going to love living alone, you just need to work on it.” Between each acrylic tap against illuminated aluminosilicate screen, I tell every TikTok faux-feminist school of thought leader to, respectfully, get fucked.
Through mangled mane and hollowed cheeks, there’s self-reclamation in this unpopular declaration: This apartment was never meant to be just mine, all mine. Ten coats of paint can’t muffle the wall’s whispers. Its once-calcified canines, now brittle-cracked cavities. Modern dentistry explains that when one tooth is lost, everything shifts in its absence. Now, so must I. Solitude wasn’t the sole success, it was also the cost. Neither solitary confinement in haunted halls nor prescribed isolation masquerading as teletherapy equals empowerment.
The lease will still bear my name. But tonight, I asked 1,672 of my closest Instagram friends if they knew anyone looking to sublet.
“Beautiful, big apartment. Good bones!”
Exorcism by sublease. Partly furnished. Rent’s up. This apartment was never mine for free. But the profit from its markup?
Mine, all mine.
Ashley Ranich is a sister, daughter, Problem Child, brat, emergency contact, almost-economist, ex-tech, entertainment, non-profit, fine arts, culture, NBA, corporate marketer, twice-made orphan, Korean-American adoptee writing, ranting, and plotting in Brooklyn, NY. Her writing has only ever been published via Myspace bulletins, texts, burner emails, and anonymous Craigslist listings. She has a website, Instagram, and (forgive her) newly-resurrected Twitter.
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