that time fake ABBA brought me closer to god

editorial note - I’m currently killing 10 hrs in the john f kennedy airport because I’m terminally stupid and missed a 7 am flight by a few minutes. good reminder that airports are the one place where anxiety is actually correct and helpful. I wrote this piece for a workshop a couple weeks ago and remembered I’d never published it - sending it out now in the hope of a small W amid one of my more L-laden days in recent memory. as usual, I think it could be better, but I also know sitting on it isn’t doing me much good.

if there’s a sandwich you particularly like in this airport lmk. if you see a typo keep your mouth shut. and learn from my mistakes, PLEASE.

are you scared yet? you should be

I should have known that I would leave ABBA Voyage in tears. 

The odds were stacked against me: I’d had two £10 tequila sodas, four hours of shitty plane sleep, and six weeks since the most painful breakup of my life. 

I’d booked a Europe trip with my friends for two purposes: to mend my broken heart (I am a white woman, after all) and to give my ex time to move out of our Los Angeles apartment. We’d slid from “life partners” to “can’t look at each other” within a span of weeks, and he’d left after a particularly tense viewing of Showgirls in late May. I’d spent the summer alone, in a state of sticky, non-air-conditioned suspension. The lease was almost up, and the plan was to spend two weeks in Europe drinking, dancing and running out the clock. I was haunted by what I’d find upon return: the formerly-full bookshelves leaning into each other like crooked teeth, the furniture gone, the gallery wall reduced to nail holes and sunburned stucco — everywhere, cluttered-up proof that I’d need to start again. 

ABBA Voyage was supposed to protect me from these thoughts through sheer absurdity. Some context: the show is a 90-minute “live music experience” that runs seven times a week in a purpose-built iron dome in East London. It features an IMAX-size screen with animated, de-aged versions of the band’s two couples: Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus, and Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, running through a 20-song gauntlet. These “ABBAtars” (yes, I’m serious) look just like their real-life counterparts circa 1979, just before both of their relationships fell apart, pushing the group into a decades-long hiatus. There’s a few dozen virtual costume changes, a human band backing up the original vocals and two fake jumbotrons adding close-ups of their conspicuously poreless faces. 

It’s a joyride through the uncanny valley, somewhere between the Eras Tour movie and whatever happens in the Vegas Sphere. It wasn’t the most artistic option for evening entertainment, but in my fragile state, it seemed like the safest. It suggested a version of joy so choreographed and airless that I had no chance of inserting my all-too-human sense of loss. I had a sick sense of curiosity about the trashy-cyborg vibe of the whole thing, and it was ABBA, for god’s sake — a musical entity with little pearls of pop music that seemed to have emerged fully formed from the Stockholm harbor, so shiny and impenetrable that the listener could almost forget the irritation at their center. There was no way I could be reminded of my pain at the fake ABBA show, right?

Wrong. 

After a string of name-brand tracks complete with dancing lasers and glowing stage props, the ABBAtars moved into the deeper cuts, and I began to get worried. The costumes shifted from disco-chic space suits to solemn winter coats, and we were treated to increasing close-ups of ABBAtar Agnetha and ABBAtar Anni-Frid’s pouting faces. Home movies showed up — always a bad sign. This was clearly the “feel your feelings” part of the program. I maintained my ironic distance for a time, watching the bouncing singalong ball move under their weapons-grade curtain bangs. But then, a plaintive flute intro started, and a set of lyrics came at me like a programmed missile: 

“Walking through this empty house.” Oh god. 

“Tears in my eyes.” My stomach spiraled toward the floor. 

“This is where the story ends.” Eyes started itching. 

“This is goodbye.” Oh no. The slight friction between the two voices shimmered and sharpened, slicing straight into my sleep-deprived, barely-mended heart. There was no use in resisting. I was putty in the ABBAtars’ nonexistent hands.

As the chorus of “Knowing Me, Knowing You” continued, I started bawling. Loudly. A blonde mother-daughter pair turned around to make sure there wasn’t a medical emergency. When they saw my face all crumpled and purple, they seemed to read exactly what was going on. Heartbreak, much like pop music, is instantly legible, which is why they pair so well with each other. The women pulled me forward, holding my shoulders as my fear poured out in a single, awful stream. They mumble-shouted something kind and British at me, wrapped me in a cheap feather boa — a gift I never would have accepted under normal circumstances — and released me back into the crowd. 

My sniffles subsided when the ABBAtars returned in white boots and bell-bottoms. “Feel your feelings” time was clearly over, and they wanted us to party again. I felt the salt on my cheeks start to crackle up and dry. Was I smiling? As neon beads descended from the ceiling and the finale began, my two unnamed saviors twisted around to make sure I hadn’t melted into a puddle. I saluted them with the boa, dropping a shower of polyester feathers. I was the dancing queen, I was young and sweet, I was only…25. But the point still stands. 

When the house lights went up and the crowd filed toward the Tube, my friends glanced at me nervously, afraid that my night — and by extension, the trip ahead — was ruined. But I felt weightless. I kept the boa on as we sped toward our godawful hostel in Paddington, looking sillier and sillier as the stops ticked by, smiling still. 

actual photo post-voyage

I’d underestimated ABBA — at my peril — and I will never, ever, make that mistake again. Healing can come from the strangest places. And even ABBAtars, under the right circumstances, can force us toward our own disgusting, spectacular humanity.