Coca-Cola
Fizzling on the tongue, sugary sweet and deliciously cool, there’s nothing quite like Coca-Cola on a hot day. Cracking open a bottle, Seb Emina takes a long, deep sip. The iconic carbonated soda has been adding flavour to our imaginations for decades. Tall glasses, dripping moisture, their caramel-coloured contents glistening with bubbles and cubes of ice, adorn billboards. Coke is freedom, love, sex, nostalgia, modernity – in essence, just about anything you want it to be. The poet Frank O’Hara built fantastical worlds out of the common commodity, writing lyrical verses on the joy of sharing a glass with his lover, while the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector ruminated that it is the drink of “Today… The Now.” For Seb, however, Coke conjures past memories. On a sunny afternoon in Paris, he sets off in search of the beverage. While on the hunt for a retro glass bottle – a rarity amongst the plastic and can varieties – he recollects a teenage crush, holidays to a Greek island and the youthful desire to get a taste of adulthood.
Introduction and outro voiced by Johnny Vivash. Editing and sound design by Tobias Withers. Soundscape by The God in Hackney. Artwork by Karel Martens. Produced by the Extra Extra team.
