for the past three weeks i’ve had the same recurring dream. in it, i’m either looking off a building balcony that faces spadina—with pure shock and awe on my face—watching snowflakes fall on the ground in the middle of the summer. the patches were small enough to be transparent, ice collecting on the perimeter of each mound. people surrounded the buildings wearing coats and scarves, somehow all in a trance, not scared, certainly not alarmed. regardless, i brushed it off the first time, annoyingly reciting to my bf an article i found online that reassures me it represents “blessings soon to be called upon” and “a much needed clean slate” i’ve been manifesting for, all while navigating a busy street market across town.
i was scrolling through reels (as one does at 6:51 pm on a monday) and my mood was sadly soured by the takes of white people talking about, of course, hip hop in a podcast studio. ignoring the obvious micro-aggressions from everyone in room, it speaks to, i think, a conversation that we’ve been having for decades at this point. said conversation has been characterized by the golden age fallacy (i.e., the belief that a specific period in the past is objectively better than the present), with many perpetually looking backward, averting their gaze on the art being created in the present. for anything that does illicit some response—teetering between neutrality and small bouts of un-enthusiasm—it’s more of a fluke than an indication that good art is out there for us to enjoy.
and if the world ends tomorrow surrounded by the burning. despite it all. i want to try. i want to look for something more, waiting for something to break in my favor. if i sit with the desire for too long i can feel a cry bubbling up. i’m not asking for much. not fame nor fortune. but to teach. why do i always lag behind? is it the past sticking to me? will i ever be sterilized?
my brother said he didn’t become a person until he was 16. everything else prior was a blur or forgotten outright. how could he ever remember me as a child? or the apartment by lindsay park? or the walk from humboldt to graham? i swear i was there. i don’t say i’m from The South but my personality crystallized in the repeatable suburbs of florida. my friends drove me everywhere. i survived without a license by unapologetically imposing my presence on my peers to get a ride home. i was always a passenger lending an ear. i remember the muted teal pacifica with the peeling leather seats that sucked in the humid heat, a victim to my neurotic inspection on the way back, somewhere. i befriended the viscosity the florida warmth bestowed upon me. i was always dewey with sweat. it never bothered me, really. the landmarks we considered holy were parking lots, stoplights, and boba shops within shopping centers. it’s trite but obvious but true! the backdrops to arguments were mundane. i look out to no skyline or bustling street. it’s a cul-de-sac i’ve walked 100 times. the prospect of leaving was more enticing than our daily lives. i can’t wait to go. my life will start once i leave this place. why would i ever come back here? i feel trapped; a prolonged prison sentence despite good behavior. when will i be released? the streets have not changed. the routes i organized in my mind still run the same. time has not moved. middle class hell indeed. no wonder no one ever wanted to stay. was i even supposed to be there in the first place? i became a person there.
this is a musical answer to the question: are men still yearning?
i’m most drawn to the songwriting where love spells tells his partner no, i’ll take the blame for their eventual downfall, even if no intimate details can be shared with curious bystanders. he even guards their relationship with pride telling us to worry about ourselves if we push our inquires too far. the music video paints this picture of pushing and pulling away from a relationship that shouldn’t work, but with sheer, white-knuckled will, any opportunity for breaking up is closed off. in the visuals, love spells dances his way to the door of his lover (very manakin-like tbh), declaring his love publicly for her knowing that people will be peering outside curious to see the finalé.
i started listening to lush because i wanted to post a spotify link of my favorite song on twitter, all in attempts to get a like from a hot guy i (briefly) met at a house party. that aside, these two songs are some of the best indie rock to come out in recent memory. i’m most impressed with jordan’s guitar playing, switching between pretty abrasive strumming patterns and intricate finger plucking seamlessly. these songs also pair narratively: speaking terms seems to have the narrator assert their agency over an unloving partner insisting that they have unknowingly gone too far. despite this, heat wave starts with (presumably) the same speaker, waking up in their clothes having dreamt of them. we also can’t forget:
and i hope whoever it is
holds their breath around you
'cause i know i did
on an oddly specific personal note, this song represents expansion. i remember looping this album as it accompanied me walking in between classes my freshman year of college. how crazy was it to be free for the first time?
i want to say that i got into tennis before i saw challengers, but that would be a lie. rather than the movie itself sparking my interest in the sport, it was the coverage i saw online that did it for me. i watched countless sports creators give the “yep! this is pretty realistic!” stamp of approval on the film, and i felt just moved enough to watch the tour’s remaining competitions that year with a well-meaning, observant eye.
i thought about my old feeling of too-muchness, and what would it mean to surrender to that “softness and permeability” that ehrenriech describes. to be permeable to the tides of story and history, to let everything that feels like too much flow freely through the mind and body. this is the way to live joyfully and defiantly, whether in politics or in the individual mind. this is the only way to escape the preordained, damning plotlines that expand to fit whatever empty hollows they are allowed and can exert so much painful pressure when we try to control or undo them.
as a researcher, there was something so poignant about chihaya’s description of this seemingly endless process of reading, digesting, and writing of new materials in her memoir bibliophobia. while she explores this concept through the lens of ozeki’s a tale for the time being—her observations can be extrapolated nonetheless. this idea she presents of feeling physically bloated with ideas, hoping they’d whoosh away as articles get finished and papers are presented, is a phenomenon i have yet to be articulated in such a way. that other metaphor of metastasization is especially effective for me. while this is mostly coming from my experience with sometimes severe hypochondria in college, i still felt that foreboding ache when thinking about my brain for too long.
opening spotify when you’re not obsessed with a song is like opening up the fridge over and over again when there’s nothing good to eat
to no one’s surprise, that’s exactly how i’ve been feeling with this song over the past couple of weeks. idk what specifically caused the resurgence as mgmt isn’t in my usual rotation, but i was randomly humming the chorus one night and my head snapped like a hunting dog towards my phone. the song transitions from c# minor to its parallel major of e, but the eeriness, somber, and weight of the first eight bars bleeds into the rest of the song. listening to a piano arrangement of the song made me realize that chord progression is sort of hidden in the mix, with the bass doing a lot of the work for guiding the ear. the songwriting of the outro coupled with the refrain of “hand it over” is what really makes the song for me. i’m particularly drawn to the use of “rightfully” when the speaker is talking about this amorphous desire of theirs; this declaration of deservedness is a feeling i think most of us have felt and (personally) brings me in closer to the track. below is an earlier section (around 0:38) that always grabs my attention—the descending melody.. the ascending minor chords.. the rise back up to the previous motif… like yeah… #realfuckingmusic.
i’m always intrigued by artwork that casts the author’s personal relatives as religious figures. it feels like the ultimate form of flattery. imagine being immortalized as mother mary for observers to see. maybe the act of rendering a person on canvas is a religious act itself; you are preserving memory and making a figure omnipresent in the rooms of galleries.
