keep it to yourself – love spells

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.

wink wink – charli xcx

idk why i’m so intrigued by this era of charli’s career since she’s by no means making the same waves as she was two summers ago. when i first read on instagram that this was going to be a rock album, i kinda rolled my eyes and kept scrolling because i knew a) this decision was likely not motivated by pure artistic expression and b) the “backlash” this genre choice created will only serve to benefit the rollout. are these songs quote unquote rock music? sure. the elements are there: guitars, steady drums, stepwise melodies—all with a tinge of glitched out production. but does it truly feel like an earnest attempt at Rock Music? i’m gonna have to say no.

i think that answer is rooted in my biggest gripe being the songwriting. because of her stardom, everything she talks about regarding fame feels a little… plain? ok that’s too harsh. let me try again. there’s only so much you can say about being provocative and giving into the desire to seek attention. she’s made statements on this exact thing professionally and within her art for the past couple of years now, but using rock music as the vehicle for this doesn’t seem exciting as it should be. everything is ironic with charli now. the glamour of it all seems to fit her well and i think that commentary she wants to verbalize via this project looks interesting on the surface, but in the context of her career and how she’s approached discussing her prominence previously, idk if it’s landing the way she wants. like why do i have to believe that she’s the new arbiter of coolness for the general western population? who even gets to decide how culture moves? is it something akin to a dynamical system? our individual opinions on celebrities end up moving like liquid across internet, with true delineations between who said what, attributions, and ownership become muddled beyond comprehension.

charli xcx is undoubtedly a cultural icon now. her words on music, fashion, and film are taken seriously by those with social capital. brat proved she has what it takes to handle the lofty responsibilities of being a pop star in the new(-ish) 21st century. she can stomach the surgical-like dissection of her body, music, relationships, and everything in between. the conviction was there the whole time. going from true romance to charli within the same decade is a feat her contemporaries could not have pulled off with the same resources. she can now ask prolific artists to pose for her album cover. they seemingly deem her worthy of their time, and whatever their opinion might honestly be, charli gets a tasteful stamp of approval by the mere presence of their likeness on her creative work.

deep end – josie

there’s not much i can say about this song other than i love the fact that josiah is releasing music on his own. while basically all anecdotal, i’m seeing a lot of band members branch out of their collectives and create a new artistic identity away from their long-time collaborators (e.g., not for radio, jon conway, etc.). one of the main reasons i was into greer’s music was because of josiah’s falsetto vocals and satisfying melodic choices, all of which are displayed on this single.

…

more scattered likings – various artists

• will – ear
• the lonesome border, pt. 1 – dear nora
• hollis prozac – exum
• on the very low – ivan ave
• don’t kiss me – maple glider
• spiral/disco (outro) – mike

we lust life but god'll stay along 'fore they crush us it's one dice, you gotta use some charm and some structure and sometimes you gotta use the arm of your brother dumb pride, i learned to be the calm in the thunder and sunrise

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?

detour / need for speed / basketball — kim petras

she needed a win so bad that she pulled out an unreleased sophie demo… this shit means something to her!!! no but seriously, i was really impressed with this album in an unexpected way. granted, i’ve been off kim petras since feed the beast came out with lackluster reviews, all of which she probably agrees with given her intentional (and 100% initiated) move away from massive record labels that have stifled her creative vision. even before that… wasn’t there an n-word scandal brought up by old tweets?

aside: i think we forget that miss petras was at the center of hyperpop before its transitional period to becoming that much more mainstream. this was back when charli xcx was signing douches at meet and greets after concerts and every self-proclaimed Twitter Gay was sending mine by slayyyter to all of his mutuals.

anyway… i’m glad she was able to independently create this project with a series of top notch producers like frost children and margo xs given that classic bubblegum pop sound with bright synths and opaque percussion was flattened by previous collaborators in her record label projects.

funny — broncho

i listened to this song when the weather just started to get warm in toronto after winter overstayed its welcome. spring was eclipsed by subpar temperatures and the need to put on a sweater every time you left the house in early may—basically an attack on my entire bloodline who lived in dewey temperatures for all of their lives. ryan lindsey’s lyrics washed over me as the sun hit my skin not as a relief from cold but a reminder of warmth re: take a moment / for a moment / and i liked it.

the feeling — steve lacy

his voice has persisted throughout his progression as an artist. even if the production value increases, the writing remains honest and unique to lacy. i’m often wondering if the narrators in his songs are aware of their ego. in the feeling, he asks if he’s still cared for (am i your baby?) and states an eagerness to rekindle a toxic relationship (i’m not scared to bleed, you know our history).

the video for this song reminds me a lot of what he did for playground—a dreamy sequence of scattered, colorful visuals punctuated with lacy singing to the camera right in the foreground. he needs to keep kathleen heffernan on his production team ALWAYS!

while getting situated in the clay swing that summer, i quickly learned the three titans of the men’s tennis: novak djokovic, roger federer, and rafael nadal—all achieving ludicrous feats during their careers that are still used as the standard to assess promising young talent coming up on the atp tour. for djovokic, he’s won the most number of most grand slams (i.e., the four most prestigious annual events in the sport taking place across oceania, europe, and north america) out of any male tennis athlete. and what’s crazy is that he’s still currently alive and kicking on tour now, albeit at a fraction of what his prime level was… no shade! federer made a name for himself with his elegant one-handed backhand, a still uncommon tennis stroke, which added better angles, potential pace redirection, and shot variety to his game, resulting in dominant winning streaks on hard courts in the early 2000s. he was also just so effortlessly cool, most evidenced by his laid back practice sessions which felt more like a performance to patrons walking by. nadal was the undisputed king of clay, winning the majority of roland-garros titles during his tenure on the atp tour by absolutely suffocating opponents with his topspin-heavy shots rotating almost 300 times per minute.

as you can deduce from the spiel above, tennis is not played on the same surface all season and its been like that basically since its inception. due to the varied climates and naturally abundant resources, certain materials were easier to maintain for play, with europe primarily supporting clay and grass, and hard courts reserved for the states. characterized by its long-standing tradition in the fields of england, grass courts are fast with low-bouncing balls and has been the favorite amongst serve-and-volley players. since it rewards more aggressive tactics towards the net, most grass court rallies before the 2010s were in the single digits. this is the sort of tennis you see on tv when they’re “moving through history” to situate us into the grand slam final we’re tuning into. for clay courts, there’s slow pace and higher bounce with the material itself mitigating big serves and heavy shorts placed awkwardly around the court. this surface also exposes weakness in movement as you can literally slide across the court to retrieve balls—or you end up falling, getting dirt stains all over your clothes to add drama. for hard courts, it’s durable acrylic surface is suited for both professional and recreational players, producing a medium-pace playing experience—but depending on the altitude, weather, and ball quality, it can feel completely foreign between match reps.

although there are loyal fans that think these three players made tennis and once all of them retire, the sport will die with it. however, that does not seem to be the attitude of the average viewer engaging with discourse online. the new athletes playing today are aware of the legacy of those that came before them, catalyzing the overall effort to push this sport to its physical limits. the undisputed stars of the status quo, alcaraz and sinner, are trying their absolute best to beat records set by the greatest. for the former, he just become the youngest player to complete the career slam by winning the australian open, roland-garros, wimbledon, and the us open all before turning 23. for the latter, he set a new record for the most consecutive sets won at the masters 1000 level (i.e., the tournaments that sit right below the grand slams) and to add even more insult to injury, these two are absolutely dominating the tour in ways that are unprecedented—drawing direct comparisons to the goats of the sport. alcaraz and sinner are exceeding the total points of the rest of the atp top 8 at a combined 26k each almost spilt evenly down the middle. while some fans are tired of seeing at least one of these two take every major title away from their competitors, i know i’m definitely not. do you think commentators were lamenting about how they wish they saw more players winning titles during federer’s 41-match winning streak in 2006-07? i certainly hope not! we are quite literally the audience to new spectacles of the sport! soon these moments we’re living in will be referenced in segments in future broadcasts, still unable to figure out how one athlete can stand so far ahead of his peers.

i was also drawn to the distinct fashion tennis has to offer and how it intertwined with the actual equipment they use on court. athletes are adorned in (hopefully) sponsored uniforms from the likes of adidas, nike, wilson, and likely any brand you can find at dick’s. depending on their ranking, they might have custom colorways that are tournament specific—these fabrics becoming relics of a specific point in a tennis career—even better if they’re dressing the winner of the whole thing.

it’s also interesting how specific rackets are tied to particular game styles, a fact that makes more sense when you realize that the strings are the only contact a player has with the ball. wilson’s line of rackets are most closely associated with that classic, controlled play suited for all courts. serena williams played with a blade for most of her time on tour, using it to push her already dominant serve farther into the court and become the personification of first-strike tennis. head rackets are tuned for high-end precision with a material called graphene, which allows for weight redistribution across the head and handle. yonex players are known to be clean ball strikers and care about comfort first, ideally getting a balance between power and feel every shot. babolot has been linked to enabling topspin and aggressive baseline rallies, still remaining as one of the most popular brands on tour. there are some miscellaneous brands still being used (e.g., diadem, prokennex, solinco) that can catch your eye, but i’m mostly noticing the specific combinations of grip colors and paint jobs adorning the rackets of players as they move through the court.

while watching tennis players (or any athlete, really) grapple with their own aging muscles, i can feel the tension these players have with their bodies in real-time. their reflexes aren’t razor sharp. the gravity seems to be pulling limbs closer to the ground. your strikes less potent than normal. i understand why many retired players don’t pick up a racket for months after their last match—like maria sharapova said: why would i want to to be lower than the best?

i am writing this in the middle of madrid and the narratives that have yet to take shape have me on the edge of my seat: will jodar back up his win against fonseca to make a deep run? is this clay season for him only a flash in the pan? will sinner win his sinner win his fifth (yes, fifth) masters 1000 title in a row and the french open now that there’s a vacuum left my alcaraz’s departure due to injury? will sabalenka continue to make history of her own as the rightful world number one on the women’s side? who knows? but i’m grateful i can watch time unfold so spontaneously in front of me.

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.

…

as i was operating outside of my comfort zone as a newly minted undergraduate researcher, i felt with every conference proceeding i went through, the larger this imaginary tumor would grow inside my head. it’s like my neural pathways were being excavated by the jargon of hci researchers, desperately trying to position my social science knowledge correctly on this axis of quantitative inquiry, worried i might be forgotten somewhere in the peripheries of the third quadrant.

…

i too have felt too-muchness when diving into fields like formal methods or program synthesis, subjects that are anachronistic in its applications and learnings. you can ask questions about user interfaces and stretch its concepts to the actual syntax itself (the brackets, the keywords, the symbols) to gauge where we can decrease the bottleneck in our gulf of execution as code writers. it’s funny to think about how i got to this field by way of ai-assisted coding, fully obsessed with structured knowledge transfer between developer eyes and programming agents. i think i’m just fond of correctness and verification. while this quote from flusser’s gestures (a collection of essays that ask heady questions like “does writing have a future?”) is a little too cynical for my taste, the gist of the excerpt still rings true. every discipline feels like its some applied version of the one below, abstracting more details in order to observe relationships between concepts more clearly.

the so-called humanities appear to be working on such a theory. but are they? they work under the influence of the natural sciences, and so they give us better and more complete causal explanations. of course, these explanations are not and perhaps never will be as rigorous as those in physics or chemistry, but that is not what makes them unsatisfactory.

…

it comes to a point where i want to be separated fully from the human world, in some flyover state, equipped with stacks upon stacks of books with no major objective other than to consume knowledge. similar to celine nguyen, i really believe that everyone is entitled to the development of their own intellectual ecosystem. it really makes you feel less lonely. we all have the birthright to challenge ourselves and ask others for help when we don’t know the answer. this is partly why i never got the conversations about college being worth it after we’ve been entertaining this talking point since i was researching this exact same topic as a 14-year-old for an english assignment. the prospect of obtaining mastery in anything should be enough to satiate us for a lifetime. i want to be “smart” not to impress other people, but as a matter of keeping track of my interests in real-time. how can i be a better person to those around me with my knowledge? am i willing to give up some of my life for the pursuit of expertise? is that going to be fulfilling?

…

there also exists a tension between learning for the pursuit of personal fulfillment and learning because we are giving into a culture of endless optimization, with ideas being used as currency to gain ethos online. the feeling of knowing too much feels uniquely human to me. sadly we are an ape species that gained incredible cognitive advantages thanks to evolution and we are now subject to knowing about everything going on in the world—it feels numbingly overwhelming. consumption can be for a different end entirely.

hand it over — mgmt

you know the tweet that’s like:

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.

it also doesn’t help that i still in the aftermath of applying to [REDACTED] and the lamenting of the chorus didn’t help the (occasional) spiraling. i can see my dreams so clearly! they’re right there! hand it over! also fun fact: this song was partly inspired by and written during the 2016 election and reading that in 2026 makes me realize the lyrics like these are very on the nose… i mean that in the best way possible…

the joke's worn thin, the king stepped in now we'll see who is who look who's bending over

mutant exotic → back 4 more → f.u.

this specific order of songs causes my body to move so rigorously that i’m convinced i’m doing some sort of somatic therapy. there’s something so effortlessly cool about lsdxoxo’s and it pairs nicely with toka project’s deep house production, with jamie xx closing it out with playfully adapted eryka badu vocal samples. each of these songs deserve some sort of 16 track transition with some low pass filters and center bass swaps. can a dj please hop on this?

here are some more variations of these three tracks

csirac → muschi muschi → cyan hardcore front left speaker → set the roof → the hills (george daniel remix) got em (sango remix) → screen cleaner → hitchhiking

wired — post june

i imagine this song playing after a b2b with the general aesthetics of the songs in the above absorption, acting as a breather in between hard acid, techno, trance tracks. the instrumentation is simple: a basic drum pattern, a fuzzy bass, and arpeggiated synth lines that are stretched across all frequencies in the middle of the song. i feel like one of those photos from art & oppression by ellen jantzen, but on the imaginary dance floor in my head.

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.

i wonder how artists painting portraits back then felt as they remained one of the only ways to preserve memory in physical space for centuries. did they feel that weight in the studio, peering into the eyes of their subject? how would they feel now walking around the halls of galleries, witnessing the durability of their sketched out image first hand?

hopper is able to capture a lot of expression in the faces of his subjects—slight brushstrokes moving downward on faces, looking to be the beginnings of a frown. the closer i get to his paintings, the more i can see back in time. i picture hopper making an abrupt motion down after focusing in on a face, likely painting it over for the 15th time not satisfied with the demarcated expression

people still want to learn about art. there are rooms full of life listening to someone lecture about islamic manuscripts from the 13th century. people still want to learn.

* i think i’m attracted to men that are built and look like walruses. * it’s fleeting, but i sometimes feel 17 again. it’s like i wake up and lose progress one day. sometimes i look in the mirror and see him staring back. is there something i’m missing? * i think i’m the only person who knows about madi sipes & the painted blue. i found the band right before covid hit while i was visiting home for spring break. i was in a phase of isolating myself and illegally watching movies on my 2017 macbook air until 2 AM, using the last couple of dollars from my work study paycheck to buy snacks from the vending machine by my dorm. some say i might’ve been struggling financially—i’m gonna have to agree. anywayyyyy, the music is kinda made for people who want to imagine what sex is like without actually having to experience it (there has to be a better way to say this my god). it’s melodramatic, sometimes gaudy, but always good idc. these lyrics were tearing 19-year-old me apartttttt.

• i would’ve been that one grad student in elizabeth holmes’ chemistry lab praying on her downfall.
• i’m sitting at my desk trying to work but i think this job is genuinely making me depressed. it’s hard to explain but going to the office feels like a funeral procession—i find myself gravitating to all black outfits and walking somberly to the metro as if i’m awaiting the fate of my livelihood. last year when it was even worse (lol yeah that’s possible) and my mom would comment on how sad my eyes looked on facetime. i didn’t believe her at first but now it’s all see when i look at myself in passing. it’s draining. i just want these people to take me seriously like everyone else in my life. why can’t they see me? but also who fucking cares about them? idk. it also sucks because i’m wearing my sophie sweater today and serving too much cunt for a corporate environment.

• i will never forgive the initial commodification of large language models by openai. its gonna take so much longer for ai research to be taken seriously by the general population.
• i deleted my twitter account about two years ago and while i’m eternally grateful for that decision, i’ve always been nervous that i’d be missing out on the inside jokes that make up most of internet culture. all that to say, thank god for those meme pages on instagram reposting tweets like i really needed someone to fill that vacuum of humor and they came through for me.
• i have a memory from elementary school where i was in my music class and playing with a sharpened pencil on the carpet. all i remember next is the pencil going through my left hand and blood leaking all over my uniform shirt. it seemed that no one helped fast enough as the blood dried on my skin with smudges from my tears i’m guessing? i still don’t know if that was a dream.
• time isn’t as close as i think it is. it’s like when i turn back i can’t see it anymore, i’m waving back to get its attention—i still feel the weigh over my shoulder.
• i’m gripping what i want so tightly i might kill it. i can see the life leaving its eyes and veins pop. but it’s for me. i know it’s for me.
• oliynykova’s serve is so cool, it looks too cool to be that consistent and fluid.
• i think ariana grande was allowed to co-opt black culture without too much blowback from the public since she was a child star on nickelodeon. to me at least, working with dan schneider under the age of 18 gives you one hall pass for a socially unacceptable behavior. i’m thinking about this since i’m a) a gay guy and b) listening to positions in a time of tumultuous transition.
• this tweet fr follows me everywhere:

• there has to be a drink with the same flavor profile as classic red bull like i can’t keep drinking caffeine like this if i want to retire in brazil.
• i find it so endearing that my barber sings along to the radio while he cuts my hair. he’s not shy with it either, finding harmonies with the melody and vocalizing the ad-libs with precision. i sometimes join him in between cuts obviously avoiding eye contact even though everyone knows the words to s&m…
• i’m actually so glad i don’t have a childhood home. i don’t think i can visit a space of mine that has witnessed so much change. my presence is inherently transient. i’ve gotten so attached to places i’ve only lived in for a couple months, college dorms mostly. i look back at the photos and can explain ever design choice, every poster placement, every pin on my wall.
• why do we need to ai-generate little latin boys with grammys if we have bad bunny performing at the super bowl?
• i don’t have my pulse on the culture like i used to but i hope bugonia is a frontrunner in the oscar conversation. (aside: i’ve heard so much about one battle after another [review below] and tbh i wasn’t as impressive as it was made out to be. coming into it i had this expectation that pta succinctly captured the climate of post-covid america in three hours and while he kinda did, it didn’t move me at all? that’s a pretty loaded statement and i probably need to write a full-blown essay about it but i digress…)

• i think gpt by stayc is the best songs on love in the internet age post-covid and that’s a hill i’m willing to die on. i’m also only sharing this opinion because i think i’m dl, but in a k-pop sort of way. (aside: i’ve been on the periphery of k-pop stan culture for most of my time on twitter and regularly found myself running in the same circles as people with irene avis. in a way i felt an kinship with them and i don’t think i have time to explain further.)
• the world has always been broken
• i feel like 2% of all air canada employees speak french fr
• are you predicting trends or just observing what’s already in front of you?
• whenever i drink a strawberry matcha i feel like a fruit fly drinking sugar water in a wet lab
• is media literacy really at an all time low if the only people seeing these takes are also concerned with anti-intellectualism? we only talk about these issues as outsiders looking in instead of actually interacting with the realistic opinions of the people who are “media illiterate.” it also doesn’t help that these conversations mainly happen online with media publications regurgitating the spark notes version of a video essay an editor found on youtube. i guarantee you most people don’t know who mina le is.
• there’s something about the personality of the average british person that makes the traitors uk the best in the franchise
• emerald fennell’s movies are gonna be cult classics in 30 years and yes i’m being dead serious
• rather than relying on gestures, we rely on diction and syntax
• we need more horny b-roll footage
• industry is one of the only shows that treats sex scenes as something that is used to explicitly help the narrative to make relationships more obvious to viewer without it teetering on “show, don’t tell.” it feels less intimate—more viscous and voyeuristic. it’s like i’m watching something too realistic to suspend my belief that i’m watching television.
• imagine if tennis had loser brackets… like imagine an unseeded player grinding through the draw after losing early and then having to reset the bracket against sinner in the final… like i’d kill myself.
• life constantly feels like you’re traversing fog of  war and unlocking previously restricted areas; somehow MOBAs are a useful metaphor.
• time builds fondness
• and of course this knocked me off my ass btw:

• ok this year i really need to learn spanish. not only because i have moots in south america (#iykyk), but because i simply can’t believe there are white people out there living in china speaking the language near perfectly with the people at food stands. like if they can do that, i should be able to order at a dominican restaurant without sounding like a toddler.
• i’ve been obsessed with watching recaps of niche internet drama on youtube for the past couple of weeks now. the sheer volume of videos is so baffling to me as there’s countless beefs between creators i’ve never heard of that sometimes lasts months on end? like there’s feuds between those influencers you only see in those reels your gen x mom sends you. they’re truly living in a different reality and i applaud those youtubers for putting in the time to chronicle these events to me while i sit in my bed… sometimes high. why do i know what podcast ash trevino went on (sitting with her kids mind you) after she received allegations of not giving said kids a bed to sleep on? why do i also know that the host of that podcast recently released a course on “how to be an influencer” with an application that didn’t need any social media handles? let me stop.
• i don’t know why i always scrape by surviving january. every year, without fail, i find myself counting down the days to february 1st. i think it started in high school when i was waiting on college app decisions for what felt like an eternity, desperately trying to be validated for the countless hours i spent studying for ap exams. it all felt like a blur. somehow simultaneously comforting yet foreboding? i just remember being really scared. it’s a new year of my life and it’s up to me to carve a path for myself and i'm like what? 17? how can i be trusted to make my own choices, let alone a dream to chase. maybe that is reserved for someone else. i don’t think i’ve ever shaken off that feeling and it’s kinda metastasizing in my psyche, praying to get found out.
• trixie mattel is rupaul’s successor
• i’ve been listening to my playlist from 2019 and i think south florida was patient 0 for that gen z aesthetic everyone posts on their pinterest boards. i get the association with la and emma chamberlain and that side of the internet plastered with video thumbnails of rex orange county refracted by the discoloration of a jakarta filter—however comma—i think broward county is the real inspo. do you even know who traithalon is? right…