there's a name for this, i'm sure
always pacing around in revelation, repositioning the plants and paintings…
I’ve been cleaning up a lot lately - my house, my head. Sifting through the things that have accumulated in and around me, sorting through what to keep and what to let go of.
Below are some of the scraps unearthed in the digital part of my cleaning spree.
I had a dream I rearranged all of my furniture because of a Bon Jovi song (unspecified or unremembered) so it is safe to say things have gotten a little weird lately.
“Keep snapping, y’all” - Elton Aura
(He was opening for Noname sometime last year when concerts were still a thing, and shortly before she announced she might be retiring from playing for people who couldn’t be bothered to care. Luckily, she didn’t.)
And when he asked the audience if they had cell phones and told them to turn the flashlights on and hold ‘em up, it was actually strangely beautiful. A reminder that behind all the impersonal screens there are people who sometimes still can hold up the light.
Also, I’m old.
Last track ended with a walk off while the drummer just kept going and going and going.
Noticed a trend lately where performers do a lot of pointing and a lot of reminders to tell people you love them and maybe it’s because the world is ugly and no one does anymore but also maybe because standing next to someone day in and day out doesn’t mean you love them- cynicism strikes again.
Also, I’m old.
It was primal and strange and it made the people in front of me stop making out so essentially it was perfect.
(I think this was about a Phosphorescent show, but is also about what I wish all music at all concerts would do.)
Wait.
To think about Maps is to think about making out in cars and in parks and being young enough to do those things eagerly, without self-consciousness. To think about Maps is to think about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and werewolves, the Strokes and the friend who loved them most - the friend who, by a weird twist of fate I now live with, so many years later, but barely ever speak to.
To think about Maps is to think about him and the letter that made it clear for the first time but not the last, that, if I’m not careful, I might easily spend a lifetime trying to force feed people more than they think they deserve. And another weird twist of fate that had him sitting on the floor in my room a decade later, invited by a friend who had forgotten we’d ever known each other, gripping the neck of my guitar but unable to meet my eye. To think about Maps now is to think about how much I hadn’t thought about so many things in so very long.
To think about Maps now is to think about all the people I’ve failed to tell to wait, to hold on just a moment, and all of the reasons why.
(This was written as a reaction to this superb essay by Helena Fitzgerald in the now defunct Griefbacon newsletter.)
And now, for your regularly scheduled programming:
playlists:
It’s summer! Whatever that means now! Most of my past summer playlists were built as things to soundtrack sadly drinking next to pools (seriously, this really was a whole thing.) but I’ve been sober for a bit more than eight months now and pools aren’t safe to go to so I had to rethink what a summer playlist should be - Something Like Summer. (For what it’s worth, I feel a lot better about this concept of summer, but do need to find a friend with a pool.)
Sometimes I need an excuse to wear a cowboy hat in my own house. This is the excuse I came up with - Western Wednesdays: No Glory Edition.
albums:
Untitled (Black Is) by Sault is the first album in a very long time that stopped me in my tracks. It’s the first album in a while that insisted I sit down and just listen. This is it. This is the stuff.
songs:
I recently read Joan Morgan’s She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and absolutely loved it. Related to that, I discovered that putting on Hill’s version of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” makes even shitty days good for 3 minutes and 41 seconds.
Kevin Morby’s cover of Gillian Welch’s “Miss Ohio” is catnip.
etc.:
A while back my friend Luke Byrne asked if I’d take the dubious honor of being one of the first Americans to participate in a moving portrait of life under lockdown called Lost Together. You can see me ramble in this episode, but I encourage you to watch the whole series. Luke and I met more than a decade ago, talking about Fionn Regan on Twitter (clearly not much about my life has changed), which is a weird thing to think about but bless the internet and all that jazz.
As always, Listen to Ted Hawkins.