HILARY HUGHES @hilaryhughes - Tumblr Blog

There Will Always Be Something

Elvis and Willie Mitchell on Lamar Ave. | Memphis, Tenn. April 2018

Of course the jackhammers showed up on the day I woke up early to finish this.

I’ve had a horrible time trying to write this week. When writer’s block gets really bad, I’ll word-vomit paragraphs and have to scrap multiple pages of gibberish and half-baked ideas by the end of a full day of writing. If any one of those sentences could give me a kernel of an idea or a prompt, I’ll save it, and at this point I’ve figured out how to find those salvageable nails in a pile of gnarly ones bent beyond their service.

This week, no. Every single time I ditched the Word doc to fact-check or source something, I opened Twitter, a reflex more than a decision or a need, and immediately got anxious, then panicked, then full-blown hysterical depending on the day. Kids in cages, infuriating soundbites, the Supreme Court nightmare, the churn of obituaries, new music, new bad music, new stories about lost geniuses dangerously close to the self-immolation point -- the distractions were more than detours, they were collisions, intellectual fender benders that completely halted the flow of the task at hand and squeezed any creative capacity out of me, leaving me with maybe two or three usable sentences. Bent nails, rusty nails, headdless nails. This isn’t the fruit of labor, this is a banana peel that can’t decide if it wants to be a liquid or a solid just in time for it to hit your ankle when you go to take the trash out because you’re driving yourself crazy.

Instead of forcing it yesterday, I gave myself some space, and I baked a raspberry buttermilk cake. I thought about my passport and whether or not I have the pages I need. I thought about meeting my cousins in Bilbao before we head to Barcelona together and whether or not I want to stay within walking distance of la Boquería. I thought about whether or not I can get away with just packing a red dress, a black dress and cut-offs for that week in the Mediterranean; I thought about whether or not I should try to bring 2666 to finally finish after a decade of trying on that 12-hour trek. I thought about Iceland, too, and googled how to say “I’m allergic to nuts” in Icelandic; I put on Utopia and made a note to see if Olafur Arnalds is playing in Reykjavik while I’ll be there. I thought about Boston next week and checked the weather even though I know it’s futile, that every single time I do that I can hear my dad say “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute” when given the opportunity to crack the joke.

I thought about Elvis Presley, the dude responsible for these packing lists and Twitter detours in the first place, and Graceland, and Memphis. I thought about the Soul Burger at Earnestine & Hazel’s and how I doubt I’ll find one better and the tour given by the bartender’s boyfriend of the haunted part of the bar that used to be a brothel. I thought about that mural on Lamar Ave, the one in the abandoned lot that connects Elvis, Willie Mitchell, Johnny Cash, Otis Redding and Howlin’ Wolf in a stoic street art musical Mount Rushmore. I thought about the ceiling at Sun Studios. I thought about Elvis’ keys to Graceland and how they’re exactly the same cut as the keys to my apartment. I thought about the list I’ve been keeping to note when I hear or see an Elvis reference in the weeks since that trip and how I’ve been adding to it every day because he’s omnipresent, a constant, an element of our American atmosphere as integral to its makeup as carbon and oxygen, Superman and kryptonite in the same broken, bloated vessel.

I think about how many paragraphs I’ve spent trying to say exactly that and how many times I’ve watched Bye Bye Birdie not knowing that Viva Las Vegas came out after that and how shameless Hollywood is, how Elvis was locked into a contract that forced him out of the studio and onto the studio lot and into a depressed, frustrating creative period that made him a musical mockery while making the Colonel rich. I thought about how Elvis made a comeback in 1968, that that was the whole reason why I wanted to write this thing, and that there will always be something to hold you back unless you create something to look forward to.

This morning, I woke up early to watch a movie about Elvis, again, and try to write about it, again, and five minutes after I fixed my coffee and pressed play, ConEd showed up with jackhammers and went to work fifty feet from my front door. In the time it took me to list off all those distractions, they stopped.

There will always be something to distract me; there will always be noise, headlines, breaking news, fragile resolve. I’m trying to write through it until the distractions dissolve, and today they did. I’ll take the little victories where I can, even if it just means that I’m staring at an empty Word doc on my terms and I’ve finally figured out that atmospheric analogy I’ve been chewing for three days.

#the things we write when we should be writing something else #writer's block #meet your damn deadline hilary

Isolation

Avenida Yucatán, Ciudad de México - January 2018

2018 really began in Mexico City, where I turned 32 and walked all over Condesa and Roma Norte, stopped into whatever bookstore or cafetería or record shop looked good, and waited. I sought out graffiti, murals, and markets instead of monuments, and made sure to work in as many meals as my belly could fit in my limited time there — tostadas and tacos and conchas and a beautiful birthday corn cake at Huset covered in caramel and popcorn complete with a candle to blow out. The bomb cyclone kept me grounded in Condesa for an extra two days, and I treated those additional hours for the gifts they were, taking my time to hit the places I missed on the to-do list I’d scrawled into my notebook and pop into an arthouse movie theater in Roma Sur to see a documentary about a Mexican indie band.

My notebook was out for the majority of my time there, and that was the point: I wanted that to be my companion on this trip so I could try to work out why 2017 had done such a number on me. I wanted to be proactive, to figure out what I could do to heal from that, and learn from that, and work on my failure to get over that. (Because that’s how it felt, and how it continues to feel: A failure. 2017 beat me down in many ways, and I had underestimated how deeply the year and its blows had hurt me — and it feels like I’ve failed, in that stronger people take less time to process hurt and overcome it. I’d say it’s wallowing, but I don’t choose to fixate on these wounds; I’d say it’s obsession, this tendency to scrutinize the mistakes that brought me here and took my happiness there. It’s neither. That’s the heart of this: I’ve failed at diagnosing it, and I’m struggling to find the tools to put this behind me, whatever it is.) I filled up pages at dinner tables and rooftop bars, park benches and breakfast perches; I drank the coffee because it was fantastic, but mostly because every cup purchased a lease on a place to sit for a spell, which in turn secured more time to sit in a vibrant, bustling city and try to sort out the trauma that had me dreading the return to the vibrant, bustling city I currently call home.

I left Mexico City later than expected, with a suitcase full of records and magazines and two bracelets, both red and beaded but different in their shades and styles. They join the lapis and bronze cuff I picked up in the 11th in Paris back in October, and the brass, bone-shaped bangle I took home from Broadway Market in London a few days after that. I wear these bracelets together because they’re trophies, and they remind me of why I decided to take these trips in the first place: To clear my head, put distance between hurt and healing, and feel better about being alone.

2017 stressed that unfortunate truth to me: That my happiness and self-worth are far too reliant on the whims of other people, that I am wrecked when they disappear or dispose of me, and that I needed, desperately, to manage this addiction to intimacy and kinship or kill it altogether. James wasn’t the chief perpetrator in this year of hurt, but the one who drew the problem into focus; the mental abuse he inflicted has left a lasting imprint, but the hurt of the mindfuck of the year I knew him was further magnified by realizing that my support system had drastically changed in that time — and, more specifically, shrunk. The vast majority of my loved ones feel like strangers, save for a precious few: There are best friends who have demonstrated (in largely unintentional ways) that they don’t need our friendship as much as I do, or even want it, and immediate family members with whom I share nothing more than blood. I made a conscious decision to ease up on the relationships that seemingly existed only because I kept them going. I was devastated when the lack of effort or interest or contact from the other party proved me right.

Instead of fighting for these relationships and protecting them, I let most of them go, telling myself that if they cared enough, they would notice that I don’t text as much, or call as much, or visit as much, or invite people over as much. On one hand, I understand how inherently unfair this could seem, that I effectively pulled the chair out from under myself: Why should these friends be cool with me cutting off my emotional availability so abruptly just because I felt neglected or hurt or worse? Why should they understand? Isn’t this hypocritical, and essentially doing to them what they did to me, but with intention instead of accidental ignorance? Isn’t that worse?

I told myself that London and Paris and Mexico City were adventurous exercises in getting good at being alone, but instead of pushing me into independence they pushed me into isolation. I don’t blame my loved ones for living lives that don’t have room for our friendship as I knew and loved it anymore; I’m thrilled that they have partners and fulfilling careers and growing families and full schedules, and I mean that. I don’t even blame James for triggering this period of introspection that manifested into what I’m coming to realize was a depressive episode, most days. (On bad days, I do: I think about how his cruelty destroyed me, and how he faced no consequences for that, and how he threw one girl away and kept the one who didn’t figure him out — or did, and was fine with being treated that way. This is what I mean when I say I feel like a failure: I am six months out from that man being in my life, and this is still a thought when he should be forgotten by now. I don’t blame him for being alone; I blame myself for relying so wholly on his affection and friendship, and for doing so because I was lonely in a sea of people who didn’t need a best friend anymore because they had a partner instead.) I blame myself for my failure to heal and adapt, and for failing to find the strength or tools required to do so and get back to myself. I blame myself for focusing on what’s broken instead of what’s not, for spending so much hurt and thought those who decided I was worth throwing away instead of spending love and thought on the ones who didn’t. And I blame myself for being so brutal on myself, too, because my ability to trust a person was deeply compromised in 2017, and the effects of that were far-reaching. Getting on a plane or crossing a language barrier or putting on a bracelet won’t speed up the process of healing from that until I give myself permission to trust and proceed on that front.

It’s not that I wanted to get really good at being alone. I had to get really good at being alone, because I no longer had a choice in the matter, and figured if I could trick myself into thinking I wanted this, that it would be empowering instead of isolating. I was naive enough to think that calling this solitude by a different name would make it better. I was wrong.

In February, I went to New Orleans, but not alone. For three days, I walked all over a city I’ve always wanted to see with old friends I don’t see enough of. We took in the last show of the night at Preservation Hall, scarfed beignets and king cake at any given opportunity, squealed while dodging puddles of puke in the French Quarter, danced through Treme on a stormy afternoon, and savored all of it. I tiptoed out of the hotel room in the mornings and I wrote myself out in the lobby over coffee while everyone slept, and thought about how important those pages were, to work through these humiliating, fearful thoughts and try to put a name to this deep unhappiness rooted in something darker than heartbreak.

By the time we flew back to New York and I climbed up the stairs and dropped my backpack on my couch — for the third time this year — I was alone, but I didn’t feel that way. I felt full. That’s what I was waiting for in Mexico, in Paris, and in the quiet moments where I’d rather hear another person’s voice instead of the lonely ring of my tinnitus. Maybe I’m getting closer to fusing the two. That doesn’t feel like failure.

Shirley Temples

Wanted to get your thoughts on being buds.

I knew it was coming, but he beat me by a few days — a few hours, maybe, as I thought I’d be the one to say it. I knew that this wasn’t going to work on our first date, when he showed up to the dive bar all boisterous and lowered his voice, conspiratorially, to tell me he “had some bourbon when I was at the barber earlier. Like, a couple bourbons.” He gave me a wink. This is fine! I thought. So he drinks. He can drink; he’s not the one with the drinking problem. We’re literally five minutes into this. He’s fun. He’s probably nervous. It’s fine.

We left the bar and went to an event my friend was speaking at. He crushed a couple of beers in the hour we were there. It’s fine. He went to the barber hours ago! It’s not like he’s drunk. This is tipsy. This isn’t drunk. This isn’t awkward; it’s awkward in your head, and that’s it. We go to dinner afterwards, and as the conversation escalated in both intensity and volume, he had a couple of Negronis and a sambuca. When we left, he hailed a limousine idling on Prince Street instead of a cab. He tried to kiss me in an elevator; I stopped him because he had pecan pie for dessert, and though I’d mentioned I’m allergic to nuts, and that any body part of mine that touches even the faintest trace of a pecan would inflate, that didn’t seem to matter, and I had seconds to keep my lips from blowing up. Who remembers that kind of stuff on the first date?! He shouldn’t have to remember that stuff. He probably couldn’t remember much after eight drinks. It’s fucked up that I was counting. He probably couldn’t remember that I mentioned I don’t drink anymore, like, a few days ago. He’s fine. This isn’t his fault.

I was convinced I wouldn’t see him again, but he wasn’t awful — he was just drunk! And hey, it was a first date, and maybe he was nervous! And I had written up at least forty different excuses to give him a second chance if he wanted one, and I created every scenario I could to make that happen. I quit drinking 34 months ago, and a variation on this theme has happened every single time I’ve gone out with someone since: They have all been dudes who drink, many with drinking problems, many who knew I was sober, respected it, praised it, and yet the fact that they were drinking and I was not created a fissure that cracked into something bigger before we really got to know each other.

There are degrees, of course. There was the dude who showed up at my apartment after a dinner party and was so hammered he nearly dozed off at the counter at the diner that I, in a panic, insisted we go to when it became very clear that he wanted to be alone with me, and I didn’t want to be alone with him. There was the dude who arrived at our first date so drunk his eyelids didn’t flutter, but slid up and down, greasy, fleshy window shades that never fully obscured his pupils as he repeated himself and asked me the same questions on a loop. There was the man I loved who supported me, fully, and made a strong, genuine effort to be comfortable with my sobriety, but would get blackout drunk and say terrible things to me on bad nights or make romantic plans of cross-country moves and lives together in Los Angeles he had no intention of revisiting when the hangover subsided on good ones. And there was this guy, handsome and charming and fun and a complete and total party animal who was kind enough to make me feel like he had a good enough time with me that he didn’t realize I wasn’t drinking, too, but who got so wild that it freaked me out.

This is fine. This is all fine. They don’t have to be comfortable with my choices; they didn’t sign up for this! It must be awkward, to be comfortable with your own drinking and be hanging out with someone who isn’t, to be drunk and very aware that she’s not. Maybe they care. Maybe they don’t. Maybe I’m thinking too much about this? I’m probably thinking too much about this. Other women can have a glass of wine or knock back Bulleit and it’s sexy and fun to be around and I get to be the giant child drinking a Shirley Temple. Other women are easier. Other women don’t require compromises in order to exist. Grrreat.

He didn’t say, outright, that my sobriety was an issue — again, he’s not awful, and I doubt it crossed his mind, in that he doesn’t believe it was an issue at all. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. It does mean that he got drunk enough that I noticed, and that it was a bummer to be around, and that I’d taken to counting his rounds — a coping mechanism to prove that, no, I wasn’t crazy, this dude really was hammered and not just outgoing and unhinged. It does mean that when the man I loved decided that another woman was worth loving instead I immediately thought, “Bet she can match him round for round at Sharlene’s and it gives him one less thing to think about. Bet he likes that she evens the playing field. Bet he likes that she forgets the stuff she should.”

It does mean that every single time I meet someone new, I exhaust myself thinking of first date options that don’t involve dive bars and pool tables, even though I love them and feel my sexiest when I sink a shot and have to rest a leg on the table to do it. It does mean that I haven’t figured out how to do this yet, and I am starting to realize that there’s a very good chance I never well.

It does mean that it’s hard. It does mean that even though I knew this wouldn’t work out, that I’m embarrassed when he says the right, kind things and ends it first.

Hey girl ... Wanted to get your thoughts on being buds.

I want to get my thoughts on being buds with own sobriety first so that it can’t loom over love any more and crush it before it can root. Then, we can talk.

#dating while sober #sobriety #love and sobriety #love and other stuff #the ballad of love and hate #the ballad of hil and james

What I Wrote (And Learned) In 2017

Charles Bradley at Brooklyn Bowl, June 2017. (Thoughts on this show here and more below.)

SO THAT WAS A LOT, HUH?

2017 was less tumultuous than 2016, I’ll give it that, but it was still a lot in pretty much every capacity. I worked a lot. I traveled a lot. I cooked a lot (or baked a lot, and I really gotta cool it in the doughnut and cookie department for a minute). I saw a lot of live music, though not that much when compared to recent history; three of my favorite songwriters put out exceptional albums this year and played three of my favorite concerts to support them, and my headphones harbored more Father John Misty, Jason Isbell, and Ryan Adams songs than anything else as a result. I bought a blue tooth speaker for my kitchen, a big ol’ Marshall Stanmore that makes me feel like a rock star even though I’m not, and really made a point to savor the albums that felt really good at the time (like a ton of Radiohead and Oasis and Fleetwood Mac, inexplicably?) instead of making a point to download Each And Every Album that crossed my inbox. (In short: I figured out that musical and intellectual saturation affect me in ways I’m trying to benefit from in regards to my work and my listening habits have a lot to do with that.) I spent a lot of time with great people; I spent a lot of time with some not so great people, or specifically one person that has since made a not-so-graceful exit from my life. I felt a lot, and deeply, as a result of that and a bunch of other things. I wrote a lot, though not as much as I would’ve liked, and this space in particular saw less of my essays and random musings simply because I’ve been writing those down the old fashioned way — in a notebook, properly — and keeping the precious stuff private, because I’m giving less of myself away lately. (I spent nine days soul-searching the shit out of me and stitching up a broken heart in Paris and London and didn’t write a single word about that here. Paris and London were just for me, this time around; Mexico City and every other spot I’ll hit in 2018 may be the same. We’ll see.)

All things considered: 2017 wasn’t ... bad? All things considered? 2017 was also the year where I lived less as more in a lot of ways, deliberate and otherwise. It had its hurtful moments, as any year would, but I’m heading home for the holidays content and hungry for more in the new year. I am capable of withstanding a lot and giving a lot. I’m ready to make more, give more, fight more, heal more, and write more in 2018. Here’s a handful of the stuff I’m especially proud of from this year.

+ I wrote about my favorite musician, Jessi Zazu. Jessi and I met in 2010 at SXSW, where I saw her perform with Those Darlins, my favorite band on the planet at the time/one of my all time favorites still. We became casual friends over the course of several years, a lucky circumstance of phone interviews and run-ins at shows, and that solidified into a proper friendship when I hit the road with Those Darlins and Diarrhea Planet for a story in 2014. Jessi was diagnosed with cervical cancer in the final quarter of 2015 and spent 2016 fighting it while using her experience to advocate for the Affordable Care Act and further her work with activism in Nashville. We spoke about that in February, when the prognosis was grim, but Jessi was not. She died in September. I wrote about losing her and wish I didn’t have to. I have a print of one of her paintings taped to the wall so that I see it every time I come home, and it reminds me of how powerful she was and how I can try to fight like she did — for myself, and for art, and for others — every day.

+ I dove into Janelle Monáe’s dystopian discography for MTV News’ Dystopia Now! series. Real proud of the work that went into this one, which was a part of a super, super rad collection of stories that zeroed in on the post-apocalyptic tone of our current moment in a cultural way. Also, what a great excuse to watch Metropolis and listen through The Electric Lady a zillion times over.

+ I SAW GREEN DAY LIVE FOR THE FIRST TIME AND IT WAS THE BEST, MOST CATHARTIC ROCK SHOW I COULD’VE HOPED FOR IN THAT MOMENT. Have you ever walked into a venue expecting to enjoy yourself and then you’re hit with a tsunami of nostalgic wonder because you’d completely buried just how deeply you loved and needed a band? Green Day was huge for me throughout my adolescence, but they grew distant when I grew up and made a concerted effort to dive into new music instead of keeping up with the pop-punk and showtunes of my long-lost CD binder. This tour was necessary and revolutionary and great, and I’m so glad I went.

+ I compared Father John Misty to Bob Dylan and my mentions lived to tell about it. Lol so. Watching my colleagues across multiple outlets take joy in ripping the dude to shreds without making even a shadow of an effort to listen to his music was a frustrating exercise, to say the least, and the Pure Comedy cycle was more about indicting FJM as a snob than unpacking the album on a critical plane. (This was a bummer, to say the least.) I’m glad Josh got a Grammy nomination for Pure Comedy, and watching the album run up year-end lists (especially on those written by people who were alllllll about bashing the dude because they processed his every move as an intellectual jab) has felt like delicious justice, frankly. I maintain that he’s one of the best songwriters of our generation and that strong music has staying power, so I look forward to the future for this dude (and how Pure Comedy will be considered in the years to come).

+ I wrote about Ryan Adams, New York, and the romance between the two. I loved Prisoner and will take any given opportunity to dive into the gnarly, knotted, beautiful complications that hum and thrive in any given DRA production. This was no exception. Hopefully we’ll get to work together soon, as there are few artists I’d love to profile more than that guy.

+ I spoke with a ton of incredible people who are turning music festivals into a green business. SCIENCE IS COOL. MUSIC PEOPLE WHO CONSIDER THE ENVIRONMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY AND WORK BOTH INTO THE MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR FESTIVAL INDUSTRY ARE EVEN COOLER.

+ Jason Isbell and I talked about The Nashville Sound and I cannot wait to write a book about this hilarious, compassionate genius one day. I’ll do it eventually, even though he’s an incredible storyteller and perfectly capable of doing it himself. This is such an important record, and it does the seemingly impossible right now, which is to speak truth to power empathetically, in terms both brilliant and plain, and in a way that doesn’t condemn difference but looks it in the eye. Jason, if you ever need a co-writer for the biography we’d all be lucky to read, holler this way.

+ Charles Bradley returned to the stage after he beat his stomach cancer, and I was there for his first hometown show since his diagnosis. That the cancer came back and killed him a few months later is cruel and sad. Charles was such a joy of a human and I mean it when I say that the last time I saw him was the best set I’ve ever seen him deliver, and I’ve seen him perform a lot. He loved to live; he loved to share; you will be hard-pressed to find a dude so grateful to simply exist and make music with people and treat it for the gift it is with such reverential appreciation. The photo above was taken just when he came onstage to greet the crowd at Brooklyn Bowl. I think of his elation often.

+ I wish I could call up Tegan and Sara and talk about the important nexus of music and activism whenever I get discouraged in this insane world we’re living in. We spoke about their foundation and the importance of Pride in the Trump era back in June. College-aged Hilary freaked the fuck out the whole time.

+ Adam Lambert’s work with Queen fascinates me, and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to chat with him about it. It’s a situation that only he can pull off, really, in that stepping into Freddie Mercury’s shoes is an insanely intimidating feat and one that’s impossible for pretty much everyone else. What Queen and Lambert pull off together is truly unique on the tribute scale, and it was great to unpack the intensity of the situation while highlighting the new strengths Lambert brings to Brian and Roger’s table.

+ Maybe one of the toughest, most disturbing and nerve-wracking pieces I’ve done: I spoke with a student activist who was literally waiting to hear if friends of his would make it out of the hospital following the Charlottesville nightmare. This was my first big piece for our issues/politics vertical, and one that required immediate, intense reporting. Ian was so calm, collected, determined, and so informed, and I’m grateful that he was open to speaking with us.

+ I’m obsessed with Nicole Atkins’ album, Goodnight, Rhonda Lee, and I’m so glad it exists because we finally have a woman tackling sobriety in song. First of all: Nicole is the best. Secondly: The “I battled my demons and prevailed” arc is one that’s typically taken up by dudes (and I love so many of them, Isbell and Adams being two of my favorites). Nicole is the first person who cut to the core so brutally and beautifully that I felt like she found my notebook and brought it into the studio with her, her words are that intimate and relatable. Go listen to “Colors” and try not to have the wind knocked out of you, I swear you can’t do it.

+ I went to Nashville and watched Harry Styles play the Ryman for the first time AND I WILL NEVER BE THE SAME. But really this was one of my favorite albums of the year and this show was a perfect set and he’s delightful and I look forward to his eventual Oscar for playing Mick Jagger in a biopic because how can that NOT be in the works already?

+ Alicia Bognanno gives me hope that engineering won’t be a dude-dominated game forever. The Bully frontwoman is an audio genius. Don’t believe me? Ask her about her process and then be blown away by her insane attention and commitment to detail that involves her crawling around the studio on her hands and knees and documenting every wire placement with a Go-Pro so that her music hits the tape exactly the way she wants it to.

+ I did my first off-camera interview for MTV (!!!) with the director of Gaga: Five Foot Two, and uncovered a Lady Gaga and Amy Winehouse connection I wasn’t expecting. My thoughts about the documentary and Gaga are complicated. My fascination with her obsession with Amy to the point where she and Ronson staffed up Joanne with a bunch of guys who played on Back to Black (read: Daptone!) is not.

+ I went long on Soul of a Woman, Sharon Jones’ final album with the Dap-Kings (and my album of the year by a wide margin). I feel like this is the story I always wanted to write about Sharon, and I’m grateful to Vulture for giving me the space and consideration to write it. That Daptone continues to endure the most heartbreaking losses and move forward for the sake of the music is remarkable, as are the men and women who made this album happen under such brutal circumstances. (If there’s one thing you read from me this year, please make it this.)

+ And finally: I HAVE INTERVIEWED KAY HANLEY SO LET THE PROPHECY BE FULFILLED. I grew up in Boston and as such Letters to Cleo are pretty much tattooed on the insides of my eardrums, but that aside, Kay’s work in movies — specifically Josie and the Pussycats, which we talk about here — played such a huge part in my development as both a musician and a music fan. My high school boyfriend wrote out Josie lyrics to me in love notes on chorus trips, for chrissake! Josie was a real rock star to me, so to speak with Kay about it — and how her experience with Letters to Cleo helped that character flourish — was surreal as hell.

So yeah. That was a lot, and I’m grateful for all of it. <3

#what i wrote in 2017 #new york i love you #hil at mtv #hilary hughes

Turn Turn Turn Or Whatever

Bless you for this shakshuka, farmer’s market tomatoes

I had what felt like a “real” summer — one full of books and long drives and beaches and more nights spent laughing outside with friends than not — for the first time in years. I made some gorgeous stacks of pancakes and a slew of beautiful breakfasts. (That’s today’s, above.) I didn’t attempt the frenzied festival circuit I typically do; I went to Boston Calling and Governors Ball, the latter a last minute decision that had Chona and I throwing on shoes and running uptown just in time to catch Lorde perform “Perfect Places” and “Greenlight” shortly before Melodrama came out. I spent two weeks split between New England and the Pacific Northwest, making it from one Portland to another in nearly a 24-hour period and submerging myself in freezing freshwater on both sides of the country. I saw Charles Bradley, Jason Isbell, U2, Conor Oberst (with the Felice Brothers as his backing band), Marika Hackman, and scores of others I’m forgetting, I’m sure; I was at the movies once a week, and spent last night laughing to the point of tears with Natalie when we decided to hit BAM to see a random screening of Tootsie on a whim. I read all of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels and was proud of the stack of books I actually made the time to read, which feels like a luxury more than it should. So many mornings were spent blasting albums I’ve fallen for in these warmer months — the Japanese Breakfast record; Lana Del Rey’s latest, much to my surprise; Waxahatchee, The National, SZA, The War On Drugs — brewing coffee and writing or slowly working through the paper two days late. So many nights were spent taking the long way home and walking from the Lincoln Square AMC to Bryant Park or strolling through SoHo en route to the East Broadway stop with a detour for dinner between my office and the subway. Plenty of nights rolled into mornings thanks to a pool table and a jukebox successfully commandeered. On these fronts, I have little cause for complaints.

The one thing I’d change, if I could, would be that first week of August, when a relationship — more than a friendship and not in plenty of ways, and one that mattered a great deal to me — was carelessly, spitefully destroyed. Last summer, we met and I was a goner, as I loved the dude before the first hour of our first date was over, pretty much. We properly dated for three months before I accidentally called him my boyfriend without his permission and he said some terrible things to me after too many drinks about an hour after we should’ve left the bar. That led to a break, and then a breakup (along with a beautiful, frankly, breakup email in which I told him that he was worth the risk in getting my heart broken, because I learned plenty about myself and love in our brief time together). That breakup led to six weeks of silence before I, in a vulnerable moment, wished him a Merry Christmas and reestablished our back-and-forth — something we both had missed, I guess. He reached out to me on my birthday; a month later, we were hanging out again, regularly; a month after that, nights at the movies turned into dinners and movies and hours spent at Sharlene’s, the bar we went to on our first date, and by then it was clear that whatever had been snuffed out the fall before wasn’t entirely extinguished. He said so himself, a couple of those times, that he still had feelings for me, that he didn’t know where he’d be living in the months to come, and that’s why we should “figure things out” without putting a rush on getting back together; that’s why he didn’t want to kiss me or acknowledge these feelings he supposedly had in any undeniable capacity, because he “couldn’t hurt [me] like that again.”

I believed him, even when he would constantly check his phone when we’d hang out. I believed him, in spite of the friend — just a friend, he assured me, three times, at that — who was bringing him as her date to a couple of far-off weddings, one who, eerily enough, has curly hair and a toothy smile just like mine. (I mentioned this to him. He said that “she doesn’t have [my] eyes.” That time, he was telling the truth.) I believed him when he introduced me to his brother, when he made an effort to come up north with me for Boston Calling and see my home and meet the people I love there. I believed him when he, in early June, told me that he thinks of me when he thinks of his future in California. I believed him when he insisted that "there’s no one else” and he did want to work this out, whatever “us” meant, but he just needed to get through this insanely stressful season. I believed him when he told me he was going to another wedding with her, even when he refrained from mentioning that they’d be attached at the hip for the week afterwards. I believed him when he texted me, in Los Angeles, while he was with her, and asked me about the movie theater I told him to check out: “Did you want to go while we’re here at the same time?” I believed him because I loved him and I told myself that I was paranoid with a hyper-active imagination; that I had guy friends, too, who I texted all the time; that being patient and trusting and taking him at his word was the only thing I could do, because why on earth would someone who just said he cared about me so much lead me on to such an intense degree? What kind of a person would wreak that kind of emotional havoc for the sole purpose of keeping his options open, and for doing this with two women at the same damn time?

The ending of that story is pretty predictable, and probably was the second I mentioned her. You know that “Explore” tab on Instagram, the one that recommends posts you may like based on the people your friends follow and the posts they’re pounding the heart button on? Yeah. Fuck that tab. I have that to thank for throwing a photo of hers in my face that featured him and a comment section that confirmed him as her boyfriend. I confronted him about it immediately, and he panicked; by the time we met up to discuss it, he’d gone through two different alibis anchored on two different conversations that never happened, and denied that the conversations that did happen — about us, about there not being anyone else, about how I absolutely wasn’t just a friend, even though I assured him, multiple times, that it was okay if I was, I just needed to know — did. (Convenient. I should probably mention that I have an elephant’s memory, at this point, and a photographic one at that. I never forget a damn thing.)

I got one apology in between these works of fiction, and looks that were smoking with such vitriol that you would’ve thought I’d just told him I’d been lying to him for the majority of the time we’ve known each other. You can’t apologize for things you can’t remember, so I guess it’s my fault for expecting him to remember the things he said— for naively assuming the man who gaslit me at Montero’s last October wasn’t the same man who was with another woman while planning movie dates with me in Los Angeles. I wasn’t expecting someone with such a loose grasp on the mere construct of truth — and right and wrong, at that — to be so dismissive of the idea that he had done anything terrible when there was a whole year of text messages to fall back on and her very public, very obvious adoration of him expressed on social media. (In hindsight, so many things make sense: She’s a hairdresser, so that accounts for the daily barrage of texts I’d receive — you can’t spend all day texting a dude when your hands are full of someone else’s hair, or what have you — and I guess I just filled up the hours she couldn’t, and vice-versa.) He made no further effort to explain beyond “Well, I’m sorry, I could see why that [photo] would be upsetting” and those fictional alibis, and all he offered by way of closure was “I don’t think I lied, but whatever. I’m not going to fight you on this.”

That final conversation — which took place at Sharlene’s, because of course it did — was brutal and cold and not at all indicative of the year we’d spent tied up in each other’s lives, and he clearly was more interested in preserving his own ego and motives than making a shred of effort at fixing things in even the smallest way. When he offered me a “Good luck with everything?” before I grabbed my bag and booked it, all I could do was look him in the eye and respond with “I’m not gonna need it, but thank you.” I probably jinxed myself something terrible, but it’s true: What I needed from him was sincerity and the truth, regardless of how painful it would be to hear it. I didn’t need a send-off worthy of a stranger.

That happened a month ago, that swift, merciless disconnect; I’m still reeling from it, clearly, though I’m writing it down now to prevent myself from falling into the same trap twice. It hurt, very much, to cut ties with him, but I had to; I should’ve, for good, when we broke up in the fall, and now that he’s revealed himself to be this sort of person, I know I can’t be friends with someone who can’t remember the things he says, especially the things he supposedly means. I’ve spent much of the last few weeks throwing myself into these books and those movies, as a result, and last week’s trip to Los Angeles for the VMAs was a much-needed challenge and a distraction. It proved that I can thrive under pressure even when my insides feel like holes have been blown through them, and that I can laugh and write and get utterly, wholeheartedly giddy about a song or a paragraph that thrills me when that crucial organ of mine is bruised and blistered. I thought that I would miss him, but it’s been surprisingly easier, this time around. You can’t miss someone who wasn’t fully there, it turns out; I’m not sure how dishonest he was for the duration of our year, but I know that I would rather be where I’m at than spending another day longing for a person who thought so little of me that he couldn’t deign to tell me the truth. I couldn’t listen to another phrase he didn’t mean.

There’s been a ton of talk of changing tides and seasons and phases of the moon and stars, lately, with summer coming to a close, eclipses upstaging the sun, and mercury wilding the fuck out in retrograde per usual. This August tried to level me and didn’t. The same man ripped the heart out of my chest and it’s in the process of growing back (and stronger, thanks to that scar tissue). The sun continues to rise, I continue to walk down Fifth Avenue to catch a movie at BAM once a week, and every Friday brings another album that gives me such hope for this fractured future we’re all trying to believe in.

This felt like a real summer, in all of the best and worst ways. We started one summer and ended the next. Instead of thinking of all the hurt in between, I’m choosing to be grateful for this inability to forget anything, because the good that was there — and the true work I did to learn, and the work I’ll do to heal – it’s all worth it, in myriad complicated ways. Maybe that’s why I’m so ready for fall. I just want to leave the bad in that rainy Monday afternoon and get onto the rest.

#the ballad of love and hate #the ballad of hil and james #figure out your bullshit brothers with a c

Mine And Yours But Not Ours

I do not come to your mind.

When you’re planning for a week out west, in the city you want to share, in the city you want to look upwards and soak in the blue skies you say you so desperately need, I do not come to your mind. You think of the neighborhoods you want to try on; you think of their streets and their dive bars and their coffee shops, the apartments and whether or not they’re walkable to the laundromat or if you’ll have to drive, as so many people in this city do. I do not come to your mind when you stumble upon the staircase in Silver Lake with the heart spray-painted on its steps, the Thai place around the corner from that, the winding bends of Mulholland when you try to remember who told you to drive those late at night with Frank Ocean’s Blonde playing just loud enough to compete with the sound of tires rolling over grit. I do not come to your mind when you begin to look for apartments in the neighborhoods I got to know before you, and recommended in kind — Los Feliz, Eagle Rock, Highland Park, definitely not Echo Park, because who wants to deal with that insane gridlock on the days when the Dodgers are playing at home? — and I do not come to your mind when you sign a lease and find a place where you can hang the blue and red artwork you told me you had pictured when you thought of where you would finally be able to take a deep breath.

I do not come to your mind, because you fight to keep me from approaching it in a variety of fashions. From running at it, arms flung out in the hopes of being swept up in some romantic embrace straight out of a Rodgers and Hammerstein movie; from cautiously tiptoeing so as not to disturb you, scare you, or take you by surprise in any way; from bounding up and letting you know I’m here in whatever way I can vocalize without betraying any sort of insecurity or doubt that you want me there.

I do not come to your mind, because you don’t want me there: There is more room for other things when I am not a concern. There is more room for Los Angeles and the thousands of people you haven’t met there yet, and the millions more you never will. There is more room for new directions, new addresses, new haunts to replace the jukebox at Sharlene’s and the pool table at the Brooklyn Inn. There are more corners to know instead of the one at Sterling and Flatbush, where we say goodnight, or 10th and 5th, where we say goodnight with a question mark that you quickly reduce to a period long past last call, each and every single time. There are shortcuts to memorize and favorites to assign — movie theaters, restaurants, the special places you reserve for when you need to impress the friends who come to visit you in your new home. There is more room for your Los Angeles when I am not in it, as this is a city you need for yourself. You need your blue skies, your bungalow, to find a neighborhood and move there on your own just because you want to, all independently and standing free of a partner whose wants and needs could conflict with or impede or clutter or complicate yours. There is nothing wrong with this; it’s just so much easier to navigate and so much simpler to execute when I, and my Los Angeles, aren’t encroaching on the claim to the roads and dives and billboards and palm trees you will know as yours, and yours alone.

I do not come to your mind because it’s easier that way. You love me, I think; I love you, I know. Therein lies the most impassable problem, that the balance of affection and emotion and the powerful confluence of both lives solely in my heart instead of splitting time between your ventricles and mine. I do not come to your mind, because if I did, I would show up everywhere; my words and feelings and favorites and facial expressions would pepper these places, these people, these new beginnings and obscure your need to have them, wholly. You cannot hear Sharon Jones or Aerosmith or Father John Misty or scores of songs by scores of musicians screaming out at you from KCRW without thinking of me; you cannot speak of jukeboxes in Brooklyn without remembering how my face looks when it’s frontlit by shallow neon and the mirth of picking the soundtrack. The Rolling Stones are mentioned and the poster of Keith Richards on the wall by my bed floats over your iris. Indiana Jones comes up and you smirk, thinking of the girl sitting next to you who was buried by the overzealous digging of an oblivious puppy on a humid night in Red Hook. With any hint of New England, forget about it: I am synonymous with any spot that shoulders the cold salt of the Atlantic, and suddenly that night in Providence and the hush of our closest morning is deafening. I do not come to your mind, because if I did, memories of me — my look, my touch, my taste, the way your senses mix with mine — would overwhelm you and stop you right where you’re standing, especially if it’s down the street from a bar I recommended or a bloom of desert flowers that would make me go weak in the knees. It was easier, at first, to be away from bodegas and their bouquets, as it was impossible to pass them without thinking of the ones I’d fill my arms with; flowers grow wilder out west, and the memory of my fondness for them springs up from roots that don’t need a lot to survive in the arid, unforgivable heat.

I do not come to your mind because I am not a part of the plan. It really is that simple: I could have been, but it’s better that I’m not. It’s less stressful this way, less complicated, less messy; you are beholden to no one but your cat, and even then, he’s easy, though you wonder about how he’ll be when he gets accustomed to the new spot — how he’ll warm new windowsills and stare out at a quieter intersection than the one on Washington you were so eager to leave. Without me, there are no compromises, no additional feelings to consider, no hesitations; there are fewer questions and fewer opportunities to bend the truth just to make the few weeks we had a little easier and free of conflict. There are more places you can choose from because you only need a single parking space; there are fewer obligations and people to meet, bands to see, parties to attend that take you away from the Mets and beers with your friends and movies you want to see when you want to see them. There is no acquiescing, simply action. There is only you, and your plan, one you needed to make because you haven’t been able to do that entirely on your own as an adult.

I do not come to your mind because it’s easier to dismiss my potential than it is to embrace it and let it flourish into forever. If I were to come to your mind as frequently as you’d let me, I would become a fixture in your Los Angeles, a pillar, a part of that new foundation; if I were to leave you, if I were to disappear, your world would alter, if only for an instant; maybe it’d be a slight tremor, which neither one of us had experienced but probably would for the first time, together, our eyes wide as the earth rumbles in its own rebellious, ancient way as it does in our Los Angeles from time to time. Maybe it would be nothing; maybe I didn’t matter enough to leave a footprint or remind you of bodega bouquets and forgotten jukeboxes and the fleeting sound of “Siegfried” on the radio.

Either way: I do not come to your mind, and by the time I do, I will be nothing, and the song will have slipped into something else in a city you can’t call home just yet.

#los angeles #temple of doom part 912 #the ballad of hil and james #the ballad of love and hate

BEHOLD MY 2017 AESTHETIC

Father John Misty/my inner psyche pretty much shot by Paola Kudacki for GQ

#father john misty #pure comedy #2017 af

The Things We Write When We Should Be Writing Something Else, Vol. 1208

H&H, the market I pass every morning on Prince on my way to the office

+ My apartment is a lovely one to sit in when it rains, and I’m grateful for that. On Saturdays, I’ve made it a habit to walk over to 7th for coffee and a trip to Food Train for fruit, an avocado for toast if they’re ripe enough, and flowers. They’ve had bunches of lilacs out front lately, a 2 for $14 deal that feels like a luxurious splurge when you’re forced to hug the unwieldy, rootless bush on the way home because you don’t want to crush the buds in the canvas bag you carry for groceries. Before it started raining this afternoon, that’s what I did: I ran out, grabbed an avocado, which I’ll pair with the potato sour dough from the farmer’s market I always pick up on Sundays and some poached eggs, some berries that were on sale, and the lilacs, and now my living room is stuffed with their scent.

+ I’ve never been a person who makes a point to take a bath — to commit to a whole hour for running water and pouring fancy potions and reading a book without dropping it in the water that’s never hot enough. I go through stages of making a point to work through the piles of books I bring home on Monday and Tuesday afternoons — the newish Didion biography, the first Elena Ferrante book, Michael Chabon’s latest, a smattering of best sellers that come highly recommended with beautiful colors that I’ll read and likely immediately forget. My memory is razor sharp when it comes to faces and factoids, but the plots of books — even some of my most favorite ones — are so difficult for me to hold onto once I’ve moved the bookmark into another one and placed it back on the shelf. As I’ve been traveling less, life at home has been very, very busy, and I’ve got no complaints about that; if anything, the insane schedule has forced me into picking up unusual habits like drawing these baths and making a point to indulge in them instead of dinners with friends, movies, or other outlets for self-care in a time where we’re all encouraging each other to do more of that. A pile of nearly-gone candles now live in the bathroom next to the tub, and I listened to the new Perfume Genius album twice through while working my way through Hari Kunzru’s White Tears the other night. I spent a stupid amount of money on a coconut bath milk soak whatever, so I consider that an official investment, a concrete indication that I’m a bath person now. I’m a clumsy, lazy, coconut-covered mermaid.

+ I find so much comfort in the machinations of my own two hands. This starts in the morning now, as I’m also apparently a breakfast person who’s made a point of setting the alarm an hour earlier for the sole purpose of putting a record on and boiling water for coffee and steel cut oats. I’ve mastered the art of the cinnamon dash before filling up the Chemex; I listen to Otis or Smokey or Bitches Brew depending on the brightness of the morning, dig in, and pick through the sections I haven’t read yet of the Times that came on Sunday. (I’m trying to be better about reading the paper in full by the time my “weekend” is over on Tuesday night.)

+ Everyone has their Late Bloomer musical proclivities; I was super late to the Ryan Adams train considering how deeply my friends adore him and how I always knew Ryan Adams songs, thanks to social exposure and second-hand listening, but didn’t truly know them or actively listen to him until I saw him at the Orpheum in 2011 and tried to make up for lost time from there. The Replacements have been added to that list lately; that was Springsteen and me for most of last year. Seeing Ryan this week brought a lot of that back, and the Mats’ greatest hits were the soundtrack for most of today. “Kiss Me On The Bus” is a song I wish I loved a lifetime ago, but I’m glad I get to now with abandon.

+ I’ve seen a lot of last calls lately and tumbled into bed just before the sun comes up. and played a ton of pool and fed a lot of fivers to the jukebox at Sharlene’s, and I highly recommend easing into the warmer months just so. Walking around this neighborhood when the trees are blooming and illuminated by neon and street lamps is something else.

+ Work is really good. I still catch myself at least once a week where I realize that I’m hustling off to MTV to go write things I’m excited about and I still can’t believe that’s real. I saw Green Day and had a few epiphanies in the pit; I learned a ton about how eco-friendly and sustainable the biggest music festivals really are; I dove deep into the dystopian spine of Janelle Monáe’s entire creative output; I observed a Day Without a Woman by highlighting how the music industry would grind to a halt without them; I spoke with personal hero Jessi Zazu about her battle against cancer and how the ACA saved her life; I wrote an ode to my favorite romantic expression on Valentine’s Day. I’ve been writing like a fiend and I’m really, really happy about that.

+ This is all to say that after a year of nonstop travel and a ceaseless barrage of emotional earthquakes, things feel slow, and that feels great. I was talking about Los Angeles in one of those mentioned post-2 a.m. talks lit by the jukebox and how by this time last year I’d already been to and from L.A. three times. We just started the fifth month of 2017, and I’ve boarded a plane exactly once. I’m due, and L.A. doesn’t feel like travel so much as it’s simply leaving one home and visiting another at this point. It’s just strange to think how comfortable I feel here, how truly at home and settled for the time being, when I wrote this a year ago and figured I’d be out there by now. It’s lovely, and it’s appreciated, but it’s foreign — and that’s not so bad, I guess.

#the things we write when we should be writing something else #new york i love you #brooklyn #home #i'm 31 or something

A New Normal

The usual tricks aren’t working.

Normally, when I’m blocked, I can head to the diner on 8th, pull the elastic on the red notebook, let the pages fall to where the ribbon lies and write. It’s so simple and cliché it’s laughable. Ten years ago, I wrote in a notebook every single day in Buenos Aires. When I was lonely, I wrote. When I was homesick, I wrote. When I somehow wound up over in Caballito too early to head to the classroom at Filo y Letras, I wrote. I wrote about what the coffee shop looked like on Beruti; I wrote about the law student from Recoleta that I kissed in the elevator of my building; I wrote about bus rides on the 152; I wrote about renting Sweet Home Alabama and other mindless rom-coms at the Blockbuster on Arãoz because I didn’t have friends for a month and I missed mine terribly back home. I wrote to get in the daily habit of writing because I felt so great when I looked down at a page and saw that my pen had tattooed it with words I didn’t even know I needed. I loved chasing that discovery. I filled something like six notebooks in those five months.

Lately, I feel like I can’t write anything. Given everything that’s going on and this new, furious normal we’re in, this is to be expected, I suppose — that creativity and impulses shift and adapt and breathe differently in a new atmosphere. I still go to the diner on Mondays and Tuesdays, and fold up the parts of the Sunday paper I read so that I can catch up on “my weekend.” I spend too much money on fancy oatmeal, but the bottomless coffee makes up for it. I wind up making my way through half the paper and leave my notebook in my purse, and I’ve taken to staring at my phone and scrolling through my Twitter feed instead.

It is SO TERRIBLY FUCKED that I am — that we are — conditioned to be glued to the phone because we’re all expecting something terrible to happen. It’s a reflex, now: In a dull moment, I open Twitter and scroll. In the elevator, I do the same. When I’m eating alone at the diner, I absent-mindedly pick up my phone to do that, and then half an hour of scrolling and bouncing between Twitter and Instagram and shouty-matches on the ignorant statuses of other people’s friends from high school flies by. It is so dull, it is so tiring, and working through a sentence that fits or feels good or reads remotely as if I wrote it is taking three or four times as long as it used to. It is, again, so simple and laughably cliché.

I’ll keep up with the usual tricks until the new normal relents for a minute, because eventually it will fucking work. Today, I didn’t go to the diner. Instead of letting the vegetables in the fridge go bad, I took all of them out, stared ‘em down, and scrambled them with some eggs. I brewed a Chemex full of coffee, which is my favorite thing to do in the morning: I mix in just enough cinnamon into the earthy pulp of it so the spice cuts the acidity of the nearly-too-old grounds without overwhelming the flavor, and then feel like a scientist who’s suddenly cracked some chemical code when I pour the water over them in a perfect, slow spiral. I ate the eggs while they were hot, and went with the Powell’s Books mug: The Cofax one, my favorite, doesn’t hold as much coffee, and I was exhausted today and needed the most as soon as possible.

I wrote in the Alwych — the little black notebook that I’m using for the random bouts of fiction I suddenly feel compelled to play with — for an hour, and I shuffled through the paper while making a point to chuck the sections I knew I wouldn’t read into the recycle bin. I jotted down the equivalent of a few text messages into the little blue notebook that serves as the resting place for love letters I’ll never send. I started to outline a proposal in the work notebook, the one covered in stickers and old photo passes, and flipped a page and wrote a grocery list. I caught a matinee of Misery in the afternoon because I’d never seen it and BAM is playing a bunch of social thrillers this month to celebrate the opening of Get Out. Dazed after the movie, I stumbled over to Greenlight, picked up the first of the Elena Ferrante books (Lucy Dacus recommended them awhile back) and the Murakmi Jen told me to read ages ago, and felt really, really overwhelmed looking at the various displays in the bookstore that screamed RESIST and REMEMBER NIXON and DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT ESCAPING FROM THE HEADLINES, GAL, YOU CAN’T TURN YOUR BRAIN OFF in various typefaces without spelling it out. (I’m grateful they’re there and support them wholeheartedly, to be clear.) I called my mom after I turned onto 5th Ave. and criiiiied, big, sloppy, sniffly, mascara-ruining tears, not because anything was wrong, really, but because everything feels off, and watching Kathy Bates beat the shit out of James Caan’s legs with a sledgehammer one minute and fawning over him the next did a number on me on a vulnerable afternoon, apparently. I told my mom the truth — that I was, am, lonely, and especially so lately — and assured her I’d do something nice for myself to try to yoink myself out of it.

So: Now, I’m home, wearing my favorite sweatshirt, staring at the roses and hydrangeas I just bought for myself and wondering if I should put the ranunculus bouquet on the coffee table instead. (I kind of lost my mind at Food Train and spent $50 on four bunches of flowers, including this dozen roses, and two fancy chocolate bars that I haven’t touched.) Awhile ago, Chona was crashing here while I was away, and she did what she usually does, which is fill the place with flowers in my absence, a gesture that always makes me feel wonderful and at home. She found an old pickle jar and used that as a makeshift vase for a bedside bouquet on that visit, and I’ve tried to keep it up, so now there’s a perfect clump of hydrangea buds and tight sunset roses right next to where I keep my glasses. It’s a nice thing to rest your eyes on when you first wake up.

Maybe tomorrow will be better — maybe I’ll write more and make my way to the diner, or crack the binding on the Ferrante – but today was enough to just get back to the routine. We live in weird, fucked up times. The least I can do is have something to show for it.

#The New Normal #the things we write when we should be writing something else #new york i love you #brooklyn #writer's block

What I Wrote (And Learned, Or Something) In 2016

(Thierry made a comment about how this should be on the back cover of my first anthology [should I ever get read enough to merit one], but Chona Kasinger snapped this in a very specific moment, and if I had to pick a photo of me from 2016 that sums up a lot of things, it’d be this, so here you go.) (Sorry, Mom. I only smoke cloves sometimes I swear.)

WE-HE-HELLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.

I usually round up a few pieces that I wrote at the end of the year, but this one had an unusual context that very much so informed how things progressed between then and now, so, first: Story time!

The moment I knew that 2016 was going to be different took place on Monday, January 11, about four hours before the sun came up. I had spent the last few weeks working on the 2015 Pazz + Jop Critics Poll and the massive — like, 20+ extra pages massive — music issue that went along with it. I had worked on P+J all weekend, but had taken a break to watch the Golden Globes that Sunday night, and had tried to force myself to hit the sheets early as I knew that my Monday was going to be brutal. Mondays at the Voice were always nuts, as that’s the day the issue goes to press. The ones who felt this the most were the copy chief and the guys in art and production who put the issue to bed when they send the book to the printers long after everyone else goes home. My alarm was set for 6 a.m., and my plan was to get up, shower, head in, grab a red eye and oatmeal from Blue Spoon across the street from the office, get to my desk by 7, and try to get out of there by midnight. I wasn’t going to leave until copy and production left. The P+J issue was my baby, and I wanted to make sure that behemoth was perfect.

And then David Bowie died.

I had spent New Year’s Eve and my birthday in Los Angeles, so the jet lag from those couple of days still had me wide awake and restless after the conclusion of the Globes broadcast. I tossed and turned for a couple of hours and checked my phone out of habit sometime around 2 a.m., and that’s when The Hollywood Reporter’s Bowie obituary started making the rounds on Twitter. I sat up in bed, fumbled for the switch on the lamp, and considered making coffee and heading into work. P+J was a huge, multi-faceted project that I had managed more or less on my own, and on top of all that, this was breaking news in my department, and no one else could’ve pinch-hit for me on either thing. Bowie was beloved in New York, his chosen home, and his passing was a terrible shock, something that surely would’ve changed the music section — and likely the cover of the damn paper — on the day we went to print had it not been the biggest music issue of the year. Pazz + Jop was one of the cultural tentpoles of the publication; it’s not like we could delay it by bumping it to the next issue. I weighed the pros and cons of how useful I’d be on little vs. no sleep, decided that three hours was better than nothing, and went back to bed. I put on Seu Jorge’s acoustic covers of Bowie songs from The Life Aquatic and eventually settled on falling asleep to a repetitive loop of “Life on Mars?”

It was a good thing I slept, as I left the Voice office around 1:30 a.m. that Monday after copy and production assured me that there was nothing else I could do for the issue, even though they themselves didn’t make it out of there until 3 a.m. I didn’t mind the madness, to be honest, because I loved my job, and I was so excited to get that issue out there. Instead of sleeping in and working from home before the P+J party, I was woken up by frantic text messages asking if I still had a job and if I was okay because my boss had been let go that morning, and what did that mean for me? I had no idea at the time. I put on a black sequined cocktail dress in a pseudo-stunned state and hosted the party later that night running on fumes and nerves and approximately 64 ounces of caffeine. The next issue following P+J turned out to be one almost exclusively dedicated to Bowie in the feature well. I wrote the Voice’s obituary for the Starman and a feature about his relationship with New York City that ran in the front of the book, and pulled that together in a couple of days. February 17, I lost my job, took the posters off the wall of my corner at the Voice, and walked out the front door of 80 Maiden Lane. (I do wish I’d taken the old press photo of Patti Smith I had pinned up on the wall there on my way out the door, but ah well. I’ll get a better Patti poster soon enough.)

That was a pull-the-rug-out moment, to be sure, and the first big one in a year full of them, because Oh My God 2016 Never Slowed Down. I am the proudest of this one thing: My feet barely touched the rug by the sixth or fifth pull, let alone the tenth or twelfth. I did not stop working. I did not slow down. Recounting those first six weeks of 2016 is a crucial exercise, because that stretch was incredibly painful and trying, but it did not break me, and the work spoke for itself. As much as it hurt to leave the Voice, I think of those two issues — the Pazz + Jop Issue and the Bowie commemorative issue — and I feel nothing but pride for the work that we did there. I went on to write and write and write and write, for publications I was happy to return to and outlets I had long respected and always dreamed of working with, like NPR, and the New York Times, and Pitchfork, and the place where I’m stoked to hang my editorial hat these days, MTV. I traveled; I chased bands; I drove a ton; I listened a lot; I put aside my own needs and relationships and well-being for the sake of various stories. (I do not recommend this last bit, though, even if I’m very proud of the work I have to show for said sacrifices. I hope you never have to read a story you wrote and think, “Hey, maybe if I didn’t get on that plane that one time we’d still be together.” That’s a real thing, and it sucks.)

SO! With that in mind, here are some stories I wrote in 2016 that I am proud of, in addition to those two Voice issues. (Now that you’ve heard the lead-up, that photo was snapped by Chona a week after I’d left the Voice, right after I’d come home from a job interview at a dream outlet. I was also waiting to hear back about whether or not a massive feature was going to be killed or saved. I didn’t get the job. The story lived. That’s like 12% of the background of this photo.)

+ My first Village Voice cover story on one of the first bands I wrote about for them, Lucius: This story was a magic realist assignment start to finish and one that I was so goddamn happy to see on the cover of the paper I called home for so long. The Marquezian vibes came not only from Jim James’s barefoot cameo and the giant turtles hanging out with him at the time, but the video shoot for “Gone Insane” and the mystical properties of the record we spent most of our time talking about, Good Grief. (This may be my favorite album of the year.) There was one point during the shoot, which took place in a Frogtown warehouse, where I was laying flat on my back with lightbulbs hanging like naked little lanterns above us in this weird, disjointed constellation, and we had to hit the deck so as not to fuck up a complicated shot. I’d write a story about writing this story if I had it in me. (The video is a work of art and you should watch it if you haven’t seen it.)

+ My New York Times debut came thanks to Beach House and the art installation shows they mounted last spring. I spoke with Alex about their intention to break down the expectations and imaginary barriers that separate artist from audience in a typical concert setting, and how they succeeded in doing that with dreamy visuals and unexpected staging. (A snippet of this ran in the Sunday Styles section of the Times that week and I squealed at South Station when I ripped open the paper and saw my name above the fold.)

+ I weathered a crazy storm complete with rattlesnakes and lightning and wound up in a tent with about 200 people — including one determined grandma with whiskey-pouring henchmen named Mabel — to watch Willie Nelson perform on a ranch straight out of a movie. (No, seriously: His Luck, Texas property still boasts the Western town, saloon, chapel and all, that was constructed for the set of his 1986 film, Red Headed Stranger.)

+ I saw Bruce Springsteen for the very first time and this shaped the way I listened to music the most in 2016, honestly. I had always appreciated Springsteen and been a casual fan, but I didn’t get Springsteen until I saw him at MSG and then again at the Barclays Center a few weeks later. I’d go on to read his book (and love it) and listen to almost nothing but The River and Born in the USA exclusively for most of September and October. This was my year of Springsteen, pretty much.

+ I was blown away by Iggy Pop’s performance just after the release of Post Pop Depression and found the parallels between that record and Bowie’s Blackstar — and the contexts in which both of them were made — to be eerie as hell. I wrote about that for my NPR debut.

+ I called up my pal Charles Bradley to talk about his gospel of love and his new record, Changes, at a crucial time for my Pitchfork debut. His endorsement of Hillary Clinton is one of my favorites, even if it smarts to read it now.

+ I spent most of April blasting country and unironically wearing a bandana thanks to Stagecoach. My feature on the growth of the festival ran in LA Weekly (another debut, technically, as that baby looked great in print), as did my feature on my brothers from other mothers, These Wild Plains, and their experience as the unsigned rookies that scored a dream gig three thousand miles away from home. Watching John Fogerty backstage while Ben freaked out about his Slugger guitar is a life highlight and something I look forward to telling my kids about someday should I ever have any.

+ I went long on the shared fiftieth birthday of Blonde on Blonde and Pet Sounds, which was an utter joy to do. I wasn’t really a committed Beach Boys fan before this: My best friend has always loved them, and I’ll always love “Sloop John B” because it reminds me of driving everywhere with her, be it west on Memorial Drive or up the PCH.

+ I hung out with Blink-182 at a karaoke bar on Sunset which is an absolutely fucking batshit insane thing to type out as fact and not something off a wish list I likely wrote out as a 14-year-old. Also, Travis Barker is the nicest dude. (They all are, but Barker insisted that this conversation take place in an actual room with a door instead of a corner of free space in this otherwise packed bar, and for that I’ll always be grateful.)

+ I saw Dolly Parton for the very first time and it was THE MOST JOYOUS OCCASION OF MY ADULT LIFE.

+ I still have no idea how this story got approved, but I’m glad it did: Hozier and I drove around Hollywood for a few hours. (Bless you, Columbia Records, for basically letting us kidnap one of your rising talents for an afternoon.) I took him to the Frolic Room and told him about the dress I wore there on New Year’s Eve and how sequins from it were still probably lodged in the bar’s carpet; he told us that his friends in Little Green Cars love Bukowski, and thus would love said bar; we cruised Hollywood Boulevard looking for the Walk of Fame stars of people that actually mean something to us; we talked about fame and expectations and how it feels to have the world screaming for a record you haven’t even written yet. It was great. It’s weird when you find yourself wishing that you were friends with one of your favorite musicians as he inspires that kind of connection.

+ I went to Newport Folk (lol of course I did are you new here) and saw god, a/k/a Patti Smith, in all her glory. No hyperbole, that was a religious experience, and I still think about her singing “Boots of Spanish Leather” in low moments when I need to make myself feel better.

+ Oh, Sharon. This was the last time Sharon and I spoke, for this piece on Miss Sharon Jones! and the ever-widening reach of the amazing documentary about this singular talent. I interrupted dinner at her pastor’s house for this chat and she ribbed me about it.

+ And hoooo boy okay. So, The Frightnrs: The hardest story I have ever written and may ever write. Their debut album, Nothing More To Say, was supposed to be such a triumphant occasion for them, and for Daptone and everyone involved with the record, too — and then Dan Klein, the lead singer of the band, was diagnosed with ALS, and the recording process suddenly turned into this very sad, very determined race against a very mortal clock. I spoke with Dan three weeks before he died. The album is remarkable, as is the strength that went into making it.

+ Lucy Dacus and I haunted Rough Trade NYC for a couple of hours and I’m genuinely surprised the very nice people who work there weren’t like “Hiiii you bought a cup of coffee like two hours ago buy something or gtfo.” (I bought a French ‘60s rock compilation and she picked up the Andy Shauf record, eventually.) Her album is one of my Top 10 of the year, to be sure, and she convinced me that I need to read Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend like yesterday.

+ I went back to Indio for Desert Trip and now 1,000% get why people worship Roger Waters because his live show is one of the best things I have ever seen or will ever see. (Added bonus was once again catching up with the Lucius girls about singing with Roger and being a part of this utterly mindblowing set.) Also, Neil Young made me cry in public. Like, a lot.

+ SPEAKIN’ OF CRYING IN PUBLIC (jk) (kind of): I drove Big Sur by myself, listened to 22, A Million on a loop for the whole trip, and then went to Bon Iver’s tour kick-off in Oakland. It was another Top Concert Of My Life kind of thing, but I was also nursing a broken heart, so that may have played a heavy hand in my affection for and attachment to that record and that one show in particular. (Still worship every note of it, and the heartache remains worth the risk.)

+ Sharon Jones died and the work she’s done speaks for her. I still haven’t fully accepted this and wish I didn’t have to, but I tried to do her incredible life justice with this tribute for MTV News. I keep remembering that I won’t see her sing with the Dap-Kings again. It knocks the wind out of me every time.

+ If Kardashiology was an academic pursuit, this piece, The Year They Stole Kim Kardashian, would be my thesis. I went long on the dangerous economics of give and take when it comes to celebrity worship and how the royal family of American entertainment wound up the victims of success, excess, and the public’s insatiable appetite for both.

+ And last but not least: Back in September, I went to Nashville to watch Margo Price perform at the Americana Music Association’s annual awards ceremony at the Ryman, where she took home the honor of Emerging Artist of the Year, made a fan girl out of Bonnie Raitt, and showed every Music Row exec who passed her up what a fool they were to do so. We then caught up in Los Angeles, before her sold-out show at the Troubadour, to talk about Midwest Farmer’s Daughter (another favorite listen of 2016) and her incredible year.

Are you still here? Are you still reading? If so, thanks, because that was a lot. 2016 was a lot, in general. 2017 probably won’t mess around, either. But hey: Hundreds of brilliant people shared their art and their stories with me, and I am the luckiest person alive for that. That’s all I could’ve really hoped for. My heart got ripped out of my chest multiple times in 2016, I wrote my way through it, and I am stronger at the end of it than I was at the start. As far as year-end epiphanies go, I’m okay with that one. 2016′s lessons were taught with tough love. I’d like to think that my imaginary report card is worthy of my fridge in that regard.

And I’m really glad that the story I was so worried about in the photo above made it to print.

Thank You, Sharon

Sharon at the Beacon Theatre on February 6, 2014. I stood up on a folding chair that miraculously appeared thanks to a mischievous security guard and snapped this with a glorified point-and-shoot.

I was at home on Friday night, with a mascara wand in my right hand, when I made the mistake of checking my phone. I had plans to go out, hence the makeup, and one set of lashes were done when a text bubble popped up. I glanced at it, but didn’t read it — I figured it was about said plans, and would get to it in a sec. Out of habit, I did the click-around, saw that I had two new messages in my inbox, and the one from Judy with sharon jones, important in the subject line made my heart stop. I went back through my texts, opened my Twitter feed, dropped the mascara, walked over to my couch, curled up into a ball as small as I could, and wept.

I truly believed, in spite of logic and science and the fuckery of disease, that Sharon would be fine. I believed she would beat it again. I believed that she would live to finish her next record and perform at its release party. I believed that her body, extraordinary and stubborn, would do the unthinkable and force pancreatic cancer to retreat or surrender completely, even if it had already done that and even if the likelihood of her succeeding at it a second time was really slim. I had just confirmed an assignment to go see her and the guys play a holiday show at the Kings Theatre, for fuck’s sake. I had no reason to believe I wouldn’t see her there, that I wouldn’t finally get to meet her in person, maybe, after years of phone calls and interviews and pleasantries exchanged.

I’ve had the great privilege of loving this woman’s music and that of the Dap-Kings since the night I stupidly had to skip out on my spring formal at Sarah Lawrence — which they played — to go to work. When I walked from my dorm and heard the brass and bass cutting through the trees on Kimball Ave., I rued the decision to not ask for the night off, but filed away the band name for later.

Since then, I’ve written about Sharon every chance I could, really, though that didn’t happen until several years after that night in Bronxville. (The first time was a review of her 2010 Newport Folk set, I believe; I can’t find the DigBoston archive, but I love this photo of Jess’s from that day.) She had just started chemo when we spoke about Give The People What They Want, and she said, in no uncertain terms, that she thought that cancer diagnosis was a death sentence and that she wouldn’t live to see the album drop. A few weeks after that, she was onstage at the Beacon dancing and waving and pushing herself to unthinkable limits in order to deliver an incredible show. A few months after that, she (rightfully) scolded me (as lovingly as she could, really) because I didn’t know the story behind the Tree of Hope at the Apollo Theater, which we were discussing as she was playing the hallowed hall that December to close out her definitively triumphant year.

I didn’t speak with her for my report on the erasure of the Dap-Kings from the Amy Winehouse documentary, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a part of this piece or every conversation that went into the research of it; the same goes for this feature on Binky Griptite, the Dap-Kings’ lead guitarist, as he was working on blues music of his own in the rare downtime he had when he could be home in Brooklyn instead of on tour. When the premiere of the documentary about her cancer battle and Give The People What They Want was announced as a part of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival, I skipped into my then-boss’s office and basically told him that I was going to Toronto to write about it, and that I’d pay my own way in order to make it happen if I had to. I was in the room when Miss Sharon Jones! premiered to a rapt audience and Sharon then delivered the terrible news that the cancer came back, and this was the first conversation she had on record following that announcement. We got it into the book that week, even though I’m pretty sure I was the reason why our copy chief went home long after midnight that Monday.

Sharon and I had one more conversation after that — one that was also about Miss Sharon Jones!, as the documentary soared and got snatched up by a zillion other film festivals after TIFF — and more stories were in the works. We were going to do a piece on her White House performance back in October, which she had to cancel due to illness; I was planning on hitting that Kings Theatre show, and couldn’t wait to speak with her about the new album. I wrote MTV’s tribute to Sharon earlier this week, and I’m sure this won’t be the last time I write about this incredible woman and all that she gave to us.

Looking back on these stories, we only did four features together, and I wish we did many more. (I will forever kick myself for booking my flight to Atlanta for Bonnaroo a day early without double-checking the date for their Celebrate Brooklyn! gig.) I’ll always wish that I got to work with her more, and, selfishly, that I got to tell her how she inspired me in ways I’m not sure I even understand.

When I got laid off from the Voice in February, my life was turned inside-out: I loved that job more than any other I’ve ever had, I was that job, and I was nothing short of despondent when I lost it. That cab ride over the Brooklyn Bridge remains one of the darker moments I’ve experienced in my thirty years. Sharon and the Dap-Kings were opening for Hall & Oates two days afterwards at Madison Square Garden, so I threw on my leopard coat and red lipstick, and Chona and I went to go watch them do their thing. It felt like a return to routine in the best way, in that going to see Sharon was a necessary reminder that music heals, and that the word “impossible” is but a bluff, and a potentially empty one at that. That’s the last time I saw her perform, on that Friday night at the end of that terrible week, and she was the angel I needed then. She was living proof that you can get through dark days. Her passing doesn’t discount her ability to do that, and if anything, the fact that she was singing on her deathbed after two strokes tried to rob her of the ability to speak just makes her stronger.

She won’t stop being a legend on this earth just because she left it. And I’m thankful for that.

#sharon jones #rip sharon jones #daptone records #music

You Can’t Start A Fire

The Born in the U.S.A. binge started somewhere on the Gallatin Pike in late September.

I drove all over Nashville that week, from 12 South to Inglewood to Opryland and back again, and “I’m Goin’ Down” was my soundtrack for most of it. Since seeing Springsteen for the first time in March, I’ve worked The River, Born to Run, and Born in the U.S.A. especially into heavy rotation when I’m sketching out ideas at home or in transit. For whatever reason, “I’m Goin’ Down” was the release for me, the pedal stomper, the shake-it-in-the-mirror number, the break. I like the snarl of it, its breath of stale beer, the cigarette ash stuck in the frets, the sarcasm, the palpable frustration, the hurt feelings and the perfect chord progression. I like how it makes a joke of a seriously unfunny situation, how he makes a point to say everything you shouldn’t in a moment that could break a fragile thing.

“I’m Goin’ Down” gives us Springsteen as a lit fuse, venting over a relationship left out in the cold, where the object of his affection is treating him less like a lover and more like a nuisance, an obligation, a chore. He’s fed up, wounded, and offended at the changing tide that he’s exhausted himself swimming against. The bright melody is a perfect juxtaposition to the squint of the subject matter. “I pull you close now baby, but when we kiss I can feel a doubt” "My kisses used to turn you inside out” “I'm sick and tired of you setting me up, yeah / Setting me up just to knock-a knock-a knock-a me down” — the song is the autopsy of that last call last straw, when you’ve been patiently trying to wait out the mood of this person that suddenly feels like a stranger and you’re furious that they let you get swept out to sea. You would throw them a life jacket if you could, or give them your own, even, and they just watch as the waves take you, for whatever reason. They just let you go.

Nashville is a city full of ghosts for me — I once chased a man there l thought I could love from a distance, only for him to treat me as an afterthought — and even though that piece of past is distant, the roads in Nashville look and feel the same. “I’m Goin’ Down” was a familiar comfort in a familiar place, but it had new context in September. I drove up and down Gallatin super late at night, passing my turn-off in both directions and doing loops in the Woodland Studios parking lot just to hear it a few more times before rolling the windows up and turning the volume down as I eased into the driveway so as not to wake the neighbors. If Springsteen in all his boisterous charm and Take Me As I Am And Know What You Got When You Get It, Sweetheart swagger can still be vulnerable when a woman suddenly decides that she finds him unattractive, unloveable, or both, it made me feel less alone and rejected in my own suddenly discardable skin. It legitimized the hurt, a little bit, and stressed the importance of the universal power of the love (or love, lost) song: We all go through this at one point or another, it is temporary and cyclical, and we get through it, too — and sometimes even with the other person if you're both strong enough to figure it out.

But it turns out we’re all disposable, even to the person who was tracing the curves of your body in the morning just hours before he seemed to change his mind.

I was hellbent on figuring it out, for some reason, and this has never happened to me before, this need to see it through. I flew back to New York with “I’m Goin’ Down” on repeat to psych myself up for the week ahead. I thought about what I’d say, how I’d act, how I’d approach my situation with care and consideration to not pull a Bruce and throw my hands up and walk away in a sulky huff. I wrote out letters I’ll never send and exorcised my emotional demons by jotting them down and throwing them away. I didn’t react or pick a fight to force a conversation as Bruce does when he calls out his girl for her bored sighs. I did my hair, wore the new jeans that made my ass look fantastic, hoped for the best, and watched, horrified, when it crashed and burned over a single sentence I absentmindedly blurted out in an exhausted, angry moment at the end of an exhausted, angry week. I was walking on egg shells leading up to that never-should’ve-happened conversation that did, and all of the thinking I’d done with the other person’s feelings, wants, and needs in mind didn’t matter. I wasn’t worth figuring out with everything else they had going on. I felt like I’d set myself up to fail, in spite of the best intentions I’d had in mind and the cautionary tale “I’m Goin’ Down” provided, and then I lived out “I’m Goin’ Down” in real time. Self-sabotage can wear the mask of good intentions and really, truly convince you they’re the same sometimes.

On the flight to Los Angeles days after that, I continued to listen to “I’m Goin’ Down” on a loop, an act of meditation and research all at once. (I was writing up Bruce’s biography, Born to Run, at the time, and filing the final draft of the piece from the plane.) I love driving at night in Los Angeles, as plenty do who have an affinity for the city but haven’t committed to calling it home just yet; I rubberneck on boulevards to savor twisting tubes of buzzing neon and pull over if palm trees are leaning towards the ascending hills in Silverlake just so. At sunset, just before the switches are flipped and the city lights up, the trees and bungalows and urban topography of the low L.A. skyline makes for a stunning silhouette against the burning sky.

I didn’t pick up the car until my last day in L.A., when I drove out to Malibu and then up the PCH to Big Sur, but I finally broke the “I’m Goin’ Down” spell with Bon Iver’s 22, A Million as I was reviewing his set in Oakland in a couple of days. (The car didn’t come with a USB port or an aux cable, so I stopped at Amoeba in Hollywood, grabbed the disc and the Allah-Las’ new record, and went about my business. I left Born in the U.S.A. on the shelf.) If “I’m Goin’ Down” was a masochistic mantra, 22, A Million for an eight-hour drive was a degree (or several) crueler than that, as Justin Vernon can tap into heartbreak and confusion and the complete and utter despair of abandonment better than anyone. I drove through Salinas, through Pismo Beach and Morro Bay, the sun hot and the wind intense as the Pacific betrayed its blues and hit the eye with silver. The sky was cooler than it was in L.A., all benevolent pastels as it set save for the smoldering red of its center. I made it to my spot in Big Sur — a motor lodge, just the kind you’d want nestled in the redwoods, complete with a porch and a fireplace but just enough of a stinging reminder that you’re staying in such a romantic spot alone — in time for sunset. I ditched my stuff and drove to a bluff with a decent view so I could watch the sun sink into the deep.

Springsteen talked about his Californian failures in Born to Run, long before “I’m Goin’ Down” was written thanks to years of romantic fuck-ups and empty gestures. He admitted to having huge dreams on those first jaunts out west, thinking he’d make it big and get to stay out there instead of returning to the squalor and club notoriety of the Jersey Shore scene. As beautiful as that drive was, and as proud as I felt for making it, part of me felt like a failure, too, as I hit those hairpin turns in a context I didn’t want. I was taking this trip and going on this adventure alone, and the person I wanted to tell about it — to send a bunch of photos of breathtaking vistas, to laugh about various signs I’d seen on the road, to gush about how good it was to see Berkeley again, how excited I was for Bon Iver’s tour kick-off, all of it — he didn’t want to hear from me, to hear about any of it. He had set limits about when and how I could do that (or, explicitly, that I couldn’t). The empowerment of “I’m Goin’ Down” and the work I thought I’d done to get over this wavered, and even if I was justified in feeling as frustrated and pissed off and incensed as Bruce, it didn’t matter. I felt alone, cast aside, disposed of, abandoned. Pick your synonym for “ditched” and fill in the blank accordingly. I wanted this silence to cease, and the vulnerability that 22, A Million finessed just ripped the sutures out of whatever part of my heart had started to scar.

By the time I made it past San José, I favored the radio and blasted KFOG to break up the funk: Sister Hazel, Hozier, Semisonic, Everclear, Seven Mary Three, a laughable smattering of weird alt rock and popular hits that made the hour-and-a-half into the Bay Area fly while shaking off the side-effects of 22, A Million and Bruce. I met up with Marcy, and we spent most of the afternoon giggling and catching each other up on our lives and sharing my last joint, same as it ever was, but with smoke curling up and out of her window instead of wine bottles and glasses leaving rings on the coffee table. When we drove to dinner, she put on Lemonade, and I grabbed her phone and bounced back and forth between “Hold Up” and “All Night,” playing each track twice each before we got to the restaurant. “All Night” is my favorite song on the album. (It’s apparently Beyoncé’s favorite, too.) The resolution of it shatters with stark intensity, and it’s the conclusion the hopeless (or hopeful) romantic yearns for at the end of that raw listen. If “All Night” can preach optimism and forgiveness in the face of infidelity and hurt and fury and pain, then there’s hope, right? There’s a chance?

I rarely go to shows alone these days, and the last time I felt like I truly made a habit of it was when I first moved to New York and didn’t know anyone yet. Since then, concerts involve a handful of familiar faces, at the very least; there’s always another critic working, a friend and their friends who are having a great Thursday night out, someone who saw that you mentioned the gig on Facebook and excitedly chimed in that they’re going, too, etc. Bon Iver at the Fox Theatre was the first show I’d gone to alone in a long time, and I’m glad I did. Vernon was extraordinary, and I wept through most of it, from the desperate pleas of “715 - CR∑∑KS” to the resignation of “8 (Circle)” to the unexpected encore of “Skinny Love,” which felt pointedly addressed to me and so embarrassingly predictable at the same time. Of course Vernon would come out and sing the song that’s nursed me through every break-up that mattered in that very moment. Of course these songs I studied while driving up the PCH would feel so autobiographically mine in this minute. Of course I was standing there, solo, soaking in the tears of his words, reveling in the flawlessness of his artistry and lyrical masochism as I was trying to hold onto something that wasn’t really mine to fight for anymore.

I felt hopeful for a naive minute or two before the light changed somewhere on Telegraph, as the magnitude of heartbroken solidarity hit me at that intersection. Bruce Springsteen and Bon Iver and Beyoncé had all written love songs that spoke to what I was going through in ways that didn’t feel like cookie cutter clichés or reaching comparisons. They’d all been there before; they’d all given up and spat insults in a wounded moment and thrown self-respect out the window while begging the other person to stay. They’d all fought and lost, said the wrong thing in the wrong moment, felt trapped in the shell of something the other person had long since discarded. They wrote their lines in different cities, in different time zones, and in different decades, in the case of Springsteen. But they hurt, and they found acceptance in that, even if the end really did draw nigh and in a way they’d fought so hard to prevent. If Bruce can walk away, so can I. If Bey can believe that love will figure itself out, so can I. And if Vernon can sprint back and forth between both and drive himself fucking crazy in the process, so can I. From Nashville to Los Angeles and up the PCH to Oakland, I didn’t feel wrong or stupid or psychotic or misunderstood. I just felt, those feelings were strong, and I had back-up blasting through the speakers at me to prove it.

On the night I flew back to New York, we raced the sun as we drove over the Bay Bridge and through the city on the way to SFO. “I’m Goin’ Down” came back on; I fell asleep to 22, A Million on the flight.

In the weeks since then, my street has changed, the city has changed, the country has changed, the world has changed. Whatever this was took a seemingly final turn yesterday, and I really gave everything I could to patience and tolerance and understanding to keep the cautionary tale at bay before that. He had sneered at me that “Timing is everything” in a horrible moment the night everything unraveled, and he wasn’t wrong. My feelings weren’t enough — I wasn’t enough — but that’s not the worst thing here, or the worst outcome for me, even. I can sleep at night knowing I was open, and passionate, and kind, and that I was eager to share the best of myself with someone I wanted to kiss all the time. I can listen to “I’m Goin’ Down” and 22, A Million and “All Night” and think of him and not feel like a failure, and I can drive around listening to Born in the U.S.A. in a different city and think of the signs I desperately sought out in the poetry scrawled in dive bar bathroom stalls and neon marquees and on stages across the country.

We all go through this at one point or another, it is temporary and cyclical, and we get through it, too — and always with the right person, if you're strong enough to realize it may just be you this time around.

#love and other stuff #hfh #this is my youth #nashville #los angeles #hil in la #hil in new york #the ballad of love and hate #california #bon iver #bruce springsteen #beyonce #beyonce all night

bottomdiluc

Do Not Tell Your Favorite Band What To Do

I wrote a story about Lucius's performance with Roger Waters at Desert Trip. Roger Waters is a political dude; Roger Waters used his platform as a popular musician closing a festival before a 75,000-strong audience to further a message he believes in. Of the six artists at Desert Trip, he was the most outspoken one, and incorporated Black Lives Matter messaging and commentary on Trump’s wall into his set. His execution was genius, the performance was sensational, and as Jess says in this piece, regardless of how you're planning on voting in November, it was the kind of show that moves you and, most importantly, makes you think.

When Lucius shared this on their Facebook page, the first comment was "I really wish you and other musicians would just stick to music and leave the Trump-bashing behind. You DO realize that there are Lucius fans who are also Trump fans?"

This response is boring, expected, and infuriating all at once; every election season, we hear about the bizarre relationship between conservative fans and their relationship to music made by liberal artists. Republican candidates, in particular, are sent C&Ds and told to stop playing the music of artists who have no desire to support their campaigns.

It's why the Springsteen fandom of Chris Christie is so mesmerizing, and what's weirdly humanizing about the Jersey governor: While I find the man and his political council repulsive, there's a part of me that cringes at the thought of my very favorite musician — my idol, even — despising everything I represent and do. Springsteen doesn't acknowledge Christie's presence at shows. That shit must sting. I genuinely don't understand how Christie can listen to Springsteen's music and be so self-absorbed or delusional as to completely ignore the narrator and assume that every word he says is rooted in fictional thought and opinion. Amanda Petrusich boiled this down in her excellent piece on the subject for The New Yorker: “it doesn’t matter if there’s a staggering fissure between what a thing really means and what someone else wants it to mean. All that matters is that it sounds cool.”

This is where this gets personal, and why the Lucius comment is forcing this train of thought right now: We all know people who refuse to respect the people making the music, because their interpretation of the artist’s words and actions is the absolute. It is the listening experience they can own, not the words; the only meanings they seem to glean are the ones they find once they’ve played through Darkness on the Edge of Town enough times and a particular stanza resonates based on where they’re presently at in their own story.

Your interpretation of a lyric or a performance does not erase or take precedence over that of the artist. The beauty of the lyric is in its relatable quality, and imprinting or projecting your shit on top of it only reflects your inability to listen, not the strength or validity of the art itself.

Example: A friend went to a Springsteen show, and posted a photo of them and their family waving a "Blue Lives Matter" flag in the parking lot. This person is passionate about protecting the lives of police officers; I’ll give them that. The gesture is still baffling given the occasion and Springsteen’s activism and politics. I have to hope that they don’t know “41 Shots (American Skin),” because holy shit, if they are familiar with his statement on police brutality, and they still were like, “You know what’s a good idea? Bringing a ‘Blue Lives Matter’ flag to the stadium and waving it in the parking lot before going into the venue and listening to Bruce sing about police officers shooting people!” — that’s a lot. I bring this up not to mock, insult, or scold these people, but to illustrate that their personal stories and connections to that flag were more important to them than the message of the person they had paid tickets to see that night. They were proud of waving their Blue Lives Matter flag. They were waving a Blue Lives Matter flag at a concert where the headliner has spoken out against reactionary campaigns and police brutality for decades. These lines of thinking do conflict.

To bring this back to the Lucius comment, I find it wildly hypocritical for a fan to tell an artist what to do, and even more offensive for a vocal Trump supporter to essentially tell these women to not perform with who they choose because it might “annoy or piss off half your customers.” His interpretation of the fan/artist dynamic is one thing — you are not a customer, guy, and your concert ticket does not buy you the right to tell them how to write, perform, or do a goddamn thing — but his dismissal of the material is telling, not only of the typical Trump supporter but of an uncomfortable music fan forced to confront the agency of the artist.

I’m sure he does wish that artists like Lucius would refrain from making him think, from making him confront his own hypocrisy. I’m sure he’s not super into being reminded what the First Amendment is and how it works. And I’m really, really sure that the music he loves is rooted in something so, so different from his interpretation of it, and confronting that delusion has to be a very frightening thing.

The only way to avoid that delusion in the first place is to listen — and to listen to the person singing those words that move you so much, even if they’re simply just telling you to think.

#politics #music #music and politics #desert trip #lucius #roger waters #pink floyd #roger waters politics #desert trip 2016 #LOUD NOISES WHAT ARE WE YELLING ABOUT #Hil Got Mad #do not tell your favorite band what to do

at Silver Lake, Los Angeles

Matthew Logan Vasquez takes flight. #newportfolk (at Fort Adams)

#newportfolk

boyhaus-deactivated20181129

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