Y’all it is hot out, but you probably know that. My body does not handle heat well, I get real slow and tired, my feet swell, and I get big time irritable, but I’m trying really hard this year to embrace the sunshine (with lots of cold water and sunscreen), and also know my limits. In the past my fear of missing out on fun times in the summer sun with my friends has forced me out of the house, but as I can feel myself shedding some of my compulsory needs to be included and participate, I can also feel myself allowing more space for my own well-being (which sometimes means staying in on a 90+ degree day to sit in my cool, finished basement, and watch a movie instead).
It’s been big time internal shift → external shift → reflection → growth? → change? → gratitude hours over here for me, and I’m really happy about that. I’ve worried a lot in my life about spending too much of my time and energy living inside my own head, but I think I’m actually reaching a solid equilibrium between my (flourishing) internal life and socializing in ways that feel good. It’s nice to feel my brain slow down a bit, to feel less pressure to have opinions about things I just don’t particularly care to think about, and to feel more lucid in a lot of my decision making, instead of like a tiny little hamster on an unstoppable wheel. It’s cool to give yourself space to let your priorities kind of shift into focus in ways that feel more accessible in your everyday life. Aging is cool, and so is therapy.
As of yesterday I’ve officially lived in Philadelphia for 2 years. I love it here. I love how it feels simultaneously like home and like a puzzle I’m still solving every day, with new tricks and treats around every corner. I have two jobs in town that make me feel very much like myself and also very rooted in Philadelphia: days at the bookstore, nights at Johnny Brenda’s (new cool gig for me). I feel like the seeds I started planting when I moved here are starting to blossom, and that is so rewarding. Not everything is roses, but the thorns don’t feel as sharp as they sometimes do, and that’s another thing I am thankful for. I was considering going on antidepressants, but took the first step of going off of hormonal birth control after 8 years. I’m currently, slowly (but surely) detoxing from hormones, and after about a month now I can feel my moods starting to level out a bit. The first couple weeks were Rough, and I’m sure that they’ll return in waves, but I fear them less knowing they have an end. Every end and every beginning are temporary. It’s cool to know that I can always revisit the idea of medication once I feel I’ve found my natural balance.
I write to you today because I am just so excited about new Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I spent the long weekend in New York, showing a friend around (his first time in the city), and on Sunday we stumbled across a sidewalk in Williamsburg that was tagged up and down with “YYYs” in black spraypaint. It felt like stumbling into a 2007 time warp following the tags to a secret show, but instead we just ended up at the massive Secretly office building with no questions answered. Lo and freaking Behold, now I know, NEW YEAH YEAH YEAHs!
I’ve been making spreadsheets all morning for Summer Tour goings-on, and listening to every YYYs record in order, with the new single padding them out in between. I love the use of Perfume Genius here in a way that feels seamless, and I love how BIG this song sounds and feels, I just cannot wait to see them perform it live.
Most music has just not been hitting for me in the last month, with key exceptions being Rosalía, Tokischa, Rosalía x Tokischa, and lots and lots of Reggaeton (my summer go-to). When I don’t want to think thoughts, and I just want to have a very good time I exclusively listen to pop in Spanish because I can vaguely understand what they’re saying, enough to catch the vibe, or to know when something is very gay, but not enough to have to really think about how corny pop lyrics are. A fun thing to do is to listen to Tokischa rap and watch the lyrics fly by on my phone screen and realize she’s saying like twice as many words as I can distinguish.
Listening to YYYs today has been a completely different vibe though. Putting on Fever to Tell (2003), one of my favorite albums of all time, and just blasting it and screaming along for the first time in years felt like it unlocked a teenage giddiness that I don’t often access when it comes to music these days. It’s such a special feeling to call something forward from your past and be able to meet it with equal excitement as you once could at 16.
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I’ve been thinking a lot this morning about one of my favorite shows I attended in high school: CSS co-headlining with Sleigh Bells in 2011 at the National in Richmond. How special and exciting for me to be able to see this brilliant Brazilian band perform songs from their 2006 self-titled record that I had been obsessed with since it had come out (remember when “Music is My Hot, Hot Sex” was in that one apple commercial for the first iPod touch? I’m remembering now that getting into this band was how I found out Brazilian people speak Portuguese, hello colonialism), followed by Sleigh Bells performing Treats (2010) absolutely THE album I used to listen to in my friend’s car and feel like that bitch junior year !!! I remember seeing both front women of these bands putting on back to back some of the highest-energy shows I’ve ever seen live and just being mesmerized by them. Shoutout to Sleigh Bells for having a full wall of speakers built behind them so they could really blast that shit right into my teenage bones. I remember leaving that venue and going to spend the night at a friend’s house feeling like I knew exactly who I wanted to be: loud and vibrant.
Working in music for the past handful of years, especially when I was working at a label, made me feel like I have to stay on top of new music every single week (again the hamster wheel), and it really sucked a lot of the joy out of music for me. I didn’t revisit most records for years, I felt like all of my listening time had to be productive in a certain sense, and I’m really happy to be breaking that cycle. Today I’m just listening to the badass records that made me feel like I was on fire in the best way possible, and trying to access and channel that energy.
What I read in May (favorites bolded):
The Lost Daughter - Elena Ferrante // brutal, parenthood
Poetics of Work - Noémie Lefebvre // i did not like this
Diaries of a Terrorist - Christopher Soto // poetry, solid, gay
Permanent Volta - Rosie Stockton // poetry, very academic, gay, i re-read many of these poems
The Year the City Emptied - Daisy Fried // high concept, high delivery
Monarch - Candice Wuehle // deep state gay beauty queen novel for ME
Either/Or - Elif Batuman // laugh laugh laugh
Ashkenazi Herbalism - Deatra Cohen // incredible resource
The Employees - Olga Ravn // sparse and stylish with so much going on under the surface
Time is a Mother - Ocean Vuong // quite good, I like his poetry much more than his novel
What I watched in May:
Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987, Éric Rohmer) // Rohmer is comfort food for me
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022, The Daniels) // this was so much better than their first film, very silly but heartwarming
Four Roads (2021, Alice Rohrwacher) // stunning short film made in early quarantine Italy
The Fifth Element (1997, Luc Besson) // 90s Bruce Willis so hot
In the Aisles (2018, Thomas Stuber) // quiet, sad workplace romance starring two of my favorite German actors
Paris is Burning (1990, Jennie Livingston) // a CLASSIC, ICONIC
Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known (2022, lol) // what a fun time, I cringed and cried
Paris, 13th District (2022, Jacques Audiard) // fantastic reworking of Adrian Tomine’s short stories, so horny and stunning and French, thank you Céline Sciamma for this co-write
The Novelist’s Film (2022, Hong Sang-soo) // got to go to the US pre-premiere like an exclusive little bitch! Kim Min-hee is my wife
The Power of Kangwon Province (1998, Hong Sang-soo) // the oldest of his film’s I’ve seen, very different from his new stuff, very slow
You’ve Never Been Completely Honest (2022, Joey Izzo) // animated & produced by a streetwear brand I like lol (Brain Dead)
Army of Shadows (1969, Jean-Pierre Melville) // I love Melville, and this is one of his most famous films but I found it to be narratively sloppy, had a hard time understanding what was going on and why
High and Low (1963, Akira Kurosawa) // So tense and gorgeous, love a high speed train crime scene
Pather Panchali (1955, Satyajit Ray) // So glad I finally watched this absolutely endearing film, gonna finish the trilogy soon
The Northman (2022, Robert Eggers) // this was very fun to watch stoned out of my mind
Lost in the Mountains (2009, Hong Sang-soo) // this 30 minute short really encapsulates the narrative turn in his filmmaking, my retrospective continues
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I would like to thank you for reading this, or skimming it, and I would like to tell you that And Then We Danced is playing on Mubi right now and I would really recommend it! That was the last film I saw in theaters before covid and it’s one of my favorites of the decade so far! Gay! Happy Pride!