SOUR at any age

It’s fascinating but not surprising to me that the confines of adulthood don’t honor the weight of relationships ending. There is no PTO for heartbreak. The one faction of people who do have the freedom to bask in the drama of it all is The Teens. At the moment, none is better at turning it into something significant than eighteen year old Olivia Rodrigo.

I’m a sucker for any story that builds a home for itself in the theatrics of unrequited love and Rodrigo’s debut album, SOUR does just that. What really astounds me when listening to the album is not just the songwriting, the production, or the vocals it’s the insight the songs are rationalized with.

My favorite examples being, “Know that I loved you so bad/ I let you treat me like that/ I was your willing accomplice, honey,” she laments on favorite crime. It’s nearly impossible to see one’s own culpability when you feel as though something was done to you. To have this level of emotional intelligence as a teenager seems like the listener is not only being given the gift of the music but also a secret ingredient to personal growth.

On “enough for you” a song that illustrates the pain in tirelessly striving to be good enough for someone else she sings “You say I'm never satisfied/ But that's not me, it's you/ 'Cause all I ever wanted was to be enough/ But I don't think anything could ever be enough/ For you, enough for you”.

If someone told me this album was co-written by a therapist, I would believe them.

While pride as a coping mechanism can play such a role in real life, the absence of it takes on a life of its own on SOUR. With not an ounce of soul-baring lacking, a listener could close their eyes while any of its songs play and visualize Rodrigo’s heart on her sleeve.

She rides each wave of emotion out manipulating pop’s malleable outlines in the process. On “brutal” an energetic pop-punk track she detonates her frustrations over other’s perceptions of her as well as how she perceives herself. She wears the pop-punk crown well while effortlessly transitioning to the slower ballads like “traitor”, “happier,” “enough for you” and my personal fave, “favorite crime.”

My only not-so-favorable critique of the record is that a lot of it feels like she’s trying on the vocal stylings of other artists: Taylor Swift, Lorde, Bon Iver, No Doubt, the list continues. However, Rodrigo is young and she’s only just begun so I’m keen to offer the benefit of the doubt here. I will contest my own critique in that her imitation is born out of homage and inspiration and soon enough she’ll be imbuing the sounds of those that came before her with more of her own idiosyncrasies.

Love might be a universal language but heartbreak is the subtext. It has the ability to both haunt our experiences or push us to surrender to love that feels right and Rodrigo speaks it at an expert’s level. Because of this, despite her newness and her youth, SOUR’s lyrics, harmonies, and wisdom know no age thus emphasizing its place as a timeless debut album.

Exploring the tank on Big Fish Theory

The synths come in on Crabs in a Bucket like alarms. On Vince Staples’ Big Fish Theory It’s unclear at first, whether the subject is rushing to or from the chaos but a listener will soon realize it’s neither. They are trying to avoid the scene at all costs.

Music critics have long since made the connection between the Big Fish Theory’s title (the philosophy that a fish can only grow to the size of its tank) and Vince’s feelings of being boxed into his own identity as both a black man in America and a rapper.

Vince’s narrative is obviously different from mine but the message of the album permeates more profoundly to me considering how much of life has been taken away by the pandemic. Even writing this post feels as though I’m operating only within confines of what I presently know because new experiences have run dry.

On Party People, Vince asks how he could possibly enjoy himself in this place when carnage wreaks havoc over his city and his people. On Ramona Park is Yankee Stadium Vince begs to know if his city will remember him if he died. For different reasons, I ask the same of my city. Our politicians have taken countless missteps during this crisis leaving the population feeling abandoned.

While Vince’s racial and professional anxieties are the album’s driving force there’s also an undertone of neuroses over love. It’s clear on tracks like Alyssa Interlude, Love Can Be…, and 745 that Vince wants or at least knows that True Love and stable companionship exist but have escaped his hands because of his own unresolved trauma. Instead of pursuing the real, he wields bravado and arrogance to keep women at arm’s length. A strategy that any worthy romantic prospect would quickly identify and tire of, liberating him from any real responsibility.

So many of us invent shields to limit the risk of pain through vulnerability. In the age of dating apps and unlimited choice, it’s so easy to coast on the shallow waters of a sexual attraction rather than really getting to know someone and vice versa.

At a time when human contact can be so dangerous, what further justification is needed for putting space between one another and surviving on the fleeting thrills of casual encounters like frogs jumping from one lily pad to the next. But bound to our own solitude during a global crisis, how can we grow when we’re just running in place?

That said, the real sinker of the Big Fish Theory is that the fish knows they’re capable of more and feels a sense of guilt over it. While we might expect Vince to lean on the byproducts of gang life or his rapper lifestyle: sex, drugs, money, etc. as a means of avoiding self-acceptance, he does not. He’s aware of what lies ahead and he knows he’s stronger than those who have fallen victim, though he maybe wishes life were different. Leave it to the late SOPHIE’s chaotic and intoxicating production on Yeah Right to make the listener feel as though they’ve been the one swept up in a lifestyle of hedonism and indulgence.

I’ve uncovered a lot behaviors and habits over the last twelve months and I’ve tried to modify and grow where possible despite this diluted version of the world we’re living in. Sometimes I worry that when it is time for the world to shift back to a semblance of what it used to be, I’ll revert to an older version of myself but like Vince I trust that I’m meant to grow larger than the tank, even if it means the glass shatters.

Traveling the World one Reggaeton and Afrobeat Song at a Time

Winter in New York is a treacherous time for myself and many others. I much prefer the tireless heat of summer. Controversial, I know but with all its flaws it still offers warmth whereas the cold is always unwelcoming and bitter and I know when I’m not wanted. Combine these usual feelings of winter discomfort with a global pandemic, and you have me at what I like to call: Not My Best.

The other day I was trying to explain to a coworker my general feelings these days and all I could muster was, nothing is quite “hitting.” To even write that feels a bit sad and stupid. There is so much joy and nuance to be drawn from the mundane. I love looking into my building’s alley and seeing the striped, tan cat with its body plopped atop the rodent catcher. I love hearing my super and his friends conversing loudly in Turkish, reminiscent of my own Middle Eastern family’s inability to talk at moderate volumes.

But underneath all of that it’s impossible to ignore that something is amiss. There is only so much to be drawn from each day and like so many, I’m tired of ringing out each one desperately trying to soak up what little tiny pleasures there are when every day looks nearly the same. I want the abundance back.

During this time of toxic ennui I’ve leaned heavily into two genres of music that hold teleportation powers: reggaeton and Afrobeat. The former has been a personal security blanket for a while now, especially when seasonal depression rears its audacious head to threaten my characteristically smiley demeanor. The latter I’ve become increasingly more interested in over the last year but admittedly have a lot more discovering to do.

With both genres you one is not just listening to a reggaeton or West African song. One is listening to generations of sound development in tandem with each people’s Diasporic movements through the UK, South Africa, and the Caribbean. Like cells, you can close your eyes and almost envision the melding of dancehall, pop, reggae, dembow transforming their structures into new DNA.

Each bounce of a syncopated drum beat on a reggaeton song invites scenes from previous years travels allowing me to live vicariously through my own memories. When I hear the brush of strings on Ozuna and Romeo Santos’ Ibiza, I see my mom and me on a beach in La Romana on our last trip to visit her friend. The aggressive guitar on Bad Bunny’s NI BIEN NI MAL and Bad Gyal’s Fiebre take me back to the reggaeton parties hosted by the Rosa Perreo music collective I would frequent with a friend. Sweating in a compact space with strangers never bothered me but now it may be the only thing that could eradicate the pandemic fatigue.

Afrobeat is a catch-all term created by non-African markets to refer to all music stemming from West Africa. While the label itself can be considered reductive of all the nuance the genre encapsulates, the music living under its umbrella has saved me on some of the pandemic’s darker days.

The polyrhythmic drums on Ghanaian artist’s Amaarae’s THE ANGEL YOU DON’T KNOW offers a metaphorical life-raft. The EP is filled with anthems of independence and bravado that simultaneously evoke melancholia and an unrelenting urge to shake ass (the poetry just comes to me.) Several songs include the word ‘SAD’ in the title so a listener might be fooled into thinking otherwise but if you take a closer listen you’ll find the repetition is a mere red herring for the artist’s obvious self-assurance expressed consistently throughout the album.

Though I haven’t been to Africa this EP along with Burna Boy’s African Giant, DaVido’s A Good Time, and WizKid’s most recent project Made in Lagos provide insight into a culture that is unfamiliar. It’s a gateway to not just new music but new dances, new food, new people, new history.

It’s been so easy to forget the rest of the world exists and to dive deeper into a well of narcissism and self-pity when the rest of the world is cut off. Reggaeton and Afrobeat offer liberation and hope in a time when both feel beyond reach and nonexistent. The artists give us more than just the music but pathways to new places, experiences, and people; a respite from chaos beyond our control. The music always hits even when nothing else quite does.

a little yellow and some orange

We’re approaching the end of April in this quarantine/lockdown/shelter in place/whatever you want to call it. To me, it isn’t hell but it does strike an odd resemblance to what I’d picture purgatory to be; this or perpetually stuck in a doctor’s waiting room but both evoke the same feeling.

I’m big on details. I love knowing that there’s a little yellow and some orange in my best friend’s green eyes. I like knowing that my mom was wearing red pants the day she first met my father and on their first date she ordered a rum and coke but pronounced it ‘rum and cock'.’ I laze in the knowledge that if I wake up early enough I can see the sunlight reflecting the shape of my fire escape onto my bedroom wall. Nothings that are somethings to me.

This affinity for the small things translates to how I consume music as well. That one electro sound on Drake’s, “Peak,” the rhythm on Tirzah’s, “Make It Up,” that pulsates like it’s some sort of morse code, or the nine hundred beat changes on Bad Bunny’s “Safaera” all these things stood out to me on first listens.

Before I dive in here, the effects of this health crisis are not lost on me. But it hasn’t just claimed lives and held normalcy captive but it’s left us with a shortage of details.

Every day I feel as though I’ve been staring at the same painted canvas for days on end, its nuance now normalized. This powerful piece of art has mutated into a mass produced inspirational quote framed and sold at Target. Okay maybe I didn’t have to get that dark but the overpowering indifference to my environment has broadened its reach and formed a tight grip on the music I love leaving me with a sense of detachment.

These days, nothing seems to sound quite how it did before, as though I’m listening from behind a closed door.

In this time, I’ve become a connoisseur of washing dishes and taking afternoon naps on bleak days like today. I’ve been throwing on recently released singles (James Blakes, “You’re Too Precious” and Leven Kali’s “PERFECT IS BORING” featuring Ty Dolla $ign) and EP’s (Kali Uchis’ TO FEEL ALIVE) from artists I usually can’t help but give all my focus to just to fill the inescapable silence. Some days it feels like a companion on other days it feels toxic.

I sit and wonder if these songs and projects are the artists’ piecemeal offerings because the quiet gets to be too much for them too. All of it feels like a bandaid for a broken ligament and the music is over too quickly but I’m thankful for it.

The other day, no match for the quiet, I was passively allowing it to wash over me as I sprawled out on a yoga mat in the living room, staring at the ceiling (new favorite activity). I started to notice new details and sounds emerging despite the aloofness I felt. The radiator hums intermittently throughout the day (she’s a Soprano), the rain droplets hit the window in an off beat pattern, and the high school orchestra teacher in apartment 4B live streams her classes until 1:45 p.m. It’s the only live music I’ve heard in weeks, I linger for a little too long in the stairwell just to soak it all in.

I also never really paid any attention to an artist’s decision to format a song’s title in all caps but now when I read them they all feel as though the artist is screaming; not out of anger, but yearning. Everyone is begging to break free, to laugh with their friends over nonsense, to hug and kiss and fuck, to drink $15 cocktails in dimly lit bars, to ride the G train, to confidently recite their bagel order in front of all the patrons in the fast moving line only to have it messed up. We are pleading for this (last one especially).

I can’t envision what the world will look like when we’re passed this: our streets, our neighbors, our relationships. I’m not sure how realistic it’ll be to hope for a return to how things used to be. But I do want to believe that in the absence of all that was, a newness will emerge. I can’t wait to discover those details.

I Haven't Laughed In Days

The stench of my own jealousy wreaks as the eucalypti on the kitchen table bathe in the doting sunlight. The audacity of its presence, making its way into anyone’s home. I want to be the sun. I want to barge into rooms that aren’t mine, claim space in homes that don’t belong to me, and latch unsuspecting victims onto my warmth. I hope it tells all my secrets and calls all my bluffs.

I claw at the wall interrogating destiny but she told me to save it for my weekly therapy session. Fair enough. I’d love to have a someone here I could get sick of but all I have are brief scenes from fictional stories I’ve made up over time. There’s no shame in loving someone who can’t handle it but it just, how you say: sucks. I wrote a song the other day called I Hate This. The only lyrics are “I hate this, I hate this,” and what makes it a song is that I sing it with a phoned in melody.

When this is all over with I’ll kiss whoever I want, wherever I want. I’ll drive six hours to get French fries in that small town upstate where the main attraction is a strip mall Canadians flock to when they cross the border. I’ll count the wrinkles in my friend’s faces when they smile, taking a magnifying glass to the details that can’t be captured through a lens on a MacBook Pro. I’ll clock the furniture and artwork in all their apartments that didn’t make it into the frame of the Zooms and Google Hangouts. I’ll build a shrine for all their idiosyncrasies and place crowns around their flaws.

I like the alone time but I called 911 because I haven’t laughed in days. I’ve giggled at words written on a page rehearsed, recited, recorded, and played for millions, sure. But laughing at something organically stupid and mundane, that’s the salt of the earth. That’s the stuff the sun is jealous of.

spinning in circles on my birthday

I’m not sure where to start here and if I don’t get this out I fear this blog post centered on Mac Miller’s Circle and turning thirty will be at risk of being published when I turn thirty one so, here goes.

It’s the eve of my aforementioned thirtieth birthday and I feel giddy. I didn’t think I would. I think it is boring to make a big deal out of turning thirty but I have a crippling fear of aging and an overall slowing down of life, and achey bones and I didn’t know how I would feel.

Out of all of my friends I am historically the one that makes the biggest deal out of their birthday. I’ve known most of my closest friends for about ten to fifteen years so it might be hard for them to rationalize that I didn’t always used to be this obnoxious about “just another day.”

While my birthday is yes, maybe a vacation in narcissism, it is more a way for me to have all the people I love in the same place. The sincerity might be gross and for that I won’t apologize. I didn’t always feel loved and as I started acclimating to the feeling that I mattered to some people (okay, sidebar - it is insane that someone, anyone has to learn that and it’s not just built in but okay whatever life, experiences, trauma, etc.) I realized that I’d maybe have people who would want to celebrate with me and so I became a person who loved her birthday.

When the New Year rolled in I wanted to write something about the previous decade but it felt cheap because, well, wherever I turned or looked or scrolled everyone was doing the same thing. I do love my birthday but I still very much thing I’m a speck of dust in this world and not everyone cares I rode a horse in Australia in 2016 or saw a taping of Big Bang Theory in 2011.

BUT all this to say, and this might be a hard pivot but like I said I’m writing this fast, Mac Miller’s posthumous album Circles dropped today. In the days leading up to it I was nervous for it, nervous of feeling sad for everything his family, friends, and fans won’t get, nervous of the sadness itself, and the guilt for the sabbatical I had taken from his music while he was still alive.

But in this decade one thing is certain, I have grown into a person who hates sadness but hates fear more and so I pressed play on Circles and a calmness washed over me. The album is melancholy, but still lifting, the perfect music for walking residential streets on a cold but sunny day; a reminder that life is sad and shitty a lot of the time but there is still warmth and love and lessons if we’re paying attention.

I am glad I still love my birthday and I am glad it is a big deal to me even if other people do not feel the same way about theirs. I love a lot of people very deeply and I am happy about their birthdays as well because if they were not born I would probably be less happy.

So in honor of my birthday, please wish yourself a happy birthday, and press play on Circles because life will never not be scary but we should still participate in the festivities.

let the horns linger, a reflection on mac miller's 'ladders'

Since Mac Miller’s tragic departure I haven’t been able to listen to songs from Swimming without listening to the album in its entirety. It feels wrong, like I’m disrupting a narrative, selectively choosing the moments I want like YouTubing scenes from my favorite movie to get my fix; as though art is the the toxic agent instead of the antidote.

But as I was listening to an algorithmically curated playlist the other day, somewhere between YBN Cordae’s Locationships and Lil’ Baby’s Pure Cocaine, Ladders came on. Interesting placement, I thought. On my worst day I’d even entertain the reality that Spotify was intentionally staging a coup on my most precious organ (heart, in case there was any confusion.)

But that day, the sun was beaming across my pocket of Brooklyn, the taco truck looked especially well lit, and I don’t know if the birds were chirping but if someone told me they were I’d believe them. In that moment, my mind played a highlight reel of the last two years’ events and I felt whole.

What starts off as a haunting musing on life’s ups and downs transcends into a celebratory ode to the unpredictability and messiness of our time on this planet. The irony of the message when inspected under the lens of Mac’s life is not lost on me. Even the song’s production feels like a ladder itself, a procession of sounds assembling into an uplifting crescendo.

The horns are an especially divine presence. I shamefully took them for granted at first because I regarded the song as sad and ominous. It wasn’t until further listening I realized how they subtly prance around in the background, making a big splash later on. When Mac mumbles, “we don’t need no more, no extra, we all we got.,” the horns claim their real estate like an underline and exclamation point. A musical reminder to me of how simple it is to focus on looming negativity and a streak of bad luck, but if you pay more attention you’ll realize there is much to be thankful for even in life’s dips.

A lot of the personal work I’ve done in the last few years was in an effort to break myself out of the jail anxiety can often feel like. Shockingly, it doesn’t actually go away completely but it took a long time to realize how unfair it is to myself and the experiences I have yet to have, to be cloaked in the cynicism of who I used to be and events that once were.

I hope this didn’t sound too preachy because I’m not successful every day (most days) and everything can get pretty dark, but in these moments I will try to remember the horns. Maybe you will too.

its the summer so i'm back to blonde

I wondered when I would write about Frank Ocean. His music looms over me, but I had been hesitant to write about it because I have been hesitant to listen, nervous for the associations my brain has made with his music.

But alas, along with the summer heat came the craving to soothe it. The simplest way I know how to do that is to listen to Blonde.

In August of 2016 and I was mid-Southwest Pacific sojourn (complicated way to say New Zealand) when Blonde was released. There are few things that can make me feel truly alone more than not being met with equitable excitement at the news that after a four year gap Frank Ocean had dropped a new project.

I loved the album immediately. I’ve never believed in love at first sight, but love at first listen? That’s my religion.

It can be difficult to holistically interpret a Frank Ocean song, in a reductive way they sometimes feel less like songs and more like riddles.

I’ll never forget hearing Self-Control for the first time. The isolated vocals abruptly started and hit me like a wave and just when I thought I was in the clear, the strings came in like their larger, stronger wave friend, to knock me right back down. Not so fast, bitch, settle into the melancholy. Gladly. I listened to the album on a perfect loop in the darkness of our hostel room and I felt at peace, like I was 3,000 miles away but somehow still at home.

It encapsulated all the different nuances of loneliness my dumbass twenty-six year old self had actually experience so far: wanting to be close to someone even if you don’t want to be with them, getting your heart broken by someone you had never actually been with, breaking the heart of someone who didn’t really deserve it, not wanting to disappoint your parents but praying they have faith in your dreams, indulging in the fleeting happiness expensive items can bring, etc.

Against all odds, these are the exact same feelings I grapple with now…three years later. Not embarrassing at all.

Blonde is known for its lachrymose undertones but the arc of Self-Control makes for my favorite kind of sad song, despondent yet somehow liberating. While the song is a retelling of a doomed couples’ history through their drug and sex filled nights (aspirational, but more on that in a later post), there are lyrical moments throughout the song that send a message of hope and acceptance. Though maybe they both didn’t want their thing to end, there was an expiration date, and they’d like to take advantage of the time they have left together. There is both truth and hope in that.

The song ends on a cliffhanger. Maybe some day down the line these characters can give it a shot but if not, that is the bittersweetness of life at play. There is romance and love in knowing you cannot be with someone but still taking comfort in their companionship. For me this has proven impossibly difficult for various people that have come and gone from my life, but for others it comes naturally, and can be a beautiful way to cope through heartache.

On my birthday this year, as the dance floor closed down the DJ played Self-Control, and wow there are few things that can make you feel less lonely than a room full of strangers all singing the same words about lost love.