november

have you ever woken up in a gregg araki movie? mean girls and camp callbacks, waking up in the middle of lean boys and a kiss that felt real? the slow will slosh and the cigarettes will keep you warm, indie sleaze is back. leather is in. dark denim, faded with garage shows and caked-on ash from bent blunts. today’s plush charms on tiny bags are the pins on canvas slings back in my two door cinema club days. i’m trying to tell you about a certain forever, deep cuts that don’t end because it’ll be wednesday and a high school hurt will remind me that i’m not far off from the boy so full of shame. the cuts keep bleeding, flowing forever in present pools of who i am on tuesday versus saturday, color of pomegranates stained kisses in the back ends of all my sophomore nights. i wanted to find an end to myself in the tenth grade, but what i think i meant was i wanted to find a forever deep enough to match a loneliness so close to my own that i could call it a friend. i want to reach out, ask for forgiveness, ask to hold your hand, feel your knuckle grooves, sink my warmth into yours ilysfm.

a dear friend of mine passed away a few days ago, what feels like, now, a few forevers ago. it’s been hard to wake up and admit to the day that i’m all well and all, to come into the office as if nothing’s happened when really all i want to do is lay in bed all hours thinking back on the sound of your laughs and the funny pictures you’ve sent and that one sunset god that sunset where i think if i look at it long enough, taste the pink and breathe in the baby blue, i can hear the sound of the sky sinking into my own and there is a big forever for us that i can run around in, like a playground kid on an infinite afternoon. 

i don’t know how to be like the way a teenager doesn’t know how to move. because the body changes and time waits for no one. because freedom is at the tip of the imagination and the forevers don’t show up as miracles but nagging reminders that you’re antsy and angsty and need out as far as possible. but the bike ride along the santa ana dam will do because it’s dried up and stark white in a suburban blankness that delusions clean-slate beginnings or a limitlessness in its concrete grandeur.

i’m coming into november thinking about freedom, but especially the freedoms we take for granted. for certain i know my friend would want so much life out of me. to enjoy the little freedoms i’ve taken out of my life out of mourning. the present is a present, but there’s only so much cheer and giving i can offer. i am one body, i am one soul. only. and i think you too understand this.

this month’s playlist is molded from a podcast with j w anderson (current creative director of loewe) where he speaks of songs that add color to his work, like joy division, which, i feel, was always the smiths for emo kids. he mentions the melancholy of hey moon! by molly nilsson, which i’ve included in this playlist.

recently, i’ve been catching up with some of gregg araki’s filmography as he has been getting a resurgence thanks to reprints of his films, the doom generation and nowhere. here he is in a talk with richard linklater on the future of cinema and what it meant to be an indie filmmaker. mysterious skin was a gateway into my queerness. i remember first finding a clip of it on a porno site and immediately ran to the film instead of conducting my usual night cap. his films always have such fantastic soundtracks that reek of teen angst, which is also found in the monthly playlist.

since the days have been gray — literally gray, i don’t know what happened to fall — i’ve been listening to a lot of beach house, which is sprinkled throughout the playlist as well. beach house has always been formative to my adolescence because it was the first time i could hear sadness. that it could be echoed into a song. i remember when i first listened to their 2010 album teen dream, walk in the park encapsulated right and wrong feelings beyond me in my body.

it’s the early cold of the bookend months that make me realize there is a new turn. a fresh start. another opportunity to make sense of the world. for new questions and new ways of answering.

as always

be well

do good work

and

keep in touch

<3

n