There’s a special kind of soap for hands that perform the kind of labour where dirt and grime and things soak into the skin. Fast Orange, as it's called, comes in an orange bottle, and smells accordingly of sweet and bitter citrus. And you would be right
I learned that men don’t like how I write about music, or how I write at all. One wrote me to say that I don’t write about the chords when I write about music, it’s always just about feelings.
I want each of these memories to be the first time I heard the Beastie Boys because I want their history to live on the delicate lines of a thousand possible futures.
When I was a kid, my sister and I raided the remains of my parent's once lavish record collection. My dad’s records had his name written on them, although sometimes they were crossed off and rewritten by his brother in a bout of playful sibling thievery. His
There is no written word without a weary hand wielding the pen.
The veneer of visibility as a performance is nice, and it is also nothing.
My first coffee was poured from the spout of a steel urn into a styrofoam cup, the kind that squeaks and crunches in your hand when you touch it that I’m certain was a little toxic.
I can tell you that McPizza was salty and sweet, with perfectly melted cheese that tasted a little like an old ninja turtle fresh from 2 minutes in the microwave, all melted plastic and nostalgia.
I don’t really have any hobbies, having fallen into the class trap of the working creative that is essentially a pile of bills and immediate needs placed gently over a hastily piled patch of grass. Most things I do, I do because I need to eat and other annoying
I worry that we have let Sad Song mean too many things, that it’s too easy a phrase to describe such a deep well, and it’s time to find new words for the walls we hit on the way down.
There are new things standing and waiting out there, each of them a mark on the days ahead, as if they are lighthouses steering me and my most tired bones away from the rocks that might shatter us once and for all.
An act of clearing by just putting all the extra snow in scores of uneven piles that are half on the sidewalk and half on the street, ensuring that at least this way no one will ever run the risk of being terribly happy
I have to trim down my coffee intake, and it is highlighting the grip of addiction in my brain. I currently drink an amount that is shocking to anyone not similarly afflicted with the same predisposition towards self-destruction as me, but normal for those who would see themselves in ruins.
Blog Posts
I am perfectly on time with this, which is to say I am late.
Essays
“Wonderful Christmastime” is not a perfect song. It might not work on your holiday playlist, or stand proud on a list of beloved classics, but it might be that it’s not a song to be played at home with intention
Blog Posts
The lesson learned in all of this is that I need to work harder on allowing myself to celebrate the victories and the little things, that I'm allowed to be here living this life.
Essays
This is the beauty of the song, the heart of it in those who lost their lives in service of building a world many believed they never belonged to, as if they are men out of time.
Maron is vulnerable, but he is also allowed to be in a way that many simply are not.
I have long described myself as Taylor Swift agnostic, which is not really true because I do believe she exists, and the truth is that I always misuse agnostic when I really mean atheistic.
When I lived here, I was always chasing something, the perfect idea of a life in the wild and untamed north. Partied and thought about parties and how each one would be the answer to the questions that kept me awake and pacing in my living room, like a raven seeking food half-buried in the snow.
Essays
The second time I ever came out as trans, it was in an Arby’s drive-through in Alberta on a flip-phone in the height of the oil boom. A decision made with impassioned haste that left lingering memories of trying, failing, and the desire to try again regardless of how
Essays
I started smoking, and I don’t remember the first one at all, but that is often the way of firsts.
Essays
Tasting heaven only cost $.49, and each bite brought me closer to God.
Essays
Do you ever think about how the emotional core of “Such Great Heights” will never feel the same due to an alarming lack of answering machines? I mean, yes, sure, even without the machine it is still an emotionally resonant song about long-distance yearning, but that distance feels cheated now.