I’m a white middle-aged mom driving through a mainly white college town listening to a now-dead Jewish hip-hop artist whose video for “Self-Care,” released right around the time of his death featured him trapped in a coffin. I’m older now than I’ve ever been. Obviously. Who cares.
I’m at Guitar Center to buy a Fender. I run through the metal heads doing their best Guitar Hero impressions to the only white Telecaster hanging on the wall.
You’re in Miami and you're driving under the banyans and the palms and you're heading away from the tennis courts by the water and you're looking at the sky above the parkway and you're heading home and sometimes it feels like you'll always be in Miami.
And while I could mythologize those years as a win for self-actualization—I did start that band—it was also a time of anxiety and frustration.
The word that comes to mind is delirium.
It took a month of working together for Luke to start talking to me.
I’ve bought more used Automatic for the People CDs than I can count.
We fell asleep in our tent listening to coyote songs.
Badmotorfinger wasn’t the first time I heard Soundgarden, but it was the first time I really listened to them.
Moaning
Moaning
Release Date: March 2, 2018
Label: Sub Pop Records
Length: 33 minutes
When you’re twenty-two you do stupid shit.... more
Damn.
Kendrick Lamar
April 14, 2017
Top Dawg
54:54
The first time I visit Southern California, it’s for work. I get lost out of LAX... more
“Get in here!” yelled Grandma. “Carrot Head is gonna sing!”
You joined in, and told Danielle that she should only serve us drinks in diamond pimp glasses.
Some songs sound best under the sun. Some are night-blooming. These you hear clear in dark-dark; maybe there are stars.
“I Go To... more
Two years later, I fell in love with a boy whose devotion to The Smiths matched my own.
Picture this: It’s 2004. I’m living in Berkeley, California. I swear I am a cool girl. I’m dating a rapper who has had some success. He’s got massive dreadlocks that differentiate him from everyone.
I lost track of Ben while I was married. Seven years. I hadn’t seen Ben in 7 years. Ben refers to those years as my... more
I turn the knob to the right, bang my hands against the steering wheel, and deafeningly inform the world that I’m out of my cage and doing just fine.
Stephen Malkmus
Stephen Malkmus
February 13th, 2001
Matador Records
12 songs, 42 Minutes
I ripped this CD onto my... more
Cave In
Album: Jupiter
Released: August 8, 2000
Hydra Head
Length: 44:10
My friend Beth was blamed for everything I ever... more
The Record
Fear
Label: Slash
Released: May 16, 1982
Length: 14 songs, 27 minutes
This is about a dead guy. But it’s... more
On this poorly planned excursion I had a bucket of coffee and exactly one CD – my brother’s copy of Death Cab’s then brand new Narrow Stairs.
You’ll wake up on Labor Day and argue with the people you’re carpooling with over when to leave.
But while I am nervous for what’s to come, I’ve always found comfort in Paramore—whether I was: 15 and head banging to “Misery Business” during anime club; crushing it on my Rock Band drum set to “That’s What You Get”; fucking up at my first publishing internship with an earful of “Ain’t It Fun”; or lip-syncing to “Still Into You” in my junior year dorm room, at 4 a.m., when I was in denial about how in love I was with a best friend.
"I didn't want to ever be outside of this moment. I knew at some point I would look at the picture I'd just taken and feel an overwhelming sense of loss. I thought as long as we could manage to stay inside this particular hotel room, to avoid our phones and every person with whom we'd ever come into contact, we would continue to feel whole. We were revolutionaries, goddamnit. These were our accumulation of beautiful moments. Before the world fractured us. I don't expect you to understand how I became Brad Pitt in that moment, how we all just flew along down the highway. Bandits. Ex-patriots. In love with this countryside, if not this country. Paper Moon. The Last Picture Show. All of this shot in black and white. Only the final scene in color."
FOUR NEW ESSAYS BY CHLOE CALDWELL! Plus the original essays that made you fall in love with Chloe!
Jason Phoebe Rusch is a queer writer from the Chicago suburbs. His full-length debut Dualities explores gender and patriarchy from the perspective of a man who was socialized and is currently still read as a woman. He is interested in complication and nuance and messy human failing, his own and that of others.
