some things must be meant to change

 i just spilled dr pepper all over myself and had to change. 

i'm back.

there was a while where i didn't want to write on this blog at all. there was a longer while where i considered deleting everything i'd ever written and wiping the entire blog from the internet. sometimes i wonder if i'll ever figure out who i'm trying to be -- beyond "myself," which is an entirely unhelpful answer when I'm not sure who Myself is trying to be either. sometimes it feels like i'm getting closer, cutting a little more to the quick of my interests, my beliefs, the things i care about. but then i remember how many times i've felt like that before, and i wonder how many more plateaus i will hit before the finish line. is there even a finish line? is it all a dream? sometimes i feel less that i am cutting to the quick of everything and instead am being shaped by the flow of tides over my skin, the sandstone canyon rather than the river itself.

if it helps me answer my own question, that's why i didn't end up deleting everything off of this blog. it's been difficult to accept, but i'm learning that there may not be any such thing as a true magnum opus, but rather a bunch of little artifacts, marking points of every person you have been. i wonder how many artists were truly satisfied after they finished their "magnum opus." I can't think of many. Everyone keeps working, keeps changing. The river keeps flowing. The sandstone keeps changing.

That being said, when I moved to new york, i felt much more ... like an image. i wanted to be consumable, wanted to try to market myself in a certain kind of way. before i moved to new york, too. i think i didn't understand how one could do that, didn't know how it worked, and wanted to experience it to understand it. it really comes through in my writing, i think. it also doesn't help that i moved to new york at 23 years old, on the cusp of one of the big ego transitions of life. i don't have as much fear anymore about sharing myself, but it's because i understand my own boundaries a lot better, and i stopped expecting everyone to play along with me in good faith. most people won't. 

rereading the post i made earlier this year on Lack, I was startled by its similarity to something i wrote in my journal only last night. i've been sick the last four days, and laid up in bed i started my period, and my mother was getting major surgery on monday. i cried for hours every day, and lamented my ability to write new music, to complete any tasks, wondered if i could ever do something meaningful in comparison to all of the beauty and seemingly endless output of my friends... and yet i was just focusing on the lack again. the rat race cranial infestation gnawing at my brainstem. every day i experience something that feels like a beautiful song. i laugh with my friends. i stroke my cat and he purrs. i stare at my ceiling and listen to an album i have never heard and am overwhelmed with enough emotion to tranquilize an elephant, and i wonder where the art has gone. whence my spirit has fled. it's sitting next to me. it's studying my naked form, preparing the sketches for the final portrait. 

it's unbelievable to me that it's not even been a year. that i still have three months until 25. slow down, shapeshifter. take time to count the feathers that fall.

things i like recently:

1. Natural Born Killers
2. Tonstartssbandht - An When
3. practicing electric guitar
4. being alone in my room
5. Dr. Pepper
6. shoegaze/slowcore
7. Totino's pizza rolls (not new for me)
8. Nana 

ok actually let's talk less abstractly about some of these things i've been doing. 

i think Nana is one of the most heartwrenching but beautiful stories about young womanhood I've ever seen. even in its surreality it is unflinching in its relatability. 

second thought. lore moment: never once got on /mu as a teenager or really until this year (this month actually). i figured i should listen to the albums on here since they're kind of the alternative music canon. but i'm genuinely blown away by how widespread the influence of /mu has been on my life given that i was never on here

like

so often in my life when i have been recommended an album that was truly mind blowing i wondered how the person found such good music and where to find more of it

and it turns out 90% of those people in my life were totally just /mu enjoyers 

no shade because i definitely would have done well to have been listening to a lot of these albums five or more years ago rather than stumbling about blindly and taking recs from my friends

in the last year there have been a few cultural institutions that i found out had a much larger scope of influence than i previously knew and every time it's perspective-breaking

super interesting.

if covid is so good why isn't there a covid 2????

a/n: this was written some ten months ago and left unfinished. i like what i had to say, though. 

january 10, 2022: okay, the last two weeks of my life (starting with the new moon in sag and ending this eve with the waning of the full moon in gemini) have been a series of indescribably intense ups and downs and events one after the other after the other until more or less right now as i sit in bed with my cat and a can of sapporo. the big can, obviously. the one that's shaped like a weird glass? my deli on the corner started stocking asahi and sapporo because my roommates and i always come in and ask about it <3 something so simple but so heartwarming and comforting...

there r many things to say about the course of the last few weeks, but i don't feel like getting into all sorts of details about it right now. epic highs and lows of high school football type situation. i will say that since moving to the city my life has been a nonstop carousel of friends and events and circumstances, each one more shocking than the last. 

february 5, 2022: never finished writing once i started that draft (recurring theme i see!). more highs and lows but much more internal than external. spending money i don't have on a credit card i need to pay off (not run up!) because i still haven't gotten hired in the last month and half. savings almost all the way depleted and i have the audacity to sit around and wonder why i haven't had any crazy ny experiences (not even true but i think i mean exploring new bars and clubs and places. but cannot stress enough how much this isn't even true) -- you know when you're broke and you are still going out and you feel this latent guilt that you really shouldn't be spending any money anyways but you're going to do something so instead of trying anything new (even if it's cheap) you go to the same places over and over again? yea. 

february 17, 2022: never finished writing again once i came back and noticed i still had a draft. so now i'm going to say third time's the charm and try to finish this out. i think that in the process of trying to adjust to so much change so quickly over such a brief period of time i was becoming numb to the beauty/excitement of everything i've been experiencing. my day-to-day experience here is something that three years ago you couldn't have convinced me would be in my future. Every week there are at least two shows within two miles of me that I'm dying to see, and a million more i can't go to or don't know about. i play music alongside peers i've followed for years artistically. i have the most beautiful bedroom i've maybe ever had in my life, with two big windows that open to a lively and beautiful street, with big trees and stained glass windows. Every night I get to snuggle with the best cat in the whole world and watch mad men with two of my best friends (now roommates) of six years. 

there's a psychological question that goes something like this: do you see in terms of lack or abundance? when you look at your life, do you see all of the things you don't have, or do you see all of the things you can still achieve? and i think about all of the dreams i've had, and how i've come so far and achieved goals and dreams i never ever thought as a child I would. but of course, as you grow and achieve, the goalposts inevitably shift. and that's okay! it keeps us reaching upwards, soaring towards the stars. but icarus' wings melted not because he flew towards the sun, but because of the haste of their construction. because he was ill-prepared to do so. it takes time to be ready to get everything you want, and you have to get it in bits and pieces, or like a little kid on halloween night, you'll eat all the candy way too fast, get a tummy ache, and be left with bitter disillusionment about sugar and sweets.

and get this -- my bff is moving into an apartment two blocks down from mine, the air is starting to get warmer, soon the leaves will unfurl on the trees. i am traveling this summer for music. i am seeing friends old and new from all over the world. i am going to a state i have never visited and sharing my birthday in a friendship reunion in a beautiful alienesque landscape. i am on the track to get a career job, one with a salary and benefits and stability. how could i have dug myself into such a hole where i only saw the lack?