7.16.26
I've worked almost two shifts of overtime this week and I can't be forced to keep my mind on my work anymore. This has been "writing month" as coronated by my two friends who are also novelists. All I want in the whole world is to be in the library, which I can can only sneak into on Fridays because I'm not supposed to be there.
7.3.26
6.29.26
Spent the weekend at a friend's house and then headed to voice lessons. It took me more than an hour to warm up before I even got there. Air conditioning must be drying out my vocal chords. I started working on Queen Bee because I surprised myself when I got that high. At first, it was the only song I ever regretted working on, but I know how to walk into the studio with an empty head and no expectations of how the day is going to go now. We slowed 'Fire' from 170 BPM to 150 BPM, mostly so I can get through the second verse without tripping up. If I do it full speed, my Japanese is incomprehensible. Since it's Japanese, my teacher is also making me focus a lot on performance; we've gone over the translation and meaning of the song, but she wants to see the meaning of every line, which is usually easy for me but difficult for this because it's so high and fast. I felt like I couldn't make it work until I played back the video I have of her doing it live, which is so much more fast and furious than the album version. Being louder, not being afraid to scream, made me feel invulnerable.
6.24.26
Saw 12 Rods tonight and met Ryan Olcott himself. He played Comet Ping Pong with just a tape accompanying him, but he sounded so crisp and clear and vulnerable. His music always uses a thin veneer of humor to make you let your guard down and be open to his sincerity. I never thought he would come to DC. I don't think he's been here in 20 years. I didn't think 12 Rods would ever tour again. And he played "all the songs the band would never let him," starting with 'Makeout Music' and closing with 'I Wish You Were a Girl,' which is the one everybody sang.
6.23.26
Just got back from New Jersey this weekend. Stayed in an old house that used to be a general store that sat up against the side of a hill. They had a flower farm too, which wasn't in bloom but still beautiful, and a fawn was five feet away from us and didn't startle. I sat in the tangled roots of a giant tree, watching a heron in the distance. Bought Edith Head's Hollywood and a book of photographs by Pipilotti Rist, who I thought was Pipilotti Riot based on the cursive on the cover. I like the lo-fi look of it. I was offline, but highly stimulated in a way that sitting at my computer for work on Monday felt like sensory deprivation even if I consumed reels constantly. I'd rather be here.
The book is ~80% finished, so it feels like every move I'm making needs to be decisive and precise. At the same time, I feel very evil and loving about all the characters. I have portrayed them well enough that they can be even less perfect in the next draft.
The old internet feels nostalgic but disconnected to me. I do not know if the old internet feels lonely to me because it is or because I was only ever alone when I was a kid who used to code. I made Neopets sites and waited hours for strangers to respond on the message board. The old internet was scary in the way that ignorance was scary. Being an adult will never be as scary as being a child because children are never allowed to know everything. Being sheltered never made me feel safer.