I am standing at the edge of my driveway. Fluorescent bulbs from my garage buzz. A single gust of warm wind against my neck. I stare west toward the dark end of my street for my 15,330th humid Florida night. I am enjoying some reprieve from the chaos of young children inside my home when I see projected onto the blanket of purple sky a wash of color.

I recognize it to be a window into a different path—one I’d opted out of at some sliding door moment.

I am transfixed. What lies before me is a feast of experiences, as vivid as choice and distorted as memory.

These and a thousand more—like silhouettes of old friends materializing from the dark.

I left these experiences behind, of course, when I chose them—the ones inside, just through that garage door.

I have my snags. I worry terribly about my children. More than she does. She tells me to stop; that it will give me cancer before the sun does. But this worry grows from the same seed as love, and so underneath the most banal moments churns a sea alive with coral of every color. And though my love manifests in flashes of pure mania, I am nourished. I have a settled mind. And it is this settled mind that shoots vapors across the night sky into this bountiful stream of what-would-have-been, leaving only dark and calm and peace for another 15,330 nights.

Photo by Tiffany Tyson

Reese Witherspoon’s impossibly symmetrical bob shakes a little as she winds up and punches Mr. McDreamy’s mother, the Mayor of New York, landing her flat on her back at the altar of the would-be southern-bumpkin wedding, as Reese’s father, still adorned in his Confederacy reenactment regalia, steps up and exclaims, “The South has risen again!”

That is an insane sentence.

Also, the climactic moment of the 2002 blockbuster romcom, Sweet Home Alabama. This was one of two specifically American movies that I watched on the nation’s 250th birthday—my first Fourth of July abroad.

As a young man, I, like many other college freshmen, read The Barbarous Years by Bernard Bailyn and have since carried that directionless shame about celebrating this holiday—each year that shame disinfected by the chlorine of crowded swimming pools and ultimately drowned out with BuzzBalls and Coors Light.

The early hours of this holiday were spent at LAX, for I, a traitor, was flying to England. It is uncanny how well the Delta terminal serves as a frenzied little simulacrum of our country. And as I questioned my patriotism in line at Jersey Mike’s, I glanced past the family of six to the girl who’d just ordered her Gabagool & Ham on Wheat. She wore a tight white T-shirt with bedazzled red & blue letters that read,

MOST VALUABLE PUSSY.

Well, there really is no place like home, I thought to myself. And from some distant recess of my brain, I heard, America, fuck yeah???

Half a turkey sub later, and I was hiding my face from the two British fellows seated next to me so they wouldn’t see that I, the American, was crying… TO LINCOLN.

“Yes, lads, of course it’s sentimental; it’s Spielberg. But when does patriotism ever feel valorous instead of gaudy?”

As I tried to keep pace with Daniel Day-Lewis’s soft-spoken elocution, I imagined trying to explain to the 16th president the implications of gender empowerment imbued in the pussy shirt. Would he deem it American?

Would President Lincoln ask me if my leaving on the holiday felt American?

I might tell him about the most gratuitously American I’d ever felt. The time I sang at a millionaire’s private Fourth of July party in Malibu, where, upon request, I crescendoed our set with a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” as his hired pyrotechnician lit commercial-grade fireworks from a barge 100 yards offshore.

I’d also tell him about my 97-year-old Grandpa. A retired Army Colonel who texts daily reports of Florida storm patterns, swimming pool temps, and fact-driven laments over the reproachable nature assumed by the country he devoted his life to.

His continual scholarship is bewildering and impressive. His anger is sincere, and his fervor is the most authentically patriotic thing in my life. And as I lay there at the end of my long travel day, cozied up in a flat in East London watching the credits roll on Sweet Home Alabama, I think about:

…how I love Reese Witherspoon, but feel gross when I see the Confederate flag toted proudly in a movie made in the 21st Century.

…how I love Bruce Springsteen and Steven Spielberg, but feel gross when I see the idiocratic AI photos the Cheeto Puff King posts to ‘Truth’ Social.

…how I love Jersey Mike’s and am stoked for the girl in the MOST VALUABLE PUSSY T-shirt—we should all be so proud of something—but feel gross when I see videos of rich kids in Newport looting a Pavilions Super Market.

When I think of this crude satire storm, I feel dismay—which is acutely different from rage. But when I think of my Grandpa sending messages to three generations of his family and how badly I want him to live to see a shift in a positive direction, my dismay resembles real anger. And in that anger, a whole ocean away from the USA, I feel patriotic.

A Pastry Abroad and other photos by Tiffany Tyson

photo by the spectacular Tiffany Tyson

I am perched on the ledge of the water feature, staring at the pennies and dimes on the fountain floor. I wonder if they made good on their wishes, and I calculate what terrible karma would come to me if I snatched a coin to brandish my own wish…

“Please ye Garish Gods of Glendale, grant me the opportunity to sing my songs to an audience of happy people soon… or let the next episode of Widow’s Bay provide some relief from this anxiety that seems to rest upon my chest these days like a full plate of Pasta Da Vinci. After all, my nervous system craves flavor, but suffers from all this gratuitous carb loading.”

A mother steps into frame, swaying her infant daughter to the 6/8 meter of “At Last”. I can’t spot the speakers, but Etta James’s voice sounds near, as if I’m down the hall from her vocal booth at Chess Studios. She sings, “I found a thrill to press my cheek to,” and the fountains shoot high in the reflection of the little girl’s eyes, which are a three-dimensional shade of hazel that glints like wet sand in the sun.

As her daughter is transfixed by the dancing water, her mom cranes her own head back, takes in the sky (with her matching sand-in-sun eyes), and lets her long hair willow behind her to and fro. And this is for no one but herself.

The daughter, hoisted on hip, turns back to her mother, expecting her to be equally wowed by the water’s acrobatics, but instead catches her mother’s independent action.

And I see it click for the child—a profound epiphany her little brain will forget by the time she is strapped back into her car seat. But in this instant, she sees that her mom is not just her mom, but also her own person.

I ponder, “Will this shatter the girl’s unchallenged belief that this woman lives to care, feed, and entertain her and only her?”

But instead of crying out for attention, she laughs and watches her mother with sweet, curious wonder.

I pan slightly left to see a few teenagers in conversation. The boy is regaling details of a recent occurrence when, in his animated recounting, he nearly knocks one of the girls’ Brandy Melville bags into the water. He blushes and takes a beat, and in that instant, I see that the girl watching was struck. Skadoosh! Cupid’s arrow through the heart. The boy continues his story, unaware of the new sparkle emanating from his friend’s eyes.

The tenderness of these moments, along with the Riley Hampton Orchestra accompaniments to Etta James’s voice, and the little train trolley, and the fountains, and the retail therapy, and the Cheesecake Factory of it all, was too much.

All this manufactured happiness. And all these things we manufacture in ourselves in attempts to sway how we are perceived. When, of course, it is something we are wholly unaware of that makes someone else fall in love with us… as a lover, a friend, a mother.

This theme of self-perception is the crux of my latest single, “On My Way.” The song started as a plea…

“See me as I wish to be seen.”

It has evolved, as these things do, and lives for me now as a reminder to give myself a little grace.

And what does that actually mean? For me, it’s…

Talk to yourself like a good friend would. Say “fuck yeah, you’re a machine!” when you make the bed or finish a song or put the dishes away. And if it helps relieve some of the mounting weight, drive to Glendale and watch Toy Story 5. Smell the ice cream waffle cones, smile at the kitschy Galleria accouterment, and seek some joy in thy fellow human being. (If these things seem entirely out of reach, carb load.)

Thanks for reading my stories and listening to my pleas. With curious wonder, God bless you, and God bless the Americana at the Fucking Brand.

Lyrics to "On My Way"

Don’t reduce me,
to good times.
Or the lost youth that lives in them
I am more than just a white girl
with fantastic rhythm 

Now you’re on your way
You called to say 
You’d like to talk to me

Don’t reduce me,
to my appearance,
Don't tether me to this pretty smile
I am more than a beautiful woman
I want to hear no every once in a while

Now you’re on your way
You called to say 
You’d like to talk to me
Now you’re wondering 
The words to say
Now that you’re in front of me

Don’t reduce me 
to an artist type
I’m more realistic about our life.
I know these songs may turn you on
but they’ll never make you my wife.

Now I’m on my way
I called to say
I’ll take anything
But I’m fumbling
With the words to say
My past may
Always become me

Unlike anything, music convinces me that time may be nonlinear. I’ve often written a line, a phrase, or a piece of music that makes no sense to me in the moment; yet, it presents itself as vividly as a rendered experience or resolute sentiment. Then, usually within the same year, the reason for that particular line will present itself — materializing much like my vision when it returned after going blind from smoking California weed for the first time in the parking lot of a Pinkberry. (A story for another time.)

Today, I am releasing “Carry A Song With You,” the second single from my first solo album. The title is pulled from the last line of the chorus.

Many musicians talk about the sensation of simply “snatching verses from thin air.” This felt like that. I didn’t know why I was writing these lines, but I didn’t second-guess them -- unusual for me, as I tend to assume there is always something better I could write if I toil longer. (You can only hear the legend of Leonard Cohen taking years to write “Hallelujah” before you start doubting an utterance that comes too easily.)

But there they were, the words, presenting themselves as immovable pieces of a puzzle that felt like one-part allegory for the false advertisement and eventual hacking of the genetic code brought about by a looks-maxxing culture (of which I observe nonjudgmentally) and the other part a collection of idioms and phrases we hear repeated so often that we stop questioning them. Coming from a traditional sense, yes, ladies, of course, you are to “marry a nice man.” And fellas, how dare you not “bury that lonely boy inside?”

I wrote this song before it happened. And it was quite some time after it happened that I realized this song was about him.

Our sweet friend Cory passed away, and it tore a hole through all of us. He was, in more ways than I realized, a magnet that kept the lot of us close, and for years a glue that held SWIMM together in unexplainable ways.

Some of you are picturing him now. His back flat on the porch of whatever Joshua Tree Airbnb we’d rented, his blue eyes squeezed nearly shut from laughing at something ridiculous or depraved, or just softly gazing up at the desert stars. Maybe he is McConaughey musing about something densely esoteric, or maybe he is just listening.

Cory was the most modern manifestation of the mythical creature, Pan, I’d ever encountered — never concerned with deodorant or saying no, and never meeting a woman that didn’t consider falling in love with him, if for a moment or for many years.

He also carried a darkness, and there were ways he’d try to bury that loneliness inside that would worry me — at times, infuriate me. I now know that my anger stemmed from the fear that he would leave.

And so, he did.

I wrote this song for Cory before I even knew it would be about him. But regarding time and proper tense, it feels better in this moment to say that because I know Cory, I know he’d like to take a song with him.

So, here you go, C. I do hope you think it’s a good one.

Cory and me. Toronto, 2016.

“Carry A Song With You”

Lyrics:

Preventative causes, headlines
Can’t take it with you 
Her sedative a mantra, of denial 
Can’t help but feel it was

false advertisement 
False advertisement 
But you’ll wonder why

Carry atonement  
Bury that lonely boy inside
Marry a nice man
Carry a song with you 

Preventative Dysport, crow lines
cannot tell if he’s amused

Carry atonement  
Bury that lonely boy inside
Marry a nice man
Carry a song with you 
Carry a good song with you 
When you leave me behind

Preventative causes, headlines
Can’t take it with you 
DNA a through line, 
Reminding you it was
false advertisement

Still you’ll wonder why

Carry atonement  
Bury that lonely boy inside
Marry a nice man
Carry a song with you 

Carry a good song with you
Carry a song with you
Carry a good song with you
When you leave us behind

RELEASE DAY!

This is a message that Spencer and I share when either of us releases new music — he with Sego and me, up until now, with SWIMM. It is a text that simultaneously congratulates and translates the consistently underwhelming nature of the day upon which we release new music into the world.

The process — a crescendo of work and emotion — is what makes this day so underwhelming, of course — less blood, sweat, and tears, more doubt, spiraling, and self-loathing.

“Is the mix right?”

“Okay, the mix is there.”

“Did the mastering just ruin the mix?”

“What artwork perfectly illustrates the grandeur of this tune?”

“Should I just go back to college or learn how to weld?”

A crescendo of these tormentors until the day we put forth our precious creation.

THIS IS THE MOMENT! RELEASE DAY.

Kind of like Game Day for athletes, except there’s no Any Given Sunday speech—no Pacino in the locker room at halftime. You just post to social media, put your phone down, and stare off into the distance, pondering the root of narcissism, the meaning of life, and whether you could, in fact, earn enough supplemental income on OnlyFans to justify the possibility of family members seeing your schvantz on the internet. Magic and tumult to boot!

So now you know: when I release the next tune from my first solo endeavor—which will be a song called “Carry A Song With You”—I am sitting somewhere, likely alone, staring off into the distance—pondering. And, also know that I am thoroughly grateful for your messages on release day—as they stop all the pondering, if only for a moment. God knows the OF market is saturated!

Photo by Kosta Galanopolous at his home & studio in Eagle Rock, CA.

When I close my eyes, I see you dancing.

It was Halloween, and the girl I had a huge crush on came to the party after work. She was dressed as Salma Hayek’s vampiric character in From Dusk Till Dawn. The only pictures I have of her from that place are from across the room, and so my memory of her from that night, in every sense, feels far away.

I’d rather touch you than hallucinate.

As I start to write this, sitting in the dimly lit French café off Lincoln Blvd, positioned between a Ross Dress For Less and one of the 75,000 CrossFit gyms in Venice Beach, the song “Thriller” starts to play through the wraparound bar speakers. The music video to this song terrified me as a kid. It also excited me enough to watch to the end.

I admit the frightening things always entrance me.

And what is more entrancing than seeing the one you love dance? I loved watching her dance. I loved the face she made when she danced—always biting her lips, for focus and to conceal a knowing smile.

Tongue-tied, I lie and watch her advance.

I find that when I lose love, I keep the sensory blocks that built it. The way her car smelled after a day at the beach. The way that the Roxy Music song sounded from her shitty phone speaker before we walked into her friend’s holiday party. The way she, though remarkably small in physical stature, grew larger than the room when she danced.

The ghosts of our expectations hide in the hallway.

For me, this song is a lament. It is a horror flick. It is a celebration. It honors time spent in love, and jump-scares the shitty traits that manifest in me when love looms at the foot of the basement stairs. And whether it was the fright of it all or the many, many wonderful things, I watched to the end.

In a world so often belied by earnestness, I do hope mine reveals itself when I sing these lyrics, behind closed eyes, with gratitude for the images still so vividly impressed.

lyrics

Salma Hayek high off no sleep and other things 
your costume last Halloween
I admit the frightening things always entrance me
when I close my eyes I see you dancing

The ghosts of our expectations hide in the hallway                 
The axe-wielding bride is begging me to stay 
tongue-tied I lie and watch her advance
when I close my eyes I see you dancing

I’d rather touch you than hallucinate 
the real you I could not love
the idea of you can’t hate

How could I judge you for what you did
when I sleep through the night knowing what I’ve gotten away with

when I close my eyes I see you dancing
when I close my eyes I see you dancing
when I close my eyes I see you dancing

Subscribe now

Something about the low-quality rendering of Salma Hayek in that movie feels more like my memory than if I downloaded a better one. Thanks for reading.

I haven’t found my scene in Venice yet. It’s okay. We’re staying optimistic in 2026! I have tried, btw.

I went to a Super Bowl Party with some long-time locals. They were gracious and welcoming, and I haven’t seen any of them since.

I’ve walked Abbot Kinney on Sundays and pestered the employees of Aesop with no intention of purchase, but because hearing someone talk of the intricacies of fragrance is music to my ears.

I’ve gone to the Brig and drank half a beer. I’ve shuffled through the bar at Gran Blanco like a hopeful sardine and made eyes with beautiful women who likely spend more on their shampoo and conditioner than I do on my car insurance, only to apologize for being in the way. I was introduced to the owner of a newly renovated beach bar not once, but multiple times, by numerous friends. He has refused to acknowledge my existence and even disinvited me from going on his yacht after one of his employees convinced me to join for a sunset drift. This, a specific brand of rejection, for I realized that, however slight it may be, I possess some deep-seated belief that if I’m obnoxious enough to go on a yacht, it deserves to sink. I overcame this reservation, packed a towel, and dusted off my flip-flops, only to hear that I would make it one too many. Lord knows those machines are temperamental! No shade though. We are tacking on grace with our unrelenting optimism in 2026!

What else? Oh yes, on two occasions I’ve attended the Venice Run Club. Nicole told me that everyone is suspiciously friendly. I left each time with aching joints and nary a new acquaintance. To be fair, I was too shy to speak to anyone. If it were 2025, I might say, “No one spoke to me,” but it’s 2026, and we are tacking on accountability with our grace and unrelenting optimism.

And so I drive east to be social—to see familiar faces, friends I love so fucking much. I drive, I drive, I drive. Music on the way east, and podcasts on the way home—that way I’m spending the late-night crawl back with “my friends.” As Neil McCauley of Heat would say, “I’m alone, not lonely.”

Below are some lyrics. Some from New Year’s Eve, some from feeling alone but not lonely, and a lot from the endless hours I’ve spent on LA’s binary highways.

photos by Marissa Sylvester

101

It is 1:33, 27 minutes till 2 hours till 4 
And in between lies 3 of us and the hour I was born 
You sang in perfect Stevie “I have always been a storm”
And at this hour I know that time only stops for love and music 
And still we try so hard not use it
Till lonely men with power manufacture siphons to abuse them 
And forever is a fairy tale brought to life in the fleeting fullness of a friendship 
Or within the first exchange of a familiar stranger’s touch 
and so I love my friends 
And so I love my friends so fucking much 

It is 10:01 and just shy of 2 full hands 
till the ball drops 
and 2 more till they tell us… 
Till they tell us all to stop
10 resolutions and 1 you’re sure to keep 
You said the future would be downhill you never said it’d be so steep 
In this light you look like Mother Mary
Wary at this hour 
loves becomes an LA freeway  
Congested and binary 
If you don’t roll down one window
I’ll die from the heat
And when it’s around the corner 
That’s when I fucking leave 
I am alone but not lonely 
follow me home, follow my light
if you don’t I’ll surely die, 
If you don’t I surely might 
It is again just another 101 night 
Always a Mercedes passing on the right
Always a Mercedes passing on the right

Danny sat on the other side of the glass and picked up the orange telephone. He smiled. This was new. There was something anticipatory in him. This was new, too.

“Oh, Sandy.”

His voice was an octave higher than usual.

“Oh, Sandy, what?”

“It’s all different.”

“What’s different?”

“I woke up this morning and… well, I got lost.”

“Lost? Where? What are you talking about —”

“Lost in our potential, Sandy.”

I felt like I swallowed a bee.

He continued. “I was looking at the ceiling above my bunk, listening to the sound of the guards’ batons rattling against the bars and the free-form obscenities of waking neighbors, and thought, ‘Hey, why not me? Why not now?”

“Why not what?”

“Hard to put into words, but I feel this overwhelming—this ineffable…”

“Joy?” I winced.

“Yes!”

“God, help me,” I whispered.

Danny grinned. “Not the first time I’ve heard that, my love.”

“Did they change your meds?” I was reaching for anything. “It’s unwise to change medication this far into—”

“It’s not that.” He smiled, as if he were hiding a surprise. Then he reached within his jumpsuit and retrieved a loose leaf of paper. Seeing his handwriting reminded me of the beginning of our affair…

We’d written for almost a year before our first conjugal visit. I was consumed by the detail in his letters—the “ways he would make me suffer if he could only touch me”... Christ, who wouldn’t get turned on? But along with his darkness came an irresistible sorrow. Hope was “not available” to his victims, he once said, and so he would not make it available to himself. Insatiable. And though he’d only been convicted of murdering one woman—a red-headed pharmaceutical rep from Tallahassee—he’d regal details of countless other victims in his love notes to me. That kind of trust, that vulnerability, was nowhere to be found in the men I used to date on the outside. Danny’s devotion was pure—hell, I stopped writing other inmates within the first month of our correspondence.

“Danny, wait. We can’t treat this lightly. Are you aware that unwarranted optimism could be a sign of a developing neurosis from your incarceration? Really. I’ve read about the dangers of these kinds of… manifestations.”

Danny eyed me, but seemed to be thinking of something else entirely.

I dug deeper. “Maybe we need to up your meds. We’ve come so far.” (We hadn’t gotten anywhere really, that was the fucking point.) “I don’t mean to be a dark cloud, I just want to temper unrealistic expectations—what with there being no chance for parole with the appeals process exhausted—”

Danny slammed his fist down with such violence that I nearly dropped the phone. But he never stopped smiling.

“See that’s just it, my little loaf of pumpernickel.” And then he told me.

The unthinkable. A buzzer-beater by Danny’s lawyer in the final stage of his appeal. A key piece of evidence implicit in his conviction had been deemed inadmissible—something about the warrant’s timeline—by that point, my senses had fogged over. Within a few months, his sentence would be overturned. Danny would be free.

Danny, un-phased, if not excited at my pale, lifeless countenance, opened his letter and began to sing with as sweet a timbre as “Amarillo Morning”…

My sweet Sandy.

So sweet your taste will be.

As Sweet as the rage that grows inside of me.

thinking of how

I’m filled with envy

Only when I think of how

My blade will taste you before me.

Are you ready?

sweet Sandy,

for all the terrible things,

I will do

to thee.

He smiled and held the paper to the glass like some maudlin movie scene.

I hung up the phone without a word. The guard took him away—Danny’s eyes never leaving me, and I mumbled to the glass.

“God, help me.”

Photo by Jillian Canter from Love You Down Underground at The Cube.

*Per the inspiration for this piece… Have any of you read about the love affair between Sondra London and Danny Rolling? Well, Rolling was the Gainesville killer—his story was something I heard about throughout my childhood growing up in Florida, a topic impossible to avoid the first time you visit the UF campus and see the dedication wall. Personally, I can’t do true crime—just makes me kind of sad and I start looking at every person that walks by as a suspect, but lord knows my sister and every girl I’ve ever dated loves it. So I have listened to the Gainesville case and while it’s as heinous as heinous gets, what stuck with me was the love affair that grew between Rolling and writer, Sondra London. Her work involved shining a spotlight on the art/writing of Death Row inmates. First came infatuation with Rolling’s “gentle” nature, and then came marriage. No joke. They got married. I just always wondered, how would this love develop if he were to be released?

Happy Halloween, friends.

“I said hello.”

“What did she say?” Jon asked.

“She said hello back and smiled. One that closed her eyes with it—the kind I wish I had.”

“You don’t like your smile?” Jon asked.

“Eh—my features can’t seem to agree on anything.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon said.

“It’s not like I’ll stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Smiling. Anyway, you know what I did?”

“What did you do?” Jon asked.

“I looked her right in the eyes—”

“Right in the eyes?”

“Right in the eyes—and I told her that even when she is sad, no one else is blind to how wonderful a light she emits.”

“Whoa.”

“I know.”

“Did you really say that?” Jon asked.

“Of course not. But I wrote it down when I got home and made you up so I could tell someone about it.”

Photo by Derrick K. Lee

Maybe there are sounds of reggaeton spilling from a beach bar? Maybe your will-be crush is getting a brain freeze from the first pull of their watermelon daiquiri? Maybe there is sand on the dance floor, and maybe you’ve been in Florida long enough to subscribe to the ritual, the reverence, of the holiday that is Spring Break.

Fast forward to the year of our Lord 2020, and you’ve been stuck inside your warehouse for months with no end in sight—the crude nature of your surroundings only emphasized by the absence of the neighboring cement factory’s guttural churn. Knowing that Spring Break came and went makes this claustrophobia worse. If you could just get to the sun, to the crowds, to the hedonistic decadence of it all--to the Hawaiian Tropic of it all.

And then, after too much of Dagny's weed vape pen and exploring the endless bank of Logic’s native sample sounds, I found a world to live in—through 90s drum machine claps, shitty bass synths, and a story about the last day of school before Spring Break. And while obsessing over this one song for a few hours every day, I did it. I escaped.

Songs have lives. Ones that, regardless of whether you’re their omniscient creator, you have little control over after their nascent melodies.

Spring Breaking Your Heart has had three distinct lives so far.

1st Life: Dance floor in Cocoa Beach during Spring Break circa 1997—blacklights, Shaggy, and first times (said 1sts, namely concerning all-consuming puppy love and the taste of Captain Morgan.)

2nd Life: A collaborative reimagining that relocates the song to the Caribbean getaway where Tom Cruise and Elizabeth Shue found base tans and heartache, a la the cinematic triumph Cocktail.

SBYH music video directed by me and Mitch DeQuillettes

3rd Life: A lullaby time capsule of my first brush with devotion. Me, assuming the form of a tender siren cooing back to shore the night that would sculpt me in the ways a river shapes its canyon’s edges. This iteration arrived as an acoustic version I happened to record for my mom on my first trip back to Florida at the end of 2020. (If you wait till the end, you can even hear her sweet stamp of approval.)

Among its lives, there is a consistency in a magic in the ephemera of the sacred holiday in which it was conceived—from twerking as a teenager to night swimming with your college sweetheart, each offers, at least to me, a wonderful elsewhere.

Hoping you'll find a little of that in one of these versions of “Spring Breaking Your Heart.”

photo by Cher Russo

Subscribe now

(excuse the i-phone audio quality—my recording equipment is in the shop)

The sweet flora of poetry—and the bridge of the 2016 SWIMM single "Man's Man." I'll admit it's uncomfortable for even me to read it back without the context of my sardonic, caricature-like delivery and the gratuitous sonic embellishments. But I remember when I committed to recording that bridge, it was out of an ambition to make the listener uncomfortable. I didn't want to leave any room for interpretation as to my intention of calling out this emerging entitled-core masculinity.

Some time ago, I listened to the Malcom Gladwell podcast episode called "The Satire Paradox". He dissects the effectiveness of satire by examining the audience of different shows (SNL, The Colbert Show, etc.), revealing an unlikely split in (an equally enthused) viewership. Half are liberals watching the episodes as satire—something to help them laugh through the pain of another week's depraved political climate. The other half are conservatives taking the content literally—falling for Tina Fey's endearing portrayal of Sarah Palin or agreeing vehemently with Stephen Colbert's incisively sarcastic rants.

This blew my mind. I started thinking about a comment left on the music video for "Man's Man" on YouTube...

"Are you cheering us on or telling us to stop objectifying women?"

To me, it was clear—"Man's Man" was of course a satirical soapbox moment—an egoic tirade to all the men doomscrolling half-naked models and posturing as that dangerous inner voice reacting to the nascent yet undeniable onslaught on the hormones that social media had introduced in the early 10s. Someone was kind enough to reply to this comment with an excerpt from an interview I'd done where I tied the motive of the acid-dipped lyrics to my disgusted reaction to the sexual entitlement of dudes like Billy Bush and our recently elected president.

Still, this notion of misread satire begs the question: how many men have interpreted "Man's Man" as a clarion call to assert their inner alpha?

I even pondered, is that why "Man's Man" is our highest-streamed song on Spotify? Because I captured both sides—the liberals snickering at the cheekiness in someone like me shouting, "You're an ass man"—while the red-pilled conservative bros feel emboldened to "take that girl in the picture they see." Andrew Tate, move over, Cookie in the crop top is coming in hot with a bewildered take on modern masculinity. Yikes!

Perhaps I should always disclaim this song in our live set with a wary diatribe—my intention plotted with charts and unoffensive illustrations. And after I've lost at least half the audience...

"Well, anyway, here's Man's Man."

Video story by me. Director/Producer: AJ Mester. Creative/Producer: Saul Luzeus.

I’ve been watching The Beatles' “Get Back” Documentary, and amidst the hours of new-boot goofin' and painstaking communication breakdowns, emerge these gold-dusted moments where "Across The Universe" is conceived. Of course, these moments feel all the more magical because these songs are woven into the fabric of our knowing—in the same way humans know a green light means go, we know the proper amount of gusto with which to sing “Don’t Let Me Down.”

In my writing, many songs come from a turn of phrase. Sometimes I hear it in conversation, sometimes I channel it in congress with melody as a reaction to something I'm feeling. But you feel it when you're onto something—like the first tug on your 60 lb test that says, “Oh, we might need a bigger boat.” A bigger boat, more time to chase an idea, less need to keep up with inflation.

The line that spurred “Beverly Hells” was “Hallelujah, and hooray for me.” In the first couple years of living in Los Angeles, I felt there was something biblical about the city—more Revelations than Corinthians, if we’re talking “love is blind, love is patient, love is not a hellmouth waiting to swallow all of us self-proclaimed artist types into the abyss the moment ‘the Big One’ hits.” Next came riding on that C-shape, down-strums on the 2 and 4, punctuating each question with the D-shape at each turn. It’s bout realizing you moved to a place that, despite its glossy veneer, runs off a pretty dark current. Maneuvering within a lot of shadow frequencies that distort the purest intentions into—well, I needn't wax Black Dahlia dramatic??? It’s Hollywood, baby, we get it. And not for nothing, I also fucking love it.

In prepping for the release of my first solo album, I’ll be sharing the stories behind songs. While I don’t feel comfortable talking to the camera, I do love talking about songwriting — the discipline, the magic, the unexpected births. Please share if there is anything you’d like to hear more of (or less of) as I do these. I’m learning as I go, and it’s for us! As always, thank you for your time — I value it greatly.

Beverly Hells

Will I be in town?
When hell swallows Beverly Hills
Will you be around?
When I come to my senses and confess that I love you still

So hallelujah, and hooray for me
I can smile and nod my way through almost every situation

Even you, even you have your eyes on something
In control of your own world but king of nothing
You're a prize with a catch, working on commission
A traitor to the cause
All faith in the world but 'ya chose the wrong religion

So hallelujah, and hooray for you
You can bat your eyes through just bout every situation

Aren't you happy, can't you see
How well things are going for me
Aren't you happy, can’t you see how well things are going for me

Aren't you happy, can't you see
How well things
Aren't you happy, can't you see
How well things are goin'

Well I'll be in town right
Where else would I be?
And when hell swallows up all of us whole
And you won't be anywhere in sight
I'll lay here with Lucy and place bets on whose souls will be released from the night
And listen to the low ballers bargain their hearts for a second chance in the light
All the while they're singin', they're singin'

Hallelujah, and hooray, for them
They can beg and plead their way through every situation

I’ve written sentences—a stanza here and there—like jotting equations on a blackboard in hopes there will be some calculus to offer sense to this, or, in wildly ambitious moments, conjure a visitation through a dream or through a butterfly or hummingbird or something of the winged chimerical type. I think in those moments about how the stages of grief are so thoroughly cataloged and how that should at least make the bizarre moments feel less so… right?

One of my last conversations with my friend was about Chat GPT. He asked if I used it in my copywriting. I told him, with a modicum of pride, that I hadn’t yet, but I knew I should. We joked about becoming obsolete, and then he convinced me to get the paid version—promising the upgrade was worth it. I downloaded it later that night and closed the app, doubting I’d reopen it before the next payment cycle. It was just two days later I reopened the app. My first question to ChatGPT was for recommendations of highly reviewed crematoriums in Los Angeles County, as that would be the method of burial his family chose for him.

Since the comprehensive scholarship of grief doesn’t make those moments feel any less bizarre, I feel a pull towards pragmatism. I think of Joan Didion speaking of her book The Year of Magical Thinking, a novel she wrote after she lost her husband and daughter. Did applying a journalistic approach to the unthinkable assuage the pain? Is that how I should approach this?

Mostly, I see him in front of me. Sweet Cory, smiling and leaning back in the opposite chair at my kitchen table.

He nods gently, listening to me talk. Not many listen like he did — in a way that never made me feel I had to hurry through a thought.

He laughs after a crass joke he’s made. His Travolta blue eyes claim all the light from the window. His smile always steadied my heart rate.

And then, like in the movies, he’ll be gone. I'm alone in the room again, muttering to myself, “What the fuck, Cory? You’re really going to leave us? Just like that?”

After the memorial, I noticed an uncomfortable feeling when I thought about him—not that I was doing something wrong per se, but something inappropriate—like continuing to cry in the lobby of the theater after a sad movie—everyone staring as they discard their empty popcorn boxes and shake their heads crossly, “Don’t you know that part is over, dude?”

A few days later, my friend Mel came over to sing. Struggling from a collective sluggishness, we walked to the beach in search of caffeine to spin our grief-spent minds and a sea breeze to coat our hollowed voices.

I was almost surprised at how casually she mentioned him, but we spent the next few hours talking about Cory. We spoke of the peculiarities of grief. We shared conversations we'd had with him—some before and some after his leaving. She shared things about their relationship—ways he was great, ways he wasn’t, and about his strong desire to be a father. It felt sad, difficult, bizarre... but it felt right. We returned to my apartment and were able to sing and laugh as we usually do.

So I want to give allowance to any friends that knew him or didn’t, in case it feels needed, to ask me about him if he ever crosses your mind. I’d be happy to talk about Cory. I’ll cry in the fucking lobby with you.

A few lines for you, Cory.

The weather of this year signals change beyond my growth
The you I won’t miss
Is the you I didn’t know 
I see you so clearly
across from me
Blue-eyed boy 
And if success is the sun of a day you’ll never see
Always know, sweet boy, always know
your failures sound like rain against my window

Cory photographed by Linnea Stephan.

Garrett couldn’t stop laughing. His disdain for Moonsong was no secret. He’d complained multiple times about her audible groaning and incessant gum smacking.

“Misophonia is a diagnosed condition,” he barked as he stormed out of last spring’s final Vinyasa class.

His eyes were fixed on Moonsong, but he was suspended in a soft gaze watching past iterations of himself through the dewey glow of memory. His giggling not an insidious celebration, but a result of his explorative breathwork session. In his last round of Breath of Fire, Garrett had experienced an anoetic breakthrough that shattered the barriers of his lifelong trust issues. He couldn’t help but laugh with daffy affection at the investigative misgivings of his past—like watching a puppy covered in powdery confections from a ravaged kitchen pantry.

Diane couldn’t stop crying, but it wasn’t the lifeless body before her that stirred her so deeply. Through her breathing, Diane had exhumed the bitter truth of her parents’ divorce from a series of repressed memories—heretofore liquifying her calcified commitment phobia.

Jenn sat at Moonsong’s feet, shaking like a timid Chihuahua. The session’s accelerated rhythms and vulnerability had delivered her first orgasm. Would she go another thirty three years before her next?

And finally Barry, in his skin tight yoga pants, couldn’t stop moaning. He’d just had his 427,000th orgasm and had finally mastered the art of the internal O—redirecting his, as he called it, Love Lava back into his body, up his urethra, and around his Epididymis to distribute it throughout his body and enrich his fascia. He thought the fracas among the breathers was in celebration of his achievement, but when he gauged the severity of Moonsong’s condition, he barged through the lingering panters and climbed on top of her.

The group eyed each other worriedly after multiple rounds of Barry’s CPR had no effect other than to sustain his preexisting erection. He paused, contemplated giving up, but gave one final blow.

“PUAAAAA!” She coughed and a wad of Spearmint gum the size of a golf ball flew into Barry’s eye.

Moonsong sprung up at the waist. She looked around. Dazed, but undeniably transported. Finally!

You see, Moonsong had practiced decades worth of breathwork and never felt anything. For years she faked it, listening for whichever resounding emotion the class was consumed with and assuming form. She’d pretend to laugh if the mood was light and weep if the group was particularly purgey.

Physically, she felt awful. Her mouth dry, trespassed—she was fifteen, making out in the movie theater, salty popcorn still stuck in her molars. Her throat felt sore—she was eight, in the walk-in clinic, the nurse sticking a cold thermometer down her strep throat. But emotionally she was abound with life! She was four, running barefoot on sand for the first time.

The crowd now lurched over Barry—who was writhing about and grabbing his left eye.

“I’M BLIND ! I’M BLIND!”

Despite his squirming and squawking, Moonsong felt an unexplainable calm toward the man, and, well, convinced she’d ascended beyond the neural plane, she deigned to remedy the hapless human’s ill-starred circumstance.

She stroked his cheek gently and pulled his hand away from his eye. The group gasped upon seeing the wad of spearmint gum had suctioned itself around Barry’s right cornea like some alien ocular succubus.

“Yank it off!” Diane said. “Better to get it over with than drag it out over years of lying and adultery!”—the synapses that triggered the trauma of her parents’ divorce still firing at will.

Garrett interjected. “Don’t fight it, Barry.” His heart-space still a safe reprieve from decades of suspicion. “You have to let it go, Barry. Just trust.”

So as not to pull the eye out with the spearmint obstruction, Moonsong leaned closer and exhaled her hot breath onto the gum. Barry relaxed a little. She exhaled again and the gum fibers loosened. The entire class joined—breathing with her in soft slow cycles—warmly, deliberately.

Barry gazed up at her through his clear eye. Were they all dead? He wondered, for an angel stood before him.

With one last humid breath, Moonsong freed the wad completely. The release of the gum’s death grip combined with the full vision of Moonsong’s smiling face was too much, and Barry came in his yoga pants.

“Oh shit.” Moonsong exclaimed, proving she was in fact a sentient life form with whom Barry could communicate.

Moonsong laughed, then Barry, then the whole class. This laughter filled the Self-Realization Studio like a bag of popcorn in the microwave and did not cease for the remainder of the session. And the chewing gum dissolved, returning to serene nothingness in a bubbling heap of saliva and ejaculate.

Cafe in Mexico City — Photo on film by AJ

I am not talking about the earrings or guy-liner. To express oneself so as to peacock one’s libido? I sympathize. In fact, I’m not even mad at the soul patch. Can one be offended by the soul patch? Put off? Sure. Assaulted? Likely. But I’ll posit that while it efficiently telegraphs you don’t wear rubbers and cry upon hearing Staind’s live rendition of “Outside,” the triangle of sadness attains only as much power as we give it.

So, what then? What is my issue with the Pick-Up Artist, Erik Von Markovik? What could it be if I’m admittedly tickled by, if not envious of, his self-ordained stage name, Mystery?

This provoked a question…

Are we able to fall in love when not being entirely ourselves?

Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl is a serrated examination of this quandary. Nick creates a too-good-to-be-true version of himself to land Amazing Amy—a lover out of his league. Meanwhile, Amy becomes the ultimate “cool girl” to bait Nick into marriage. The catch, and of course, the hook of Flynn’s story, is that it may literally kill them both to keep up the facade. But isn’t love worth all the sociopathy? Didn’t Leo reinforce to every millennial through Titanic, and then again in Romeo and Juliet, that it is even worth death?

My snag is not that love isn’t worth its appendaged lunacy but that I’ve only really fallen when I’ve felt like myself around someone. And so, this proves to be my problem with Mystery.

While Von Markovik transformed those rizz-challenged men into the fedora-donning cognoscenti of negging, he never disclaimed the danger in his magic’s prestige. He never said, “Hey bros, silk vests may equal handjobs, but handjobs don’t equal love.” He did not disclose that an alignment of pheromones and shared disinterests beget a variety of calm specific to being entirely oneself. At the end of the day, we just want to relax, right?

Fleetwood Mac’s “Sara” plays as I write this. Stevie sings my favorite line, “I think I had met my match, he was singing.” Then, her vibrato steadies as she lilts, “And undoing.”

The last time I fell in love, our bond was built upon this repose. We’d have plans for a night and then find ourselves in bed days later in a heap of Postmates and digested miniseries. We referred to our little retreats as ‘the first 48.’ Did I feel guilty about the sloth of it all? Sure. But with it came the indelible calm in not having to be anything but myself--a tranquil undoing.

Uh oh. Is this getting too sentimental? After gazing out the cafe windows at the ceaseless rain—Stevie harping on about the poet in her heart—I shake myself out of it. Chris! You’ve been warned about this level of introspection!

I'll pose one more question and make my escape. At the risk of gleaning a narcissistic perspective, imagine you have two scales.

One holds the love you feel for your partner.

The other, the love you have for the You that partner illuminates.

Where do your scales tip? When our hearts break, how much are we mourning that person, and how much are we mourning the loss of whatever self leaves with them?

As far as my scales, I’m not sure. I think if I knew the answer, I’d be envious of the Me that didn’t—tickled time and again by the fucking Mystery of it all.

Want to clarify that this piece is not meant to throw any real shade at this Rizz professor. Some light hearted early aughts jesting, but hey, we’re all just trying to do our thing to fulfill the primal urge.

Maybe it’s the clamoring of it all. All these people who are supposed to be too rich, famous, and beautiful to ever clamor again are clamoring—hard.

Maybe it’s the fake smiles from the sidelines. The forced expressions from those who weren’t in on the bit. I get it. Hell, imagine you’ve secured a table at the fucking Oscars, yet one missed photo opp puts you right back in your junior high cafeteria staring longingly at the cool-kid table.

Maybe it’s that I can’t control the endorphin rush from seeing this many famous faces at once. The TMZ jockey in my brain jostled without my consent.

“Bradley! How’s the co-parenting with Irina going?”

“Julia! Ocean’s 14?? What’s it gonna take?!”

“Mr. Spacey, are you really the monster they say you are??”

“Mrs. Degeneris, are you really the monster they say you are??”

And you, Mr. Hess, what sycophantic gene possesses you to stare at this photo longer than others in your doomscroll?

Is it that I, too, would clamor? Me? Oh God, is that it?? Is it that I know deep down if I found myself at the Dolby Theater on that lauded Sunday and saw Ellen flip her phone to selfie mode, I’d be leaping over tables, tripping Meryl Streep, socking Channing Tatum, and stiff-arming Lupita Nyong’o to secure my spot in the selfie seen around the world?

There’s nothing groundbreaking in the realization that high school never ends. Still, there is a comfort in knowing that even the untouchables—the ones with the Oscars, with supermodel ex-wives, with franchises built around their likeness, with heartthrob posters of their faces dating back to My So-Called Life, even the ones with the romcom fire-escape-happy-endings branded into our brains—they all have a voice inside of them screaming, “PICK ME! PLEASE, PICK ME!!”

Perhaps then, we confer a touch of patience to that eager voice of our own. Let it bandy its yearnings and squawk for a spot in the cool kid pic. Then, with a smile that pours pitiless mercy, wipe gently the bangs from its dewy brow and whisper softly,

“Look bitch, we’re never gonna be Brad fucking Pitt, and even if we were, you’d still be screaming at me. So pipe down, and let’s sip our Soda Water and Bitters alone against this wall with some goddamn dignity.”

“Admiration becomes lust at the intersection of wanting and wanting to be.”

A line from Azeez’s Platonic Husband Substack post titled “When Does Admiration Become Lust.”

As I skimmed back through the annals of my obsessions, I wondered, why does it feel so embarrassing to admit this? That I would admire someone to the point of wanting to become them. It sounds extreme, a bit Single White Female, but what is more human?

I see a boy blanching his cheeks with shaving cream, mimicking his father’s every move in the mirror.

This desire to assume someone else’s form has run the gamut of my experience. When I was a competitive surfer, I studied the style of the Hobgood brothers—how they’d bend their back knee and tweak their wrists like prowling cats seizing the lip of a wave. Of course, any sport requires emulation of technique, but why did I go so far as to analyze how they spoke and wore their beanies? Why the fuck did I try to affect their pigeon-toed stroll when I carried my surfboard up the beach? WHY IS THIS SO EMBARRASSING?

When I started performing on stage, I would study videos of Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I was healthily obsessed and even wrote an essay on her genius. (RIP my Tumblr - Memoirs of a Lilith Fairy—kinda slapped) But it wasn’t lustful. I wanted to be her more than I wanted to be with her.

Enthralled by her ferocity on stage, I was besotted with her humility. She would scream and deep throat a microphone, and before the audience could react, she’d be laughing at herself for doing it. I connected to the abandon and adored the awareness of the absurdity of it all.

So what then of the romantic leaning of this propensity? It’s hard enough to let on that you’re falling for someone these days—but admit to wanting to become them?? An ick, right? Petrifying, yes? Or just natural?

I’d argue this is the first beacon of love’s Fresnel lens — signaling the tumultuously blissful shores of infatuation are upon your ass! Oh yeah, if you find yourself borrowing the idiosyncrasies of the cutie you’re kissing, you better take up sail and return to calmer seas of low committal situationships or prepare for three months of love’s ‘why does this never get any fucking easier’ landfall.

Karen O’s lyrics animate these tendencies time and time again.

Whenever I read Karen O’s lyrics, I want to cry. I can’t pinpoint what percentage of this is owed to the enigma of her writing or the window of time I found her music. These songs coaxed me through my first ‘will it ever be this beautiful and painful again’ landfall, and it was eery how specifically her words seemed to narrate my experience.

It was, of course, a summer. I had fallen. I had assumed — behaviors, speech, style, and favorite songs. The season was leaving me as was she, for a Masters Program far away from Florida. We knew the end was coming, so we kept creating things to do — little penultimate scenes of goodbye before the dreaded last one: A swim in the ocean in our clothes, a dance to “Y Control” in her roommate’s bedroom (they had the good stereo system), a fuck with the windows open to hear the afternoon thunderstorm fill the screens with rain, and finally one last trip into Georgia to The Little Hostel in the Forest.

* These scenes would eventually become the backdrop for the lyrics of the SWIMM song “Spring Breaking Your Heart.”

It was quiet there. Unbothered by things like semesters or scholarships or any other of life’s assiduous cogs of change. It was lush and green and breathing, and I resented it for all of its budding and growing. I never knew I could feel so much under the moon, and I never thought I’d feel so fucking sad in a treehouse.

We mostly listened to music on the drive back. I recall with such weight that unremarkable stretch of 95 South, just before the state line, where pine and palm begin their compromise. As the song “Turn Into” played, I felt, at least in my hundred-ton heart, as though Karen O was damn near trespassing when she sang that first verse.

Ps. Along with listening to all of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs catalogue, I highly recommend subscribing Azeez’s Substack page, Platonic Husband. He, like Karen O, writes with the blend of style, humility, and abandon that reminds me to see humanity with wonder.

And so, over my holiday home, I’d notice the more my mom’s eyes would water, the more mine would. You may see the more severe issue looming over me…

“Oh god,” I thought. “Am I an empath?”

I couldn’t bring myself to admit it yet.

The night before my flight back to LA, I tossed and turned, contemplating the consequences of this affliction—one that humans seem to wear as a badge, though never distinguishing it between disability or superpower. I awoke from a nightmare where I was documenting my empathy to a plane full of cynics like a celiac trapped in an Olive Garden, detailing his gluten intolerance to his captors—“Give me the hose, but not another breadstick!”

I have visions of friends belaboring the details of their season’s problems; only instead of listening and soothing them with the advice I’d never heed myself, I scream at them to stop!

“Can’t you see my unrelenting humanness will absorb your condition?”

Judge me as you will, but think of my eyes—how they well and spill. Light affects them most—bright screens and big windows are PUNISHING.

With about 30 minutes left on my first flight, an attendant told me to open my window shade. I was accosted by a harsh spotlight of brumal sky. I craned away from the window. “I may never see again,” I thought. Passengers in my row shuddered in horror when they saw the tear ducts of my right eye bubble and fill. I shut the window in agony—in defiance.

Seconds later, I was asked to open the shade again. My anger grew as firm as Spirit’s non-reclineable chairs. I contemplated my choices. I could…

Option A. Beckon the captain and crew, and explain that I am, clinically speaking, a self-diagnosed empath. Sure, my rep as certified ‘bad boy’ would be lost, and they’d wonder what my enlarged empathy has to do with the window, but to avoid an exhausting exegesis on my gift/burden, they’d apologize, close my window, and bring me a vodka & tomato juice au gratis.

Option B. Simply tell them I have an undiagnosed eye condition that makes me a little bitch when it comes to bright light.

Option C. (The fun one) Go full American idiot on their ass and scream obscenities and amendment rights at a plane full of gawking passengers armed with iPhone cameras.

I chose Option D, lifted the shade immediately, and tried to mask my servility with an indignant pout. But as I wiped a leaky faucet of tears from my irritated right eye, I fantasized about Option C—my face red and legs stiff as the Spirit team dragged me off the plane…

“Y’all forgot this was MY YEAR!” I scream.

Phones fly out.

“BIG THINGS COMING SOON!”

The crowd cheers as I’m escorted away.

In haunting falsetto, I sing, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MEEE”—tears rushing down my face, not because I’m crying but because the glacial Detroit air wafting through the terminal corridor is having a field day with my Dry Eye. Oh, yes—did I mention it was my birthday? Nothing screams, “Eat, Pray, Trash,” quite like flying Spirit and being detained by TSA at your Detroit layover.

An onlooker in a pair of UGG boots calls me an old hag.

I shout back, “I’m not even middle-aged!” And then solemnly wonder if I am.

“Tase his ass.” I hear before everything goes white.

I come to, propped up against Gate 41's kiosk.

An agent kneels down, “Sir, you DO NOT know the day I’ve had—inclement weather has caused multiple airline cancellations, and half of my staff is sick with the holiday flu. Not to mention—“

“STOP!” Please, stop!” I beg her. My tears finally genuine—the drool too. “I’ll cooperate; just don’t go on another second about your problems.”

The agent withdraws, aghast.

“You wouldn’t get it,” hand to my forehead. “I’m an empath.”

This is Henry. The tiny violin playing throughout was from Rachmaninoff Op. 34, No. 14.

(Ps. Apologies for the lack of posting in the last month—a combo of being sick, moving, and my writing brain tending to shut down during unspeakable crisis in the world—too many to name. BIG THINGS COMING SOON THOUGH!)

I’m proud of myself. I chose courage.

While waiting for my flight at the Melbourne airport, I opted not to reach for my earbuds and distract myself but to sit quietly and brave the minefield of thought. And for that, I feel as bold as the chiseled icons of 300, in their shields and skirt things, eager to defend their name if but to experience a beautiful death.

“THIS IS SPARTA!” I whisper under my breath.

The statuesque man in the opposite row looks up. His muscle-fitted Under Armor rash guard and cauliflower ear signal that we are one and the same—two warriors holding camp along weary travel. I shoot him a knowing glance and rest my gaze out the giant terminal windows.

The afternoon casts a bronze gossamer over the loafing aircrafts and empty fields. Central Florida doesn’t have seasons as much as moods, and winter here makes the air sharper and lighter. I used to loathe this time of year because it meant losing my tan. (Did I mention I’m from Florida?)

The Space Coast. I really took for granted how cool it was to grow up seeing rockets blast into orbit while surfing just a few miles south of NASA’s launchpad. Who knew the years would bring such appreciation for having a countdown area code and weather with a low sun index?

I wonder how other travelers feel about this town—my home—a slow-paced semi-equatorial respite that has become a nuanced source of fascination for me.

There is the paradox of said slow pace with its incendiary political climate. A successful conversation about politics in Florida is usually one that is avoided. But of course, it is impossible to ignore the antinomy of overhearing a childhood friend flippantly drop the N-word because ever since 2016, he and his dad feel they’ve had a license to. There is the internal schism of spending five years writing a screenplay affixed on your engrossing fear and sadness around gun violence, only to have another friend brandish and clean his semi-automatic assault rifle. He keeps it under his bed in case of home intrusion. A fucking AK47! A “body stopper,” as he calls it.

I refocus my attention on the nature of Brevard County couples. The ones that have settled down and started families. There is a touch of “studying them like a foreign species” intrigue, but also inspiration.

You see, a personal fear of mine is that of routine (with a capital R) eroding the magic of life with stagnancy. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good routine. But what does the onion of commitment look like with 15 years and two kids peeling back its endless layers?

I ache to know how this feels—moreover, how it works. Dost thou think of other ways your life could have gone? If so, how often?

Even if the answers make me uncomfortable, I imagine the questions all but evaporate with how inexplicably whole you feel in that half hour after dinner—when you recline into that nook of the couch (that is understood by the greatest law of the universe to be your nook of the sofa) with your wife, kids, dogs, and debts comfortably idle beside you.

I like to think that, at least at that moment, you are free of the inquisitive torment I’ve come to know as fodder for content. And I’d like to know, what the fuck does that feel like??

At least once a trip, I get the question… will you ever move back? And again, a knot of contradiction. Never have I imagined not growing old in this place, yet I can’t foresee a universe that makes sense where I’m living in Florida again. For now, I’m thankful for my patience with this contradiction. And while I’m not as at peace with other inconsistencies, the bronze-cast tableau of my beloved barrier island still does it for me. The easy breathing and open pores that come with humidity and the healing heart and languid thought that come with family.

Dare I ask, what does your hometown draw from you?

Subscribe now

Nephew

Banana River sunset

Gracie and Jamie hangs in Melbourne Beach

Posting my response to a George Saunders post titled "Writing by a Dossier Method," in which he details the creation of characters as instigators for potential storylines. In Saunders' example, he creates two characters he likes that have nothing to do with each other. He decides to put them in a forest, and then, through a method of positive interference, which he calls "crossing the wires," he intersects the paths of these characters. They now have thoughts about each other and will eventually face something significant together. How insignificant the initial encounter, it matters not.

The first fictional writing I ever did (stemming from my early bouts of insomnia) was assuming the mindset of characters. Sitting up in bed at some stark hour of night, half-frenzied and mostly pissed I couldn't sleep, I would write these varied monologues:  a Hackensack car mechanic musing about ass and the rear wing of a 911 Turbo, an outrageously successful author high off Tramadol after her first face-lift before her next book tour, an older woman calmly detailing the unsealed box of Triscuits as justification for lighting her husband's truck on fire.

For years, I've wanted to bring these characters into some comprehensive plot: a la 12 Angry Men or a less cokey version of Magnolia/a less bathetic version of Crash. But I've also wondered if they're stronger on their own. The way some short stories feel like good photographs -- capturing a moment or feel rather than an arc. My fear has always been that banding these characters around a plot solely for the sake of plot may dilute their verve. Of course, there is some slight possibility that I'm just being lazy!

Book of monologues? Any good ones y'all suggest?

Pictured: Two characters on the same path, one in the midst of a clearly agonizing hangover and the other taking a pinch of sadistic pleasure in that agony.

Separate, they are alive (barely). Together, they thrive! (one of them at least).

Leaving you with some motivating words from Mr. Saunders…

“My feeling is that any approach, seen passionately through to its end, can produce good stories. Even if the method is idiosyncratic or odd.  Because all methods of writing stories are idiosyncratic and odd.”