Sound City Studio A is anything but warm. The room is either too hot or too cold and Tony is either there and excited or leaning in front of the coffee machine in the lobby taking a phone call with a fistful of nuts. Tony is solid and God-like and was born solid and God-like. One time I tried to tune a violin off of the wall while he was out and the bridge on it snapped clean off. My engineer and quiet, unspoken friend named Will asked “why did you touch that?” and I felt that hot spreading feeling like I pissed myself for the first time since the first time I looked up porn online. I had no answer, frankly because I was trying not to cry, and before I could say anything, Will grabbed the instrument for my hands and said “next time let’s not grab stuff off of the walls” before putting it back on in silence. On a bus back to the three-bedroom apartment I was subletting at in Van Nuys, I thought to myself “every instrument is on a wall, am I not supposed to touch any of the instruments anymore?” I also thought to myself “ I really need to tell Tony what happened before I see him.” It was October-ish and after stealing a roommates quinoa for dinner and mixing it all around with various fridge condiments before choking it down, I’d waited my 30 minutes and I would maybe kind-of feel a cigarette. I perched on my spot — an electrical box right next to a 5 lane Boulevard — and turned the noise canceling on on my headphones to hit play on the album demos. I smoked three cigarettes, texted a dude on Hinge that I had no intention of meeting with about my day, and then I passed a neighbor with his fist around a bong in the courtyard of a sodium lit building. The clash of the steel grate “outside door” usually haunted me, but this time it CRSSSSHed perfectly as ‘Say Uncle’ started. There was a daydream I had about doing a kind-of spy, kind-of stalker themed music video back when I thought the song was good enough for a music video. I listened to it three times in a row and did this mostly-jumping half-dance thing in my boxers while the image of me sunglassed under a moving car projected onto the sliding mirrored closet door in front of me and the next morning, Tony walked in all excited and looking for a joke, and we played back ‘Fingers and Clothes’ before he exclaimed

“Do you know what this song could use!? Some violin”

“Oh shit, T—“ I tried to say.

“Oh, I know who would play beautifully on this. I think you know her - do you know Katie Gavin?” Of course I know Katie Gavin — she’s one of the only things we talk about.

With my face now completely red, and again on the verge of tears, I said “Tony last night I took—“

Tony stood up and grabbed the black violin off of the wall, still pretending to not know “This one would sound great!”

“Tony, last night I tried to tune that and the bridge broke off and I’m sorry”

“I know Jake.” he said, and then changed the topic.

That day, Harrison Whitford came in to play on the record, and despite spending the whole session in fight-or-flight, I do very distinctly remember saying “I think I’m a deeply bitter person” and then feeling my angst throw a blanket over any type of light that was once in the room.

Coming up on 2 years later, once sober, then worse off than before, and now in some purgatory of smoking weed and binging a bunch, I sat at a Marriott hotel room desk in front of an open sketchbook this past Friday on the phone with someone that I wouldn’t consider my best friend but I would consider my best friend. I shared qualms with trying to record again after the closest thing I ever had to a dad went ghost on me. Richer, but equally financially insecure, he is a friend that fills in all my gaps for me. While I was in LA we booked two days of writing and I cold-opened with something like “I’ve been good! I think I might be a narcissist. How have you been?” and he just laughed. He was the first person to ever point out my nervous laugh, but after two years and one drunk call where I asked him the kind of questions that would make anyone else break their sobriety and self-destruct, it was nice to sit and not do our work together on a sticky leather couch across a table with a lit le labo candle on it. He said something like “I don’t think anyone is anything I just think people get sick with things for a while” and he answered my questions with his own failures and analogies and jokes. I told him about my internal sine wave and about how much fun recording was and how scary it felt to be alone at night. Something about being in a room with Liam will make me laugh harder than I ever have and then remember all of the reasons I shouldn’t be laughing the second I stop. At the end of the boys’ stay I caught myself chewing up the couch and finding reasons that it would be easier without them there. The boys were in town for 9 days and about halfway through I booked this amazon show where I will be playing Musician #3 and singing a John Prine song at a solstice festival. When I went to tell my family group chat the news, I opened a 3 day stale message from my mom who had unearthed the only picture evidence I have of me and my dad. That day we were tracking a song I wrote about him called Guard Rail.

“They fixed the guard rail

Where the woman drove off

Of the Stevenson Bridge

With her kid in the car

He was a blessing

Til he was older than she was when she had him

And all of those ‘in the dark things’ happen

When no one’s plugging in that light

No one’s gonna say that they get it

No one’s gonna say that they don’t

They just fix the guard rail”

We tried to track it as a band and Kane tried to add a drum loop and all of it was nice. Going into recording, I listened to the Adrianne Lenker ‘Song Exploder’ where they talked about recording a song live and then not listening again until the next day so that no one was performing for print and no one was listening like a critic. One of the things that helped me deal with a good thing ending was getting to watch my dreams left for “the right way to do it”. Frustrated about the guys going in to listen, I perched outside on the curb next to a Mexican food truck, smoked a cigarette, watched the video of me and my dad, and then asked Omar to hit record while the guys ordered lunch. I knew that I could’ve farted into the microphone and they would have been like “wow that was the take”, and so I ran 2 play-through’s without stopping and then asked Liam to come join. Liam’s natural way of musically singing along after the through-line made my nose sting and my throat get tight. I stepped outside to cool off and he followed me out and we exchanged videos of our dads. He told me about when he was 12 and his dad drove him from Carlsbad to the front desk of the capital records building in Hollywood and demanded a record deal. In his defense, his band was really great and I think I would’ve committed suicide too if I was reaching for 40 and no one made any noise about songs like that.

“Did you know 60% of suicides are rooted in financial stress?” I asked

“Thats cool”

“Im really happy you’re here, I’m sorry I’ve been so gone, its just that you are hard to make eye contact with when I’m on drugs again”

“I welcome death” He said. For fear of butchering his gospel, I won’t put it in real quotes, but he said something along the lines of “death is a celebration or finale to a life, I don’t really need to see that part, I like the filler episodes and sharing those good moments before all that. People can come in and out as they please, my door will stay open and I will just be happy to see em.”

Back at the desk in the hotel room, half-shading a face, but mostly listening, we talked about the Phoebe thing and success and how scary it is to have people looking at you and your dirty hands. We talked about sobriety and I fixed the thermostat while he reminded me that he could see me from the ceiling. Similar to Tony, my friend doesn’t give advice on purpose, he just shares what he’s seen and leaves me with enough space to water his seeds. I did my dishes while listening to ‘Haunted’ by Phoebe Bridgers. I cracked the doggy-door shaped suicide prevention window and left the blinds open while the sun came down over Calgary.

It’s morning as I finish this. My hand shakes with the cracks on the road and the horizon is buffered by green deflated fluffy pillows and every third climb makes me feel like I’m on top of the world. I have a driver and I flew here first class, and the other actors are toned and seasoned and one of them is eating hard-boiled eggs out of a Tupperware container. I’m checking my phone for a text from this guy named Brett and I wonder if the woman driving is only a Canadian Trump supporter because she works for the one percent. The other week I told Annika and Olivia why I think I’m a bad person even though I hate using good/bad spiritually and I told them about these twins that I was cruel to in high school and then discarded in college. A week later I sent them an apology text and two days after that I got lunch with Sean and told him “I was never gonna be myself around you, I was busy trying to make sure that you wouldn’t leave” as we sat around breakfast burritos and coffees and croissants. Both of us were a little heavier than the last time we saw each other, now both without our support systems and in a place where no one has to keep a secret. Second puberty is a tunnel that cuts through mountains and it’s hard to trust a light without looking for the entrance to another one. It’s hard to let a light be light long enough to let the eyes readjust, sometimes it’s easier to ask the crew questions about what to expect for my first day on set.

Jake and I were best friends growing up. Jake was never gonna be an artist but maybe he could be an architect. Its why we liked each other. We would do theatre and id be better than him and then wed go to his house and ride go-karts and id crash into a tree or something and we’d have to stop. We went to different schools, so during the year we wouldn’t talk much, but we’d spend our summers together. When we first got to high school, we did theatre, and right before that, jakes old friends bought him a vape. Between school and the musical id watch him hit this chunky box mod and blow it on the plastic red orchestra chairs. We’d try to recreate that vine where some guy spun his hand just right and turned the cloud into a twister. One day, 2 girls named Lauren and Elizabeth came into the room and caught me and Jake.

Theatre kids have this awful habit of what me and Jake once called “reverse racism”. There was something about a straight white male that could make a group of outcasts adapt the same hostility as those southern baptists at LA pride. We watched the same kids maul this kid named ross cuz he also did hockey for fun sometimes while also being in hairspray the musical. God-for-fucking-bid he had a crush on one of the girls in the cast too; holy shit. Anyways, Lauren and Elizabeth would walk into a room that Jake was in and go “ewww it smells like cool cucumber mint in here, Jake can you keep that shit away from me” and bitch about catching “secondhand smoke addiction”. Today we both forgive them— in hindsight I think that if being 14 had a catchphrase it would have to sound something like that. But I watched them shred Jake and I did nothing to help. I dont remember what was on my mind at the time, I think it might have been a girl named Alexandra but I could be wrong. Regardless, Jake learned that I wasn’t a real friend and we kept each other at the distance we needed to love each other.

We were sophomores when Jake invited me over for a sleepover to “show me something.” I sat on the bed in his hyper-blue room as he unpacked this Russian nesting doll of lock-boxes and unveiled his dab pen. That night we pushed the couches in the living room together and watched some buddy-cop film and he talked like he watched a Smosh skit where someone pretended to be drunk and thought thats what’s supposed to happen when you smoke. I dont think I felt it, but I didn’t remember much of that night. We woke up and talked about how crazy it was. We would hang out when he needed someone to pick up weed with. There was one night where it was me, Jake, and kids named Andrew, matt, and Ryan (white people name convention, I know). I think it was everyones first time besides Jake and I. We all took blinkers and Ryan started speaking Spanish like it was miraculously the only language he knew. Ryan is a blond hair, blue eyes kid from connecticut who could’ve gone to an Ivy if he got in. Andrew “didn’t feel anything” but freaked out a little and then pretended to fall asleep. Matt was fine, but in the moment of everyone doing that “jake’s parents are asleep so we can’t talk with volume” whisper-screaming, I realized I was better than this.

for the spring we each made different friends. I leaned in to my youth group buddies and fell in love w one of them and he found Max. I got properly drunk for the first time the day covid closed the school and then I discovered steamroller by Phoebe Bridgers the next day. sometime in that summer, Max and Jake and I were in the hot tub and Max told us about the “touch my body” game where you closed your eyes, held your arm out, and fell straight forward onto the other person. I didn’t want to play but Jake and Max had played it a couple times. I would love to say that I got a bad feeling in my stomach but I did not. That fall, the 3 of us hung out and Max took us to buy fleshlights and suggested we took turns using the same one. That night we talked about what videos we watched and at the end we took our pants off, held a towel over our junk, and dropped it on the count of three. I wish I felt nervous or bad about it but I felt safe and that we were having fun and that we were just boys. I am not a victim because I said yes and I was reminded throughout the whole time that I could stop anytime I wanted. They told me that they would do these funny naked photoshoots where Jake would do weird shit like put his penis in a hotdog bun. We took a break from hanging out when school started up again

I hung out with Max when id heard that he was going to take a break from “virtual art school”. He introduced me to neutral milk hotel and Grindr and how to get someone to send you nudes and I was 17 and he was 19 and he was hinting that him and Jake were hanging out a bunch. He had a couple friends that were younger than him like that. There’s one kid thats just like Jake named Harrison — jewish, artistic but non-committal, aimless, but also the kind of guy to send a girl the cringiest selfie of all time via snapchat.

There was another kid that he mentioned too, although I dont remember his name. For my sake, im not going to dig for it. I was just about 18, I had the covid teen boy syndrome and Max fed it like dry pine needles on a fire. He was my only friend that I was seeing at the time, because he could drive, and one day I was in the car with him and he was telling me about this kid. He said that he knew he was gay but wasn’t willing to say it out loud and I was like “hahah aren’t we all” and Max was like “no I sucked him off, like he’s actually gay”. And my stomach dropped. I asked how old he was and Max said he was 15 and then he turned on “in the areoplane over the sea” and I saw everything I had done wrong like a film in my head. To this day I can tell you exactly where I was when he said it and when the song started. I didn’t say anything and I didn’t tell Jake because I knew he knew. I didnt hear from him again, frankly I kept it to myself but I tried to forget he existed until the spring.

mom sat me down in the living room one day and said Max had been arrested. He was being touchy with a girl and she told the police and they went through his computer and found bad photos on there. She said “everyone is saying it was just something artsy that had something bad in it.” I laughed and told her I knew what the photos were of. I was angry but it came out as that Connecticut rich kid snark, like the family was going to Cabo instead of Ibiza for vacation that year. I thought about texting Jake but I couldn’t. I went to the park with some friends that next week and someone brought it up and I spilled over like a bucket of water and told them everything. I got an angry text from our mutual friends who had heard what I said and I told her I didn’t care if she never talked to me again if she was gonna defend it.

Jake and I have texted maybe 2 times back and forth since then. I think about what I should have texted a lot. There was so much to say and too much of it was things I didn’t want to share with him. He started dating a girl I used to date and he thinks that I had a crush on him and thats why we aren’t friends. I made a victim out of him and when I think about him I think about how Max helped make a villain out of me. I am blocked by Max, and I don’t listen to neutral milk hotel and I don’t talk to people from home anymore and I am still unlearning the things that I learned from both of them. Still, sometimes I wonder what Jake and I would be like if I reached out after the news broke.

Bobby Malone Moves Home (Live) - Advance Base

Bloodbuzz Ohio - The National

A Song That Sings About You - This Is Lorelei

About Today - The National

I’m All Fucked Up - This is Lorelei

Day I Die - The National

Nail - Oldstar

Gloria - Patti Smith

Marble - quinnie

Shooting Star - Hovvdy & Runo Plum

Angel Song - quinnie

Im Not There - Flyte

SIDE B

Karen - The National

Ordinary - Alex Warren

Lit Up - The National

A World Without Heroes - Kiss

Daughters of the Soho Riots - The National

Surrender - Cheap Trick

Abel - The National

Day Dreaming - Aretha Franklin

Julianne - Ben Folds Five

Bottoming Out - Lou Reed

Wizard Song - Grace Carlin

Already Going Home - Kitchen

Sometimes I spend 30 minutes in the shower day dreaming about the thing that I’m going to do after the shower. There is a version of this thing that is loose and exceptional and sometimes I will chuckle to myself because I know that it isn’t gonna go like this when I do it, but every time, without fail, it feels like this time I’m really gonna do it how I’m projecting it onto the wet tile in front of me. I left for tour at the end of July.

Tour was objectively great. I learned how easy it is to be bad at tour on this tour. I learned that I like agency over my free time and I learned the benefits of getting bossed around once that agency is restricted. I learned that it is possible to fill a 32oz water bottle with one single pee and I confirmed my theory that people making “funny” voices and acting non-human will pull the pin on my anger grenade no matter how close we are. I learned that no one is Alix Page.

Its 2 days before the first show and I am awake at 5:30. My legs are swollen and I am already in my running shorts and my stomach is protruding and I am full of a binge and then at attempt to get rid of the binge and then another binge on top of the first one. My motel is painted a yellow that glows before sunset, but right now, it matches the grey of the room. I need a headband and I am walking to Von’s. Last night, my ex-boyfriend introduced me to magnesium citrate after I purged in a target bathroom. I make it half-way to the grocery store before I hear noises that sound like the girl in the TV from the ring.

2 hours have passed and I am trying to find little ways to let the staff know that I didn’t do anything sketchy in there. At one point I attempted to walk back to my motel but chickened out. I don’t feel good but I feel better. I pick up Michael and we drive to Van Nuys for rehearsal. I am thinking about food. The rehearsal room is in a line of infinite garage-studio spaces. Some are for rehearsals — most of them are for carpentry. I hit the building with the gold chevy emblem on the front of the car. I drink a sugar free red bull and we start rehearsal. ‘Whose You Are’ sounds really bad and I try to fix the issue but nobody sees the issue so I make everyone listen to the song and point out the swing. It is too early to be good-enough-ing. We are practicing with wedges and I am on redbull 2-and-a-half and I am getting ready to start throwing punches. We step outside for a break and I fall asleep under the shadow of an industrial trash bin in the parking lot. They let me sleep for 45 minutes and “work on the song”. When I reenter, Michael is ordering sandwiches with his guitar in his lap. The song sounds exactly the same as before. Remy gives me a complicit smirk and everything is painfully fine — we play a different song.

My ex-boyfriend is blowing my phone up about plans that I never agreed to. I am .25 miles into a run in Santa Monica when he texts me “I am on my way”.

I reply with a voice memo saying something along the lines of “where are you going? When did I tell you to come and WHERE did I tell you to go because I genuinely don’t remember. I don’t know when I will be done with this and I am so angry at everything right now. Please go home I am not seeing you tonight.” I run 10 miles and then eat a 2 pound salad from Gelson’s.

On the morning of the first show I do 10.7 miles along a hiking trail. Its really fun, but I am slipping and rolling my ankles and the sore parts of my legs are beginning to ring alarms. I return my rental car and My ex-boyfriend is there to pick me up and he is on the phone with a girl named Sabrina who recently told him that she was in love with him. When he didn’t reciprocate, she accused him of leading her on. They had a perfectly cordial call and I sat shotgun in silence. Our “things to talk about” bank is empty. Its a lot of “have you heard the Renee Rapp album? Its really bad”, and then I’ll say “I take pride in not even knowing that she put one out”, and then we sit in silence for 30 seconds before one of us finds something to bring up. Every time I ask a question it feels just a little bit like I’m trying to make up for something. It is like tennis with 2 kids who suck at tennis. When I tell him that Lizzy is coming out for the LA show he says that we should sing a Lizzy song but I cant sing “Better Than This” — I can’t do that to him. I say “there are about 50 things that you’d say the same thing about — its old and thats the song I’d want to do.” Coming out of my mouth, the words feel like when you drop your phone and you know that you cracked it and now you have to pick it up. There’s a brief moment as you wait to pick it up where you can hear every time that you bragged about how long you’ve had the phone for and all the times that it should’ve broken but didn’t — all of it felt out of my control and horribly karmic. The last year of our friendship has felt like him taking my love from my hands and trying to drag me back to the hole I was in when we dated. It is so heavy and I want to show him how well I’m doing but he does not care about the new stuff thats happening. If we met now we wouldn’t be friends, so now he’s the dad at the concert who makes the teen girls feel awkward. I care about him so deeply until he’s in front of me.

We started this tour where I ended my stint opening up for Grace Enger’s tour in March at the little room of the conservatory in Santa Ana. Both of my sisters and Jessie’s friend Carly are there. The show is objectively pretty good. All of the things that scared me in rehearsal came together like magic — it was a feeling that put me back in the Masuk High School orchestra room-turned dressing room for the fall musical — it’s opening night after a terrible dress rehearsal and everyone is celebrating and hugging and taking makeup off and sharing the love. Say Uncle was electric and for the first time I feel like a proper rockstar. Unicef was awkward. I sleep on a hotel pullout couch and Jessie, Bri, and Carly share the bed. I wake up at 4 am yelling in pain from a charlie-horse. In the morning we take the rental car up to LA for acai bowls and a set at Sirius XM before the girls fly home. The LA show-day has the same vibe as what I imagine an office Christmas party for a financial firm would feel like. I learn that you should never call a sound guy a sound guy if you want your sound to sound good. The “front of house” guy is a real sweetheart but a dud. I am deafly singing the chorus of “fucked up” across the room from Lizzy, Taylor, Molly, Charlotte, and a few other people. There is a larger girl with glasses who is cagily walking in and out of the room to look at Lizzy and then leave. When Lizzy gets on stage, the front of house guy forgets everything he knows apparently. Lizzy says “I really can’t hear myself” and then pulls her in-ears out of her head and jumps. It is painful to watch and I want to have something to say but I don’t. She is very nice. It is all so nice and I don’t know why she’s doing it. It is fun to hear people scream that loud when she walks out. I say something stupid before we play the song. It is the most nervous I will get for all of tour.

The driving is fun. I spend a lot of time reading and sleeping and drawing. I drink a lot of caffeine. I have a boy_friend right now and we don’t spend a lot of time texting which I like a lot. I am working on a book called “Just Kids” By Patti Smith. It is boring at first and then it is suddenly really good after she bridges the gap between being a starving artist in Brooklyn and talking about Robert in the addicts house. There is no place more ephemeral to me than the pacific northwest. I could stare out the window for hours and never get bored, but parking the van in any city that isn’t Portland will always remind me that I am here for a job. Justice has our transportation down to a science: we drive for an hour and a half and stop at either a loves or a kwik-trip. If those are not available, then we go for one that’s a little more avant-garde. If the stop falls between 8 and 10pm then we will stop for dinner. I have my personal transportation down to a science as well: I pick between drawing, reading, or “social media desk-work” for my blocks. I drink all of my water in the first 30 minutes of the drive so that I am not making the band stop more than it needs to. When we stop at gas stations, I either skip the act of buying something or I get a fruit/fruit juice. At the beginning of tour I told a few of the crew members that I’d come to terms with the fact that I had a binge eating disorder. The first time I said it out loud I almost started to cry. Over time, I realize what an elephant this would grow into for me and Hana’s relationship. She is someone that cares — she is also someone that is coincidentally going through everything that I am going through in some way. As we slide through the tour and I begin to slip, I feel her eyes on me and it makes me grow resentful towards her. This is not her fault, but it does take me a week plus change to realize that it’s in the diseases code. There is a day where we start a conversation about food that is interrupted by a gas station stop and I walk out of the van really fast and move my things from the back seats to ‘shotgun’ like a boy who has a crush on a girl and accidentally said something too nice. By the time we get the van to Portland, I find myself burying an empty bottle of magnesium citrate under tissue in the hotel bathroom trashcan. Sometimes I think about my roomate finding out, but I think more about them imagining that I’m doing something like jerking off instead — I find little ways to tell Kate that I don’t do that anymore over the course of tour — in hindsight, this specific part feels more embarrassing than all of the other stuff I did.

The day of the Portland show is a triptych for how the days of tour will go on to feel. Side 1: It is 6 am and I am in the hotel lobby bathroom doing things that will haunt me forever. I feel full and empty at the same time. I feel the acid of my stomach beginning to burn my externals. It is 7:30 and I am horribly objective and muted. I shower and keep my neck craned up. I avoid assessing the damage. I say good morning to my roomate. It is like I am angry, but I don’t have the energy so I’m nice by proxy. Me and Kate and Michael and Justice get in the van to drive into town to play a radio show. I bring my suitcase as I have planned a “big run” for after our set. They stop for coffee, I stop in the coffee shop bathroom. The radio show is fine. Michael is playing piano on the songs and it sounds fine. We laugh really hard in the green room and I often wonder if everyone else also has my recurring “I am the least funny person in this circle right now” thought. I don’t think Michael thinks this, I think Michael knows he has reached flow-state of funny. Michael and Kate go hang out in the city, Justice drives the van back to Beaverton, and I run the distance between the towns. In attempt to get back into my body, I stretch and shower and avoid sitting down. I tell Justice how far I ran and she is impressed. I am putting on a shirt that doesn’t hug anything and I am wearing sunglasses because I realize how crooked my eyes are in the mirror. At some point Charlotte tries to call me and we get 2 minutes into the call before I say something along the lines of “I’m sorry I am getting angry, let’s do this later.”

Side 2: I am asleep in the greenroom and I have a crush on the front of house guy and I wake up hungry. Most venues don’t fulfill our rider. I do my VIP meet and greet and I really enjoy it today. I walk to a grocery store and I buy a salad, a brick of tofu, and an apple. Across from the store is a piano that is painted baby blue with sunflowers on the sides. I play a little bit and it summons Michael, Kate, and Hana. I film a video of us playing Twice and then we are fiddling and laughing and a man walks up to us. He is around my height and he checks all the boxes of my presumed “Portland guy” archetype — Thick framed glasses, cargo shorts, a bucket hat, an unkempt beard — very curious and very communist blue. He and Kate share a bond over their Chicago roots and then a neon man marches toward us. “Do you guys know Radiohead?”, he asks really fast. He is in a pair of inside-out orange running shorts and a pink jersey and his hair is bleached a shade of yellow that would glow under a black light. Before I say anything he is playing Karma Police on piano and he is really good. As someone who doesn’t know what Thom Yorke looks like, I kind of think that, just for a little bit, this could actually be Thom Yorke. I talk to him although go on to forget everything he actually says. Hana heads back for her set and I follow suit shortly after. I am in the green room finding tea and chugging water. I step into the crowd for a bit to see Hana’s set and to see what a 50% sold room feels like. I don’t think too hard about it, I am deeply excited by the idea of experiment. I shout my ‘say uncle’s’ in the green room to warm up the voice. We walk around the side of the venue to get on stage, and as I walk, I think to myself “they definitely made Hana walk through the crowd and that sucks”. I am keeping my energy in line with the band’s and then they walk on stage. I close my eyes, put in my ears, and take a few deep breaths. I cannot help but smile to myself. The stage is supposed to be pitch black but the front of house guy does not take our lighting sheet seriously. The crowd cheers and I start to sing and then it is over and I am back in the green room. My nervous system is on fire and I am annoyed by everyone and everything but I keep it to myself. Michael walks in to find me laying on the floor and “mmhm”-ing Kate. He has a lot to share.

Side 3: Michael begins the funniest stand-up routine I’ve ever heard — he also begins one of the most cruel stand-up routines I’ve ever heard. By the end of it, I am cackling through a “Michael, you need to fucking stop”. I’m not religious but when I hit puberty and I started having sexual thoughts that I couldn’t control, they were coupled with this belief that the world revolves around me and that everyone could hear my thoughts all the time. I would be sitting on the school bus and one of the voices in my head would start playing imagery of me banging my science teacher. He’d couple it with dirty talk similar to what I imagine the Big Mouth Hormone Monster would sound like on speed. I would use “my voice” in my head to scream stop and we’d do that until something took my attention away from it. The green room is across from the bathrooms and as Michael begins his roast on the bearded guy from the piano, I can feel him listening from the hallway. Amid load-out I am at the bar using my drink tickets on a 0.0 abv CBD seltzer when I hear the venue staff talking about a man with bleach blond hair. Apparently he showed up to the venue on speed with a loose ball hanging out of his shorts and talking about eating kids faces. They threatened to call the cops before he sprinted down the street and it makes me laugh so hard that I step outside of the venue. I get to talk with some of the people who bought tickets and it is really nice — we are chatting and I am talking about myself a lot and I am finding myself annoying and then suddenly a man shouts “MY FUCKING DIGNITY BRO” and then I am painfully aware that ‘bucket hat guy’ was actually listening from the hallway. He comes up to me and says “Hey man, apparently I made some of your crew uncomfortable and I wanted to say that I’m sorry that you guys misconstrued it.”, he gives me that “we are friends and you get me” kind of smirk. “I was just trying to share my love for Chicago with your crew.” My face is red I tell him that I’m sorry and Justice yells at me to get inside. Me and Kate are giggling at the bar trying to figure out if the front of house guy is gay or not. We are packed up and sitting in the van now and he is not gay and I am telling the van that I am really happy with my current “thing that I have going on” and that it’s just fun to speculate. They do not care. We start to drive and then I wake up at the hotel. Justice parks the van in front of the hotel, we grab our bags from the back, she hands us our room keys, and we go to our rooms while she parks the van. Sometimes I think about waiting for her, sometimes I think she just wants to be alone. I don’t have anything to say by that point in the night.

I am somewhere between Portland and Denver and I am finishing “Just Kids” in the hotel lobby. Last night was bad again. At the end of March I went on a date with a guy while I was in Indianapolis to open for Del Water Gap at Perdue University and for a while I genuinely believed that he could the love of my life. In my defense, I’d finished my first book ever, “The Alchemist” which follows a boy who goes into the desert (tour) to find treasure (music career) and learns that the treasure is a girl he meets along his way named Fatima (guy from Indianapolis). I am not religious, but March-April was the closest I have been to getting there. We spent 2 months trying to make it work before going on a “break” and then I think we both forgot the date that we said we’d check in on. His first date ever took place in a Perdue University dressing room (which included my manager), a strip mall nightclub called “The Neon Cactus”, a Waffle House, and a room at a DoubleTree by the Indianapolis Airport. I had a flight at 9:30am and it was about 3:30am when Alden started checking his phone for the time it’d take him to drive home. He mentioned something about grabbing an energy drink and I asked him if he would be down to get a room at my hotel to sleep for a bit. He told me he had never slept with anyone before. We fell asleep shoulder-to-shoulder watching NHL highlights. It was the worst sleep I have ever gotten. I remember waking up at 5am to find him curled in a ball on the other side of the bed and I was terrified I’d tried something weird while unconscious. It was the most nervous I’d been to touch someone since the first time I held hands. We did not kiss and it was sweet that no one was trying to. One night while we were on the phone we found out that his army camp was happening in Denver while I was stopping there on tour. As we ended things, he said “I won’t be an option.” — he also said “we will always have Denver”. My stomach hurts and Gracie Abrams is following me on instagram and I am supposed to text him but I cannot bring myself to do it. It triggers a binge and a purge and a 15.21 mile run. It is on this run that I discover Ben Folds Five and I spend an hour trying to decide if I like it or not. I get a haircut and eat sandwiches with my PR guy, Noah, and I get to the venue just in time to miraculously be too busy to call Alden. The stage is next to a wall of windows open to the kids lining up outside. I am testing to see if they can hear me by saying things to try and make them smile. They are all playing coy about watching me, but I catch smirks when me and Michael go back and forth with jokes. The venue bathroom is a “1 stall, 1 urinal, and no soap” kind of place and it is covered in graffiti. It is also shared with the crowd. There is a sliding barn door that does not close all the way that divides me and the audience. I send Alden a message that says “I’m sorry for not texting, I have been nervous. I’m not gonna be able to see you tonight — I thought I would have time but I do not. I am sorry if you planned to come see the set. I am happy to call and talk it through“ and I am ashamed of myself. Paul Mescal is coming to the show and so is my friend Carly. I feel as though I am wearing my shame during my VIP meetings. My famous friend, Isaak, texts me that his cousin is coming to the show and he wants to meet me. There is a moment on stage where I think to myself “No way Paul is actually here right now” and I laugh. I play the song I wrote about Alden called “Fatima”. The Chorus is “I know that I have to go back to where I am” and although the song is too smart, it is a great concept for a chorus. I step off stage and Kate and Justice separately run to me to share their interactions with Paul — both of them mention the Marlboro golds on his breath which I find funny.

It is August 14th. It is 10:31am and I am writing from a restaurant in Omaha Nebraska. We are entering the half-way point of tour. Michael’s step dad is dying and when he told me that he would be skipping the Minneapolis show to go home and say goodbye, he called him just “dad” and that made me sad. Justice, in the same night, told me that Ally wanted a break and that she was going to break up with him. That was two nights ago. Yesterday I woke up to a video of Michael’s boat on fire. I called my “Life Coach” for the first time and told her about my binge eating. After the meeting, in attempts to subliminally assure my intelligence, I looked up a podcast about binge eating and listened to it on the treadmill. I stepped outside for air before breakfast and I had good portions and went to whole foods and got low-calorie snacks to have in the van. I skipped lunch and dinner, but I’d eaten probably 1000 calories or more of food if you don’t count a chicken leg I ate from an Indian restaurant inside of a gas station. I am really putting in effort to change. At the beginning of the drive I sit shotgun and catch myself glancing over at Justice wiping her eyes with her shirt. I waited until we got to the hotel to ask her how she was doing and I came with her to park the van, but I left abruptly when the elevator hit my floor.

yesterday went worse than the day before but better than the one before that. I ate a good breakfast and then snacked a lot and then ate a big salad with a dessert to follow it. I burned around 1200 calories on cardio machines over the course of the day though, so to be a nazi about the treat would be a little intense of me. I shared a meal with Julien and we shared small talk about sports and skateboarding and fell on silence a couple times. Justice joined as my dessert came out and we talked about Ally a little bit, but we mostly brought up things like how men should never be drunk because of how embarrassing they are. I am supposed to tell her that I’m gonna need my own room for Atlanta but it feels a little inappropriate with the current state of things.

I’m sitting upside down with my legs up against my headboard this morning. My chin is pooling onto my collarbone and I can feel my neck straining as I write this. I have to come down to the lobby to meet the guy filling in for Michael at 2 and I am looking forward to it but I am also enjoying my time alone. I tried to run a 20 mile lap from St. Paul to Minneapolis today but I recognized that It was coming from a place of extremism so I stopped after 12. My legs are getting worse and I am irritable in a way that is buried. I got a good breakfast with Kate and Justice and Julien and I’m having fun.

Samia is coming to the show tonight and I don’t expect to meet her but I day dream about it. The venue is attached to a larger venue and also a restaurant. As I end my set acoustically, I hear a Charli XCX rave begin in the other room. The kids in the front row take my love from my hands and make the songs about them in a way that I have not experienced yet. Samia posts a video of me on her story and tells me she had to leave early for a house party but told me she had a great time. She is so fucking cool. I call Sean in the green room with the crew around and everyone chimes in a little bit and it is a little awkward but it is really nice.

We have an off day in Chicago and I’m waiting in the lobby while the group chat texts about plans for the day. It seems like it might be just Justice, Kate, and I, but I don’t want to get my hopes up. We spend the day on the beach and driving in a topless jeep and finish our night with bowling and bar food. Kate reveals half-way through a screwball that alcohol makes her throw up every time she drinks. The worst part of this announcement is that it makes sense for her and her character — I am surprised and also not surprised at all. It is the first time since talking with my life coach that I “black out” around food and I am ashamed of it, but the day is great regardless. I told my manager that I would not compare shows in this, but Chicago is awesome. The day is great and the show sold out first and they actually mosh and some of my favorite fans wait out by the photo booth for me to come say hi. The whole day is a highlight. Nashville is great, although I don’t get to see any of my friends and that bums me out.

Atlanta is tough because Sean is there. I am so excited to see him and then he is there and we are sitting at a dinner before I go on stage and there is nothing going through my head and I feel terrible about it and he is asking me questions and I keep doing that thing where I start to answer and then I go off on a tangent and then its 3 minutes later and I’m asking “what was the question again?”. It is chucking it down outside and we run back to the venue in the rain and it is sweet. The first entrance I find is the main entrance and we coincidentally show up at the same time as his sister so we kind-of meet — the door at Vinyl is right next to the stage and I am getting spotted so her and I just wave. The security guard walks us to the green room and the show goes absolutely fine. I am too nervous and cold to be anything but jolty. By the time I’m off stage, I just want to sleep. We get back to the hotel and I feel terrible, but I really just want to sleep. We set an alarm that makes me wince. In the hotel lobby, Sean points me to the lounge area and heads over to the front desk. He tells me he has a surprise for me and I am braced. The couch feels vinyl and gentrified and I’m staring at a gas fire place and a TV with nothing playing. I can’t bring flowers in the van and I am really having a hard time with food and he is talking as though he’s waiting for a delivery. The woman comes back from the back-room with 3 pieces of printer paper and he checks it, smiles, and walks toward me grinning. Sean hands me a homemade crossword puzzle and it makes me smile a lot. It means so much to me, and I can immediately feel my body trying to play the part of a really thankful guy. I am used to relationships where I feel guilty for not feeling what I am supposed to, but this one feels like a deep failure.

We’re at a food spot and we order these fried dough balls with powdered sugar and I know already that it’s going to set me off. We’re in one of those “we are black-owned and we wear it” businesses and it is cool, but the waiter has a gay voice and doesn’t like us talking about splitting plates. Sean and I do these things called “triplets” whenever we have more than an hour to chat — someone will put together 3 questions varying in density. The first one is something like “if you had to dye your hair a non-natural color right now what would it be?” and then the 3rd one is something like “what is your relationship like with confidence? What kind of things make you self conscious and what do you do when you need to feel good about yourself?”. I usually remember who’s turn it is — in the beginning of us I’d memorize his answers, but today at breakfast, I quietly hope that it is not my turn.

I am back at the hotel sans-Sean and I am showing Justice and Kate the crossword that he made and we gush and then start to do it together. Justice gives up and, slowly, I do too. Michael is supposed to break up with his girlfriend of 2 years today so he spends the whole day desperately attempting to push back our arrival time. We spend 30 minutes in a guitar shop and 30 minutes in a best buy and 30 minutes in a cafe before Justice gets tired of it. The day is a wash and I spend as much time sleeping as I can. I know that when I am awake I am a victim to the food noise from the sugary breakfast. We get to Durham North Carolina as all of the restaurants begin to close and we manage to grab a table at a restaurant actively putting up their chairs. I get a burger and fries and then I get back to the hotel and order from Uber eats. It is bleak. I meet Kate in the hotel lobby and we watch Michael park the van. The 3 of us meet Hana at the only bar in Durham that’s open past 10pm. One night before tour, I was talking with my sister about my experience getting sober and I said a less clever version of “progress is often impartial to intention, so if you need to be the smartest guy in the room, at least just for a night, while your friends are getting wasted then you should do it.” For the first few months, I was the guy at parties doing that obnoxious spiel about how “I can’t believe that this is something we do — like we literally poison ourselves and laugh at our brains trying to reorient.” Tonight, I get know why people drink.

The first guy I ever did stuff with lives in DC — he is also the only proper ex that I had to go “no contact” with. I spend the day cagily bringing it up to the crew. I’ve played in DC twice before. Last time I was here, we had a day off and we made some friends at a gay bar called juniors and they are coming to the show. Me and this guy weren’t “no contact” yet, but I got dodged and I spent the whole day painfully in my head about it. The first time I played DC there was a guy in the crowd with his same silhouette and I forgot the words to the song I was singing. I remember getting really into a song of mine called “just be your friend”. Walking to grab lunch, I see that he re-followed me on instagram and it breaks my heart a little. I don’t reach out — I got to feel wanted and say “holy shit guys look” to Kate and Justice, but then I just feel sad. We play frisbee at a park pre-show and the sky is really pretty and I am filming it because I want him to be a part of the day somehow. Tonight’s performance is the most focused and simultaneously loose I have been on stage so far. There is a moment halfway through “Jessie” where I think to myself “what the fuck happened, why is this really great?”. There is a comedown of knowing that he wasn’t there to get to see it and when I get off stage I am painfully aware of how small the green room is. I post my tiktok and I don’t reach out.

The venue in Philly is so terrible that its awesome — when we announced the tour, I got a bunch of DM’s telling me that the staff is on strike which starts an prolonged argument between me and my manager. We decide to play it anyways which makes me antsy for the drive up. When I enter the venue room, there is no stage. It is a restaurant with a pit in the middle for a crowd to stand in. Michael and I take turns making jokes about messing with the people who sit at the tables and trying to find a wireless mic last minute. There are a set of floor-to-ceiling windows to stage right and it is painfully not a venue. Outside it is hot and pretty and a guy at a guitar shop gives me free things. We’re by a park and we play frisbee and it is too early to be doing that because I want to do it again before the show but it brings me to center before VIP. During soundcheck, I am chatting with people who came to the George NYC Release party, and as were talking, they point out the people biking down the street and makes a call back to a crowd of rollerbladers that came down the street in Soho while I played songs. I am halfway through pointing out that most of these guys are shirtless when I hear an “OH MY GOD THEY’RE NAKED” come from the crowd. Everyone runs toward the window with phones and I watch the line of people waiting for the show watch thousands of naked people tear down the street on bikes. It goes on way too long. I start to laugh because its funny and then I start to laugh because I am nervous and then I am covering my face and frantically trying to find water. The whole thing is awkward and I feel like I probably owe the last 6 or 7 people who bought VIP their money back because I was not there. After VIP, I see Danny, my A&R is here, and everyone ditches me to go play frisbee. I am not one to get weird about being left out, but today it really upsets me and triggers a binge. Writing this out, I feel fucking crazy. What do you mean that Michael texting me “Maybe don’t come to frisbee tonight” sent me spiraling, but it does. I get a Dubai chocolate sundae and it is really fucking good ngl. The show feels like a youth group meeting and I am not as there as I should be. Some more of my favorite fans wait out by the door at the end of the show and I accidentally come out to them lol.

There is more to say, but I think that I just missed the opportunity. I finish this at 12:28 am on Sunday December 21st. It is so funny to see this after months of therapy and treatment. I am much better now, although I am deeply remorseful for the relationships that I lost to this vacuum. I realize in hindsight that I was desperately trying to fill the space between the ground and the pedestal I saw myself on after the album came out. All of my dreams came true this year. Next time I would like to enjoy it

.

The lead singer of this band is this 20-something about 6 years past ripe. he’s in a silk maroon shirt that flows purple in the blue stage light. His jeans are from Abercrombie and they are tight. ‘Feels like they should have rips in them but they don’t. the band is awesome but every time this guy sings you kind of have to pretend he’s not in order to have a good time. Every now and then he turns his nose to the floor turns his head like a washing machine after the last rinse cycle. His hair sits like how every nerd’s did on YouTube before the quiff happened. On occasion, I will watch the lights and unfocus my eyes and start to enter flow-state before I notice him either guitar-soloing while bouncing on one leg, jumping up and down all tantrum-like, or flipping down a pair of sunglasses. The drummer feels designed to be a background character — easy to draw — he is a medium sized man with shoulder length straight hair that falls middle-parted over a plain white bandanna wrapped around his forehead. Theres a microphone in front of him that will never get used. The bassist is dressed like a drummer I used to have a crush on in high school. He is in those H&M khakis that dont fit anyone right anywhere — horribly low-rise, too tight in the thighs, too long past the shins — letting the length fall just below his plain black vans. His “curly” jewish hair is in a bun and he stands with his legs just past hip length apart. He either stands with his back straight and his eyes on the back of the room or he puts his head down and bobs his head to shake hair that would dance sans-bun. His black Hanes t-shirt really makes me think about the dude I liked in high school which makes me smile given how foreign to me that feels after all these years. Andy, a man I celebrate Christmas with, and the man who stepped in as my father figure role growing up, will occasionally grab my shoulder over the course of the night so we can say in junction that he’s “slapping that thing like a $5 whore.” Andy is in a wool jacket and a hat that is decorated with jam-band pins. I am drinking again and he is buying me drinks and we will break into dance when I’m not busy watching the real star of the show. The keys guy has hair that goes to the bottom of his neck and his bangs falls all messy and diagonal to the left of his head. he has the face of someone who was once famous — like a forgotten cast member of the hangover movies. he’s in a blue button up and black slacks and he still wears his passion on his face when he plays. You can tell when an artist has seen how the sausage is made. He hasn’t yet. Him and his chin beard stand, mouth agape in unbridled excitement every time he’s exploring a solo. Completely surrounded by 3 keyboards, a 2016 MacBook, a sampler pad, an upright organ, and a pair of bongos, he is 19, although he wouldn’t get ID’ed at any bar I bet. In the beginning of the set I daydreamed about stealing him for my band before realizing how much time he’d spent under a false god and how much unlearning he’d have to do. The band is called Big Shrimp and I am having a hard time regarding them as anything but painfully unremarkable. I’m having a good time until I notice their algorithm and then by the 12 minute mark of the 4th song, the boredom begins to hit in waves. The first time I experienced it, I felt an arm on my shoulder and it was Alaina, my friend who helped me move in to my apartment in Bed-Stuy and stayed with me once before I realized that we don’t have much in common. Another time, Emily grabbed my back and we hugged which is funny because we infamously never did that until I moved. With the assistance of a weed drink, I climb into a comfortable ‘cross’ and then the rest of the night happens in flashes. I am in Andy’s car at the Fairfield-Black Rock station and we are chatting about how anal mom is being about the snow storm — then I am throwing junk food and beer into a basket at the Food Bazaar off of Myrtle-Broadway — then I am home two days later awake at noon with a plush throw blanket over my window.

It’s the day after the storm. You can’t get anywhere without wet socks by the time you get there, but if you listen for it, you can hear the kids throwing themselves into the snowbanks and dogs running in parts of parks where “off leash” is normally not allowed. In the mornings and nights the cars on the streets sound like airplanes in the distance — now they sound like tires on water. It’s nice because you can throw a cigarette wherever and step on it and it disappears. I didn’t think I’d go into survival mode how I used to, but there is something about this that is horribly liminal. I am back to blocking out time in terms of cigarette breaks. This week I’m gonna have to keep a blanket over my window to keep the heat in. It’s hard to be outside in a place like this and not acknowledge the colds climbing body count. For solace, the family group chat has been trading photos of backyards and cars. Jessie lives with her boyfriend and I’m getting a kick in trying to figure out if anyone else in the family knows. I’ve been feeling large and insatiable hunger and I’d tell you how this all smells, but it is time for me to not be able to breathe out of my nose until March. Before my management situation severed, we were planning a trip to LA to see collaborators and play a couple quiet gigs so I have been tentatively checking the weather there and daydreaming about going on runs again although it all feels clouded by the shame of how the resurgence of my addictions have bloated me. I’m sitting in a butt-shaped dry spot on the steps of my apartment building trying to enjoy a cigarette but there’s this old black beater Beamer kicking up snow pretty violently. Sometimes you shovel your way out of your parking spot and sometimes you run the engine til you’re over the bank. Sometimes you sit down to write with a candle and a glass of wine, sometimes you make a month out of going to coffee shops after the gym and “studying something”, sometimes you murmur something into your phone crossed with your head on a pillow. I am ending this at 4:42pm on a Wednesday at Cafe Grumpy. I called a manager to ask for advice and it was nice. I am getting the vibe that the people in my life are expecting big changes for me.

There’s a half-black 20-something with pink tennis ball hair, a fur lined coat, and jeggings who is walking the park similar to the manner of how I imagine a Sim would act if he woke up in the real world and is trying not to get caught. He will cross the fountain, stop as though he’s decided something, turn, take a few steps, stop, decide something else, and then head back across the fountain occasionally breaking into a laugh that feels cropped on both ends. Yesterday there was a teenage girl in the garb of Ramona from ‘Scott Pilgrim vs The World’ sitting, knees up, with her back against fat Scott Pilgrim. The first time I saw the man with pink hair he asked Scott for a pen, grabbed his paper shopping bag, and drew a portrait of the couple. I watched the two of them go starry-eyed as he headed east. I considered chasing him down to talk for a few moments thinking that I’d regret letting him disappear. Today I picked a seat that felt out of his line of fire. I’m trying to notice recurring characters here — so far its only pink-haired-guy, Tariq, and a husky 40-something with a labubu around his neck — like a millennial was tasked to conjure a man from the prompt “Santa who sells Percocet”. A lot of people walk by him and do that ‘sup’ nod. Sitting next to him for the second time caused a side-eye and a disembark and now he returns every 10 minutes, each time carrying a number of lime green reusable shopping bags that read “help our community”. There is always a Jazz band that plays 3 songs at a time and then, without fail, takes a break to talk about how nobody tips regardless of the fact that I’ve never seen the same face play more than once. This summer I was here three times a week at least. I’m enjoying seeing the space stripped of tripods and clip-on rhode microphones. It’s 40 degrees and about an hour pre-storm. This year my primary goal is to be somewhere that is real. I am doing a good job sometimes and then other times it is impossible.

Yesterday, there were Venezuelan flags waving and a crowd that made a man named Jerry scoff and say “God, this shit I don’t like.” I followed him and his pink Juliard cap out of the park and into a liquor store and then into the east village where he sat me down on a bench to play me 3 different versions of ‘Mona Lisa’ by Nat King Cole. He also showed me some videos of old bands that he “kinda did it all” for and then taught me how to write the perfect song. Me and Jerry probably spent 2 hours together at least and he didn’t ask me a single question about myself until after we were standing on a corner saying goodbye. He pointed me to this “great coffee shop” that was one of those upscale Starbucks’ and then asked me for my name again. I’m supposed to be making a list with places I like for a new friend and I’m realizing that I could spend all day every day exploring new york forever and never see a quarter of it. Jerry told me that Manhattan is born again every decade like skin — he also told me that Trump’s seizing of Venezuela was one of the greatest achievements of this century. This morning I stopped at a diner that Tariq, a skinny retired regular from Dumbo recommended. When him and I met he had a guitar on his back and we made eye contact one time before he came over to ask me what I wanted. I’ve learned that conversation with strangers is like fishing with 4 hands on the rod — you watch the line bob 3 times and then you wait for the universe to take it before you start to reel — and you can’t pull too hard if you have any desire of letting the fish go back out alive when you’re done. Tariq and I yanked our line, and although he was nice, he served as the friend before the friend for me and Jerry. The diner was nice and I wrote some stanzas about how heavy doors are in old buildings and how brash it feels when they slam shut. One of my roommates friends was asleep on my couch as I was leaving and without meaning to, I let our front door say “good morning, get the fuck out of my house”. It made me remember that this year I am no longer in contact with my first love.

The conversation where he told me we couldn’t be friends anymore felt like a video game cut-scene. I bought us some desserts from a bakery and then caught myself hyper-focused on the manner in which I was eating them instead of the conversation. On New Years Eve it occurred to me that 2025 is the last year of us loving each other in a way that is tangible. Between doomsday and the 31st, I ran prideful and tether-less. I had absolutely been doing that already, but I didn’t catch it until after I deleted the 14 gigabytes of memory that our messages had taken up on my phone. Frantically, I checked our messages on my laptop and scrolled all the way to the beginning of us. For about an hour, I watched us fall in love via slideshow while simultaneously recounting the birth of my 20’s. Him and I met as 2 kids treading water — we were both put in motion by dreams born from an attempt to escape this buried feeling of being robbed of our childhoods — basically the whole “not enough attention makes a performer” conversation but broader. We spoke different languages in love but had enough understanding of grief to fill most of the gaps. Him and I spent a year air-frying in the sun and getting to be boys together. For about the length of a “pre-game”, I recounted a lot of time at the beach, the day we made a power box explode killing power for 1200 units off of San Vincente, a trip to Europe, and a New Years Eve in Bushwick where I told him that I was never gonna love him as much as I loved music. Him and I were both accidentally mean often. My means were sharp, tall waves that knocked the wind out of the both of us. The recovery always took about a day and then we were okay again. His means were gentle waves that never really went back out to sea. By the time we broke up, the room we were in was too full of water to do anything but tread. In our attempt to stay friends, I would feel our room drain enough to relax and share some love, and then within minutes, I was scanning for escape routes. I know the “water” is my guilt and I know it was unlearnable, but I didn’t want to love him right —I just wanted to love him. By ending our relationship completely, I felt the room drain and dry over the course of about 4 months.

I got pretty close to love this summer and it wasn’t with him. I also had my first real adult withdrawal from a drug I got addicted to in November. On December 29th, in Kate’s brother’s bedroom, I laid awake for 8 hours shaking, sweating, and feeling my arms disconnected from my brain. On New Years Eve I remembered nights that he told me what his first boyfriend did to him while he was on a slurry of drugs. Back then I’d lay awake with these violent daydreams about what I’d do if I ever got my hands on the guy. I started to think about the drugs I’d done before I realized that the whole sequence had taken place in his absence. Instead of guilty, I felt sun-bleached. I missed him as a place and a time. This past New Years Eve, I found our island after losing it halfway through the relationship. On our island, Tiger Heat is still open and Renne Rapp’s second album was good and Morgan is still friends with everyone and he is on his way back from a shift at Olive Garden and he’s gonna come home and meet me in the doorway and, before anyone says anything, we are gonna go lay down on that ratty old gray target duvet for a while.

“I am not going to take it out on myself” — “I am not going to dwell too hard on the things you let slip out last night”. It’s funny — it all felt so even and then while we were breaking up he revealed how far ahead of me he saw himself as. To be fair, most of what he said was true and, in this moment, I am not thinking about that. I am frantically trying to remember him. We are on the subway platform and my train comes first. We hug and cry and I get on the C and cry some more. The left side of my sweatshirt is soaked from a failed attempt to share an umbrella and I think about listening to music but I am trying to be present in whatever this feeling is. I am at Grand Central and I am trying to get my steps in for the day, so I am wheeling my broken suitcase around in a folded figure 8 between the levels of the main concourses. I want a bagel but I hold off and get a green juice instead. I am going to eat a lot today and I know it, so I am make an effort to hold back the beast for a bit. There is a girl performing karaoke somewhere on the lower level, though I can’t find her, and she is singing aged radio hits that I know, but don’t know the names of. They are all ballads. I put Justice and Michael and Kate in a group chat and deliver the news. They are supportive and Michael makes a joke about whoring out on the next tour. I spend my train trying to read and trying to draw and trying to go on my phone. I am in the car and Mom is excited to see me. I tell her what happened and I am formal about it. I say that it was amicable and mutual and we just weren’t compatible. She knows all the other stuff. I tell her that I want a bagel and she buys groceries.

Sometimes I feel like I am just now learning how to want things. When I called Mom this morning, she asked me what I wanted to eat for dinner and then suddenly the day had a North Star. There is a pasta sauce recipe that I have been taught more times than I can count and somehow manage to forget every time. I’ve written it down in notebooks and in my phone, and yet, it is never available when I need it. When I walk through the front door, Zach is hovering by the red striped couch. My hands are full so he waits at the light blue cupboard by kitchen to hug me. I do that curious walk-through of the apartment to see what’s changed. Zach has rotated the bed and hung letters from his girlfriend/ex-girlfriend/girlfriend-again that she leaves when he heads out before her. The letters are signed “your girl, Paige”. The cat has a “happy flap” and hasn’t been giving Mom as much trouble at night. Zach is back in school and has a new computer — its one of those HP handybooks and I try to gauge wether or not he’s embarrassed about it. He is good. He sets up his jailbroken FireStick to the living room TV and I take out a deck of cards. After a failure to put on RedZone, me and Mom start the pasta sauce.

The kitchen floor is 4x6 so the practice of fitting 2 people in the space typically makes me feel claustrophobic. Mom stations me at a cutting board in front of the window and drops a pot of the stovetop. It is still raining. She shows me how she wants her onion cut by doing it for me before I shoo her off to unpack the sausages. As I cut the onions, Mom makes a reference to the tired “cutting onions” bit and I chuckle and then I start to cry. We are talking about how incompatible me and Sean were and I can’t stop thinking about him telling me that he “caught me too early”. It rolls through my brain’s big screen in a sweet way before I recognize the condescension and then I realize that I’m not listening to Mom talking and I try to get my head straight before I remember something else and I crack. I am not a hugger — Mom keeps trying to hug me and this time I let her. She is stirring my onions with ground beef at the bottom of the pot. I let slip that I feel like I am behind because I spent so long being suicidal. It is a moment where I am too vulnerable to remember wether or not I had been hiding this from her. She knows. I emphasize that I’m not anymore and she says something like “well, when you catch yourself getting back there” and I cut her off. It was a decision I made at 15 that I was being a pussy about and then, one day in March, I decided that I wasn’t going to do it anymore. She starts a monologue — usually I tune these out.

“The other day was the first day in years that I cried thinking about Daddy — I mean, I cry thinking about him a lot, but it’s usually because I’m also thinking about money. Last Saturday, Zach was out with Paige and I had the car and it was one of the last perfect days of summer and I put the top down on the bug and I could go anywhere I wanted. Your father was the best at this. Any time we both had a day off we would take the car and just fucking go. Anywhere and everywhere. We found swimming holes and hiking trails and, if nothing else, we’d go lay on a rock somewhere by water. I don’t even want to say that word — and you guys know how mad I am at him — how much he took from me and from you guys. But that day I got in the car and I could go anywhere and for the first time in years I just missed him. I swear I could see him in the passenger seat. I missed my best friend —”

There was more to the story, but at this point, Mom and I are puddles. We make eye contact and laugh and hug. I pee and get water and come back and she is using tongs to put the rest of the sausages at the bottom of the pot. When I’d tried to make the sauce at home in the past I always fucked up the tomato stuff. Today, I open a can of puree, a can of hand crushed tomatoes, and a can of whole peeled tomatoes. She pours in 2 of the cans and takes the whole peeled tomatoes to the sink. She is asking me about tour while she puts a hand in the can and starts to squish them and I tell her the Portland story. She bends to the right, squints at the pot, and tells me to grab another set of the same 3 cans. I watch her season the sauce and I think to myself that, at this point, she might as well be skipping seasoning altogether. I look out the window and it isn’t sunny, but it isn’t cloudy anymore. I put a load of laundry in the washer and grab cards from my backpack. I teach Mom a game that Sophie taught me that I forgot the name of. It’s the one where you have 5 cards in your hand and 15 on the table and you have to get through all of them by stacking cards in the middle that are 1 value above or below the card on top of the stack. Mom is really good at it. She tells me that Dad used to make her play shit like this all the time. Zach is sitting next to us getting an assignment done before me and Mom scramble and laugh at the end of a round and it peaks his interest. I try to watch them play but I grow jolty without something to do with my hands. I grab a potato roll from the kitchen and dip it in the boiling sauce. Sean texts me to tell me that he has my blue Adidas shorts and that he’s willing to ship them to me — I send him my address. For a moment I look at our messages and think, “wow is this really going to be the last thing I message him — my fucking shipping address?”. Zach needs a new vape so he taps me back in for cards with mom. I eventually start winning rounds and it is fun until I can win and think about Sean at the same time and begin to get antsy again. Zach comes back to the house with a vape for him, a pack of cigarettes for Mom, and kit kat mini’s for the table. I am in control enough to only have a few.

I am setting up my second load of laundry and I manage to grab everything from the suitcase besides a sock, boxers, and a t-shirt. I open my arms above the washer and come back to find that the shirt on the ground is from Petit Jean State Park and I catch myself about to recreate that one scene at the end of Brokeback Mountain. I reach out for an address and when I get it I think to myself, “for some reason this is better”. Everything was horribly in-sync with us — the mutual feeling after our first meeting, opinions on mutual friends, — we even lost interest at the same time. The breakup was funny: he was beginning to corner me with questions all vaguely about us as a unit before I said something along the lines of “right now I am sitting on the fence between starting a real relationship and leaving it as a summer thing. I think this is way too special to be a summer thing but I am not here right now,” before inquiring him. We were sitting on my bed and he did that thing where you walk up to the thing you really want to say and then you stop. I excitedly ran to the bathroom to pee and breathe and came back to the easiest breakup I’ve ever had. There was a moment where I was genuinely impressed before I remembered what a breakup was. He began to cry while I was still registering what had happened and I got nervous about being absent before I saw his legs kick out in my pajama pants.

The first time that Sean came over, the only plan we had for the evening was to do dinner at mine and then go see Kurt Vile open for the Pixies at the Brooklyn Paramount. I remember spending the whole next day trying to find contact solution for my roomate after emptying a bottle into the bottom corner of a tilted tupperware for his contacts and sending him to work in the morning wearing my clothes. That night, we spent 2 hours talking across my coffee table and playing monopoly deal, and when the conversation shifted to music, he told me about this band called “Dove Ellis” that he had the unreleased album of. We sat on my bed and hit play and I felt something that I will never even try to put into words. Halfway into the first song on the record we had our first kiss and I remember thinking to myself “oh, thats what that is supposed to feel like”. I was not yet aware of how little time we had, and still, I wanted him next to me for as long as he was willing to be there.

I am on the train home and I am supposed to call Bri but the clouds are glowing yellow and I am listening to “After Hours” by Christian Lee Hutson. I think about losing him to my disordered eating and to touring. There was a time when this would’ve worked and I wince knowing that there will be a time where it will work again. I wonder if by then I will still like him. I wonder if I will just miss him. On the call with Bri, she tells me about how when she got dumped by that really lame guy, she knew how lame he was, but it hurt so bad because it was the first time in a long time that something triggered her fear of abandonment. I think that it’s corny and then I remember saying the same thing during the breakup and hearing Sean say “everything is corny”. It makes me laugh and I realize that I have never been “left” before. It is kind of fun to think about. Whenever I am stuck in a situation that is not ideal I tell myself that it’s an “experiment” and, without fail, I enjoy it. There was a curiosity that Sean has that I try to emulate with Bri and we have the fastest 90 minute phone call of all time.

I come home and address the damage. There are flowers by the bed and 2 cups next to a kombucha-bottle-turned-carafe and there is a used tissue next to my salt lamp and a deck of postcards from Mother of Junk on the desk because I once said that I liked the ones with the comics. I take 2 flowers and press them between pages of a book and I think about that Big Thief song “Dried Roses”. I know I could’ve been more selfless with the time I had with him. I listen to the song. I will move everything tomorrow.

1.) “Why isn’t it cool yet?”

It was her 17th birthday and on her 17th birthday she learned that girls shouldn’t write that it’s their 17th birthday in puff-paint across the chest of their t-shirt in New York City. I was coming into town and she was leaving and I watched her stand with her arms crossed; red-faced and sweating and pointing her body towards any wall that was close.

I came here to meet some online friends at the MOMA and I learned that you should never meet people for the first time in a museum. I spent the day making fun of the art with Chris and then I let his friend talk to us about the power of a Rothko. The three of us thumbed through his paintings for a moment and then stood staring out a window for an hour.

2.) Couches

I like to think that somewhere down the line we will be 40 and we will drink wine and you will start to tell me about something that you love and I will tell you that I can’t believe you have the same white leather couches from when we were kids. You will tell me about how hard they are to get in and out of the front door. I will laugh and then I will let you say what you wanted to say.

Sometimes I wonder if you are still waiting, sometimes I wonder if, deep down, I am still waiting.

Most days I can’t imagine that I make it that long and these days I am starting to think that you like me so much because you know that.

3.)

I put my childhood in the back of the car and I merge onto the Merritt Parkway. I light a cigarette and the wind clips the tip and the ash hits him in the eye. It’s Christmas Eve and he is bitching about it and I shout on the drive home. I go to turn on the radio and every station is playing Christmas music. His Poppy is dead and he doesn’t know it yet and I try to tell him I’m sorry for yelling but he is out cold. He wakes up on the street that the house is on but pretends to be asleep when I park. I carry him inside and lay him down. I leave his new DS charging next to his bed and wait by the door to hear him open it.

I try to play the new Samia record while driving back to the house but this part of town has no service and I haven’t downloaded it yet. I try to play the new Alix Page EP because that is downloaded but it doesn’t start and then I find myself doing 36mph in a school zone and I put the phone down and drive home in silence. The birds are nice and I think to myself that if someone was going to come to Connecticut for the first time this would be the best time of year for it. The sun peeks through the trees so sweetly and everything is warm. I open my voice memo app to record the birds for a few minutes after I turn the car off.

It’s 9:45am and I am in my grey gym shorts that I bought from amazon the week before I left for college 4 years ago. My stomach is full of yogurt and granola and the speakers are playing the Mt Egypt album with ‘N.Y.C’ on it. I made a tiktok about it yesterday and I want to see if I stand by the nice things I said about it before I post it. I don’t. I am trying to post a video every day “just to get the muscle trained” or whatever phrase my team is currently using to redecorate the money making conversation this time. I daydream about telling everyone I quit music and keeping all my songs in a vault to upload to the internet after I die. The other week I finished ‘Mr Penumbras 24-Hour Bookstore’ and, without spoiling anything, this ‘codex vitae’ idea has been swimming around in my head a lot recently. I want to be an artist but I do not want it like this. I think it’s so funny that the goal of the artists that you see online is to be known. I’ve started working on this analogy about ladders when I was super sick this winter and accidentally sang “I spent 2 years in LA climbing a ladder only to find out that its exactly that: ladders” into a voice memo. It’s corny but I think there’s something there. I want to stay on the ground. I would like to tell stories of me and the people I love. The people that I love don’t like when I share their stories. I don’t think it’s that deep, but I get it. I think it would rock to get to share all of it, unedited, without hurting anybody. I park at the gym.

I text my long-distance talking stage that I’m leaving the gym and then I play Hana Bryanne’s ‘The Last Time it Snowed in LA’ 6 times in a row. I fell down a rabbit hole of Hana’s substack and then her instagram and then Ruby’s substack, and in true parasocial fashion, I draft a text to Ruby to tell her about how much I loved her most recent post, realize we don’t text, and turn off my phone.

The seatbelt alarm is sounding because there is a grocery bag riding shotgun with me now. Chicken, hot sauce, cottage cheese, chips, eggs, and strawberries. The car is sitting still in the Aldi parking lot and I am checking for a text back. It is hot and then I remember that my mom’s car is a convertible. The top is down and I am listening to the Samia album.

It is 1:03pm and Mom needs to be picked up so she can take a smoke break since apparently you cant do that at school anymore. I don’t mind. I take the same trail for the 3rd time of the day and I count it out loud. The top is down because last time it was nice outside and the top was up Mom got upset. I like driving by the elementary school because, if I’m lucky, kids will sit by the fence and shout “Honk the horn!!!” and I honk and it makes me smile. I turn the corner onto the street and I hear it and I honk and I hear 5 or 6 kids do a collective “YEAHHHH” and I hear a teacher shoo them from the fence. I smile and I turn my music back up. I ride the same 3 speed bumps and park behind a cop car. Mom walks the sidewalk that is usually overridden with middle schoolers climbing on each other. I told her I’d bring her the grapes that she left on the counter but I forgot them. She says “That’s okay,” and I offer to stop at home for them and she says “Thats okay,” and we pass the elementary school again but the kids are inside now. We take a right instead of staying on our route and we drive by the nice houses on the lake. My mom has a couple stories that she repeats and one of them is about how she used to park on the street by the lake and daydream about living there until one day a woman walked up her driveway and told her to stay out of her neighborhood. Mom smokes 3 cigarettes and tells me about the kids that are giving her trouble. There’s one who my mom says is disabled because his parents talk to him like he’s a baby and there’s another one who my mom calls an asshole. If I listen loosely I forget that she’s talking about 4 year olds. She says that the kids get less competent every year and she turns down my Samia. I tell her about the baked chicken on the counter that will soon be buffalo chicken dip and she tells me that a friend of hers who does financial advising tried to fuck her over by trying to get her to put away 20k every year to get a tax refund. Mom says that she needs that money to live and I feel bad for dropping her off on that note. I count “4” out loud as I pull into my moms apartment building.

It’s 30 minutes before my mom needs to be picked up but I skip it and send Zach to get her, I am in my best friend Carly’s car. I sit down and she says “Jake Minch!”. I ask her how she is doing between jokes and she says that she is doing good. Carly is a 6 foot tall ginger and I love reminding her of this. She points at her tan and I call it a sunburn and she calls me George to try and piss me off and she is playing Hunter Hayes’ greatest hits and the windows are down. We drive past her friend Mia’s house in Easton and we talk about how many houses Mia has. Carly also has stories that she repeats and today she tells me 2 of them back-to-back. She says that she used to call Mia’s house a Castle and I smile instead of responding and then she tells me about how they don’t have a pool and Carly’s family makes fun of them for it. I smile instead of responding again and we stop for coffee at a coffee shop. By now, we are out of things to talk about. She plays an artist that sounds just like Luke Bryan and I make a joke that there are 5 country voices and everyone picks one and uses it. Carly gets lazy with her turns and I flinch when we pass the mailboxes. You can tell that she’s been down the same streets thousands of times because she drives her Nissan Rogue like the stoner friends she used to have that we’d make fun of. We have been bickering lately and I don’t know what’s going on with us. We stop at a gas station for a new pair of sunglasses and gum and she tells me that she is going to drop me off at home but she takes the long way home so I know she’s not upset with me.

I tell Alanah that I’ll be at her house in 20. The top is down, I am checking that my guitar is secure in the back, and I hear Mom’s upstairs neighbor say “thank god,”. He used to shout “no more music!” at me when I’d walk out of the apartment and eventually he simmered down to a “no music after 9pm”. In February I came the closest to killing myself I’ve ever been and this is the first week that I’ve been able to film myself singing comfortable since a few months before that. For a while I thought me and this upstairs neighbor were having a playful banter, but as I watch him stand up to walk inside, I see his whole ass crack hanging out of his pants and I realize that this is just a bitter old man. I start the car and the lady voice in my speakers that gives me directions is really loud so I turn her down and I take backroads to Alanah’s. Her house is a 2-story east-coast-style home in a neighborhood littered with cars and an open garage that her dad works in sometimes and when she opens the front door her golden doodle, Oliver, runs out to greet me before he runs to the neighbors lawn sending Alanah chasing after him. She hands me the book she picked out for me and invites me inside for a cup of tea. I tell her about the tiktoks that I have to film and I invite her to the park to sit with me. We have been friends for a long time but without Carly we would have never been seen independently in the same room until the other day. Carly has suffered through more than I’ve seen anyone go through ever. She is a christian and God stands in a hick’s backyard shooting bottles with the people that she loves. Her step-dad passed a few days ago and Alanah and I did laundry and dishes and bought groceries together and it was nice. Alanah said that she had to cook dinner for her family but she would keep me posted. I take a really scary left-hand turn into the park and I spend 10 minutes scanning for a spot I can play music at without anyone seeing or hearing me.

The sun is down and I am trying to call my manager on my way out of the parking lot. I wave to Alanah and I turn my heat on. My phone is at 13% and my manager does not pick up and I am too anxious to be on my phone while I drive so I am soundtracked by the wind whipping through my moms broken window. I debate eating more of that buffalo chicken dip before I shower. I think about how annoyed my brother is that I took the car for 3 hours without asking.

I am showered and I have called my manager and I am wearing a white t-shirt and pajama pants and my hair is wet and I am using the sunglasses I bought earlier as a headband. I joke about how I can’t wear headbands because I’m not that gay and Carly rolls her eyes. We are in Alanah’s white Nissan Rogue and Carly has picked up the habit of saying “don’t piss me off” after she’s already pissed off which I think is funny. We tell Alanah about our bickering in an attempt to circumvent the actual bickering that we are doing. Alanah asks “where are we going?” and Carly says “I don’t know, Jake, where are we going?” and I take it personally for some reason but I look up Diners that are open past 11. We drive route 25 to a place in Newtown and I don’t like how Carly is talking about the people that she loves so I tune out. I send a recap of my day to my talking stage. I get the idea of writing this substack and I also catch a whiff of a song that I forgot about and I spend the whole car ride silently trying to figure out what the song is. It is a mousy woman saying something about little deaths and the closest I’ve gotten to the answer is that I know that I heard it for the first time in the Uber that I took from Santa Monica last April when I had to stop home and grab my guitar for Sadie Tour rehearsals and I ended up falling asleep in the car. I don’t know why I didnt save the album. I don’t even remember if I was using Apple Music yet either. We are at the diner.

We are leaving the diner. I had a big piece of chocolate cake and I bit into a purple gumball and I thought about the sugar in the gumball and I threw it out. Carly reminds me that I just ate a whole piece of chocolate cake and I don’t say anything. She won 2 games of deal and Alanah told us about her trip to France and we remembered the Ed Sheeran song ‘Dive’ so we played it and Carly turned the speaker volume all the way up. I think about how blown out the speakers are on her car and I come over the loudspeaker of my brain and tell myself to chill out on Carly. I catch myself consistently having one person in my life that I hate and it has been a lot of people but it has never been Carly before and so I work through it in my head. I think that she has given up and this is the time that Carly needs Carly the most. Then I think about how corny it is and I keep it to myself. The music is loud and I hate loud music but Drops of Jupiter comes on the queue and I don’t mind the volume. We are driving on route 25 again. There is a strip of road that is stuck in time and if you squint your eyes you can be 12 again for just a moment. Alanah’s window is open and the air is blowing on my face and I start to get my nightly wave of guilt and doom. It feels like every time a moment is sweet I first have to acknowledge all the versions of me that are experiencing it. There is a sick 17 year old that sees it and is angry, there is a 22 year old that sees it and is scared, and there is a 30 year old that I can’t imagine ever existing but I quietly nod to. Alanah queues ‘American Pie’ and I remember how uneasy the song used to make me feel as a kid and I get that anxiety that sits on your chest. I can’t place it until I’m singing along to the chorus and I say the “this’ll be the day that I die” line. I check all my social medias and I tell the person that I’m talking to that Carly doesn’t want to watch a movie with me and he says that he doesn’t want to either. I’m annoyed about it. I think about how hard I used to be and it is a little death to acknowledge how soft I’ve become. Carly skips ‘American Pie’ halfway through and I tell her off. ‘Piano Man’ comes on and the two of them shout along and grab each others arms while Alanah drives. I am daydreaming about writing this and I decide to send Ruby that text about her essay. We park at Alanah’s and Carly gives her a hug.

I’m in Carly’s car and were driving to hers and there is an old nostalgic song that I found while looking for the “little deaths” song and Carly lets it play on loop for the drive home. It's called “Little Dead-Eyed” and we don’t say a word for most of the drive. I think about how I don’t believe in god but it felt like Carlys step dad was written into the show during season 2 and it makes sense that if anyone was going to die it’d be him. We pull into the driveway of her low-income-housing condo complex and she asks me if there’s anywhere I have to be at a specific time. I say that my mom’s break at work happens at 11 tomorrow instead of 1 so I have to be home to get the car for that.

I grew up in Youth Group and we had a covenant. It was culty, but honestly, I’ve been missing it. Nobody tells you no when you’re in your 20’s. Every time I’m doing good I like to think that I’m better than everyone and then I meet a bigger dog and I am doing bad again. When I swing too far on either side of the pendulum I remember that I am just trying to learn what my song sounds like. Here’s my rolling list of rules that I use to tame my ego and also not get lonely while I’m on my way.

There are 5 categories: INPUT, OUTPUT, Going Out, Posting on Social Media, and what I call, “Once a Week:”. I’m excited to see what things I will think about enough to add to this list a year from now. Im also excited to remember what made me come up with these rules.

INPUT:

-Learn the difference between good and great.

-Reading is working out for the brain. If nothing else, do it so that you don’t catch yourself going on autopilot during conversations. Attention issues are something that you can improve. Go back and read that page until you get it.

-If you move to a new place and you haven’t tried every sandwich within walking distance by the time you leave, you robbed yourself of maybe finding your favorite sandwich of all time. For every suggestion you take, walk into a different place blind.

-Spend time looking for new people saying new shit. Block people you find annoying.

-You get 5 hours of screen time a day unless your job is to be on ur phone. Even then, you turn yourself into a zombie, people can tell.

-Keep tabs on the things that have the power to change your mental/physical direction. Write them down.

-Wake up before 8 but not before 6:30. Once ur awake, stay standing for 15 minutes and make your bed.

-It takes 10 seconds to learn if the company you’re buying from is friendly. Be mean to people who still get their coffee from Starbucks.

OUTPUT:

-Most ‘aesthetics’ are like taking cultures and skimming their spark notes. Nobody really cares what you wear so wear whatever you want, but be able to defend your decisions.

-When you’re nervous you stop listening and you start talking. Remember that when you’re nervous and about to see someone.

-You’re only allowed to talk shit if you do it with the underlying 1understanding that people change over time and that you just aren’t a fan of this version of this person. if you read this and immediately try to defend something you talk about that “doesn’t count”, you’re immature. everyone who leans in to you talking shit is not truly interested in it, they just support you.

-It doesn’t matter if it’s different people every time; if you tell the same story 3+ times in a night, the 3rd guy can tell that you have.

-Try to find a niche thing to talk about with people. If you’re excited about it and you think it’s cool, tell people til you find someone who is as excited about it as you are. I don’t wanna hear what you think about the new Taylor album. I didn’t like them. It is a devastating waste of time to pretend you like something that you don’t.

Going Out:

-If we watch a movie and you immediately start talking about how it relates to your life the second we walk out of the theatre, we’re not friends until you fix that. Textbook-boredom, textbook media wet-brain.

-No time is the right time to say that you’re sorry. No time is the right time to say goodbye. Say it.

-Get there on time. Also, pick a time when you are going to leave at the beginning of the night and LEAVE ON TIME.

-You get 3 sorry’s and 3 thank you’s a night, otherwise it’s too much.

Posting on Social Media:

-Never post about getting injured (public or private stories). Also, you are never allowed to post something that someone has said to you, about you.

-Always look at what you’re doing from a 3rd person perspective. If you can’t in the moment, make sure you have someone who will help you. The stage you’re on can be seen from a 360 degree view. Believe that it is possible to be creative and ALSO not cringe. Refuse to settle.

-“Subtweeting” or the “shoulder-brush insult” is not personal. if they’re not dropping names its because it’s a generality that you probably made them remember, if you do the thing they’re talking about then you were probably being annoying.

-Share, never sell.

Once a week:

-Once a week take a 360 video of your face and body and have the camera invert it so you can see what you really look like. Dress for that guy, not for the person that sends snapchat selfies.

-20 minutes every Sunday, make a list of goals for the week. (i.e. screen time, how many pages of a book to read, how many miles to walk/run, calling mom, etc). Give yourself things that you could always be doing.

-Once a week, call your shot before you shoot. Get comfortable being embarrassing, get comfortable being impressive.

-(Not a rule, but) Once a week I like to show someone something creative I did that’s bad just to see if I can trust them as an honest opinion.

All photos are from: http://www.epiclylaterd.com

There was a man on the stairs wearing no clothes doing a sexy photo shoot in front of a big painting and there were those big white soft-lights that flashed when the photographer took a photo. The main room was dark and made of glass and everything was sleek and black and all the people were in suits and dresses. Me and my siblings looked really good.

You disappeared and I went to find you, but I accidentally stumbled into that section of a high school library where they hold presentations and there was a kid singing one of my songs and it was a deep cut and there was an audience watching him but he had no face. I tried to find him after; I stepped outside and it was bright, and I ran into someone that I think I may have talked to on a dating app. They gave me one of those “we’ve never met in person before, I’m so excited to meet you!” hugs, so I pretended that I knew them and apologized for us not working out and I gave a classic mental health themed excuse. They were blonde and nice, but too tall and too nice. I left and saw Maia Mitchell and the girl who played Maia Mitchell’s suicidal sister in the Fosters.

I walked down stairs to a basement and it was a bowling alley with 50 hospital doors leading outside and I walked through and there was a terrace and I heard your voice beneath me and I tried to jump down from my terrace to yours, but I pulled this rubber strip off of the lip of the glass wall and everybody looked at me.

They made me put it back on and you were there and you were with a man and you were betting money on something. You were smirking at me and some other kids showed up as though they had just done the same thing I did.

We all stood in a line and the task was to put these plastic pieces on the bolts of a steel beam. The beam was super high up. I had to sit on a kids shoulders to do it. I stood at the very left side of this beam and as we started, I saw 30 more kids join and so I stepped up on the boys shoulders and climbed onto the beam and then Sadie Jean was also on top of the beam trying to beat me. My friend Devon was up there too and usually she has blue hair but it was all white and I pushed her off and then there was a wall that Sadie had gotten to the other side of. I could feel someone tying my shoe laces together, so I started kicking and I hurt somebody and then the whole beam came crashing down.

A crowd of rich people stood around us clapping and laughing. You were one of them and I was angry and then I was walking the Brooklyn bridge thinking about flights back to the West Coast but I didn’t even open the Expedia app because I was supposed to do a co-write with Chelsea Cutler soon.

I went down one of these (^) into this recording studio I’d seen a couple a dreams ago and broke a guitar and left. I knew you’d be at the apartment. You told me about it the last time we talked, so I went. It was just us and I was gonna be like “what the fuck?”, but instead, we started hooking up.

Your body twisted like it was folding in on itself and you started talking all sinister, like you knew something bad was about to happen to me and you were excited about it. There was one of those movie-like moments of silence between the main character saying that witty comeback line and someone flying through the window, and instead of asking a question and immediately getting obliterated, I put my clothes on and I jumped out of the window, scaling the building by grabbing onto those little wires on houses that they tuck under the cladding and paint over.

I was jumping around the city trying to hide from you and I had super speed and there was this guy who was there to kill me and he had super speed too so I hid in a Mexican restaurant behind the bar and I thought I’d gotten away, but my shoes were sticking out and you saw it from a window and got a hold of me. Instead of making me fight the guy that chased me, I had put on these boxing gloves that didn’t have any padding in them and then I was introduced to a Hispanic girl in her late teens to early 20s. I was punching her a bunch so I could live and I was also trying to yell for help at the same time but no sound was coming out.