backstairs

 finally real.

https://open.spotify.com/album/1pyhre8q3OJqfzwChhj7Kp?si=-wQikbj1QyWFlreeKobGGA 

blister in the sun

 club this is my first time posting real recorded music on here!!!

my side project Xenophon dropped a little something something on bandcamp and i need to show you all! its a live recording of a cover we did at an open mic for noor magazine.

Blister in the Sun by Xenophon

go listen :)

p.s. i'll be back shortly with more posts. i have so many photographs to show you because i reverse engineered by camera and fixed it <3

lock in o clock

 Hey club... I feel like i haven't been giving you any attention lately. that's because its Lock In O Clock.

i have been so locked in. I have so much to do and i am doing all of it. but today I extra locked in and I have no immediate homework to do right now and I have like an hour to kill and I am in a fancy tea shop so I figured i would get back on the blog.

thus, I am going to talk about myself for a while. and media and art and stuff.

I have been reading Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001–2011 by Lizzy Goodman. it is a super thick oral history of the rock age in NYC (think Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, etc.) and I love it. as a biproduct I have been obsessed with electroclash, like Ladytron and Peaches, even though in the book everyone hates electroclash. I also love Karen O all over again. Y Control is probably my song of the year. I am only like a third through the book and I fear it is preventing me from reading other things. I really want to read Dante's Inferno because of Virgil and Hell. 

I also really want to read The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson because I overtranslated Book 9 for Greek class and now I feel on par with her skill (jk). I met her in May and she was so cool. She was covered in tattoos and did an amazing impression of Priam in the Illiad, reading in the dactylic hexameter and everything. I have been generally obsessed with Greek mythology for a long time, but right now I really want to watch mythological movies. I think this is because I binged Kaos (2024) on Netflix and the Eurydice song is a new guilty pleasure of mine. Hopefully soon I will leave Locked In Land and watch some movies. I especially want to see Gladiator (2000), O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), and Elektra, My Love (1974). Classics fans love to be picky about movie adaptations, but what is the fun in following the myth to a tee? Then you know exactly what happens.

last obsession for today is my film camera. my grandparents gave me 2 cameras last year: a Pentax SP500 and a Nikon N2020. both are super old. the pentax is ancient. But i asked my friend to check out the N2020 and fix it for me and he did. I got very excited and bought a roll of film for like $18. and then i go to try it out. and it does not turn on. Apparently my friend forgot to put some essential parts of the camera back into it. so then I try the pentax just for fun. but it also does not turn on. and I can't even open the battery compartment. and then i google the manual and it is so old. i am going to show pictures from it after this. but through the manual I find out it only takes mercury batteries. so I was about to open this compartment and get mercury poisoning probably. hopefully tomorrow my friend will give me the parts to my camera. and I can take some super cool film pics. 

i will never betray my digital camera. even though I accidentally broke it this week and now to take a photo I must use the wiring of my earring to push down on the shutter. but one thing my friend said was that he likes film more because it is much more intentional. I reject that notion. i love digital because of how accessible it is, how i can capture a moment so effortlessly. after all, why would I want to remember the moment for how hard it was to take? when you live through moments, they should not be hard.

one of my favorite pics I've taken is this one:

because it feels so much like that day and that memory. as I type this I am like 2 blocks away from where it was taken, and i think about whenever i walk past it. i wont lie the picture is better in my head and definitely better on my phone but whatever.

not only have i been locked in, but there has also been a lot of drama in my life. i got into a fight over film. i have been invited and then uninvited and then reinvited to a party (i didn't go). there was a bomb threat at my school and we were evacuated for 2 hours?? this was all in the past week.

i have to leave this tea shop. i have sat here for a long time with a $5 lavender lemonade that I was 5 cents short for and the barista had to bail me out. i have to meet with my cousin to get some clothes from her on E Houston. and i have to go to a meeting to plan out an epic Halloween show at 6:30. 

i have other topics to type about including but not limited to:

• my guitar teacher moving to nashville
• videos of 1950s alaska i have found
• whether or not to put this blog on my college apps
• my waste of an adobe subscription

coming soon ;0

show madness!

 hey club members!

i have been so insanely exhausted. this is for a couple reasons. Last week was tiring because it was my last week of classes. so i had a ton of exams and projects and nothing interesting to really say because I was so mentally burnt out. I was also dealing with some friendship stuff with some of my closest friends so I was emotionally exhausted also.

Last week was equally tiring i am afraid. this is because I was organizing and practicing for a show that I was hosting at the end of the week! my band severly overworked ourselves. we practiced for hours on wednesday through friday morning. my bandmate even slept over thursday night so we could finish the song we were writing for the next day. meanwhile the friendship stuff was still kind of lingering on my mind. 

The most stressful day was friday. Organizing and hosting this show was so intense. I will not be doing it for a while. And after all that chaos, i had to be ready to play while also sweaty and delirious from lack of sleep. those 5 minutes before I performed were actually hell. 

In the end, the show was a success. I am so proud of my band and myself for putting all that together. the only part I am unsatisfied with is how I forgot all the lyrics to the song we stayed up all night writing. I would say it was all in vain, but it really wasn't. I will not elaborate.

i will probably write something longer about this show. there are some details about a 7/11 and a pool that i want to include. but im still processing and i am still tired. so just wait.

I would post pictures from the show but i unfortunately took ZERO because I was too busy with everything else. and I will not post pictures of my band quite yet because I don't think I want my face on here right now. also I don't want to post someone else's pictures. so just trust me that it happened, ok?

on another note, I finally told someone about this blog. like 30 minutes ago. she was very understanding. I did not give her the link.

i still feel like I need to attach something to this post, so here's a snippet of the chorus we wrote

i wanted to believe

that we would make it to the summer

i couldn't be deceived

if only we were a little bit dumber

its not too bad for being written in a night

(walkman + pastel sketch from last week)

(might post the finished sketch another time)

(#bring back walkmans)

on an entirely different note just because I am still awake and writing (12:57am), what book should I read next? i loved Pandora's Jar but it took a while to get through because it was nonfiction. i feel like I need something very fast paced and summery and maybe with romance subplot or fantasy elements? i am trying to not buy any more books so here are a few contenders I already own:

- Persephone Station by Stina Leicht

- Stardust by Neil Gaiman

- Severance by Ling Ma

tomorrow I will decide as it is now 1:05 and I need to stop this.

passion pit: love letter to synthy electropop

 

saw Passion Pit. they were awesome

when i was against the barricade, waiting for what felt like a millennia for Michael Angelakos, i looked at my fellow passion pit enjoyers and realized i was the youngest person there. has the age of Passion Pit really washed over us already? the kids are losing culture!

bring back weird and startling songs like sleepyhead. bring back LCD Soundsystem and Santigold and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. this is my love letter to indie sleaze and synthtronica and electropop.

these songs make you feel like a kid playing Little Big Planet, but also a 20-something year old at a house party wearing tube socks. they are so nostalgic yet so futuristic. they are trashy yet lavish. for me, they are reminiscent of walking by the highway on a sunny day, with wired earbuds in ears and sporting a striped shirt. they inspire screaming, they inspire holding, they inspire collapsing on the floor and they inspire getting up.

truly this era was a new movement of music. it took 80s synthpop and 60's rock and added a bunch of clutter to it. the sleaze quickly picked up electroclash, leading to acts like The Knife, Peaches, and Ladytron. i would sell my soul for just one night in Toronto or New York in 2008.

lately it feels like these types of songs are a dying art. my favorite indie sleaze revival act is The Dare, who should be blasted in all clubs in all cities in my opinion. there was an indie sleaze attempt on tiktok last winter, onset by Saltburn (2023), but like all things on tiktok it happened shortly and then it was swiped away.

personally, I will be having an sleazed up synthcore electroclash indietronica summer. I will be streaming Sleigh Bells, The Naked and Famous (forgotten too soon but that tangent is for another time), M.I.A, Black Kids, The Strokes, Bloc Party, and of course, Passion Pit.

(here's more pics i took bc it was the best night ever)

(sotw is The Reeling because its my favorite Passion Pit song AND the first song they played)

p.s. this is basically a photography blog but it was supposed to be a music blog. new music is in the works but nothing solo right now. if only I could make some electropop to put on here.

consumption

This whole week i have been thinking entitrely bloggable thoughts, but I come here to mu computer now and I am at a loss of words. The keys are asking me what I even mean. I have no new verses of substance, no new pictures taken. I only have the remnants of ideas from last week and they don't really matter right now! So instead I think I will be doing a media dump of everything I've consumed last week. I've been reading a lot more and I think it is genuinely improving my life. I love consumption.

Books

I already wrote on here about Pandora's Jar and I haven't read it all that much lately, but I will say I love the Medea chapter and was not that impressed with the Eurydice chapter. Maybe I just love Medea more than Eurydice. But the Eurydice chapter was more about Orpheus than anything. And while it did expose me to more Orpheus media like Orfeu Negro and various Orpheus operas, it was not an actual exploration of Eurydice's character faults. The rest of the book looks promising though. I also enjoyed the Phaedra chapter. I had never heard her story until now. It makes me want to read every myth ever.

I had to read Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, for English class, and actually really liked it. I secretly love reading plays but I also feel like it's a waste of money to buy them because so much of the page is blank. Inherit the Wind was just surprisingly fun. 

Lastly, I have been listening to the audiobook of Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li. I am an audiobook defender at heart. I'm like 80% through it and I have to say, I wish there were more thieves and less portraits. It's mostly a character study of 5 very similar characters and less of a heist story, as it was advertised. I have no more to say about this right now. I don't like books where the protagonist's biggest struggle is "being too perfect".

Movies/TV

I saw Challengers (2024) last Friday and I think it is the best movie I've seen all year. Or at least my favorite. There is way too much to say about it in one paragraph. But shortly, so I don't ramble: we need more homoeroticism in media. Let the people know. 

I started watching Suits. Because after Inherit the Wind gave me a longing for more legal dramas. I think movies are good for me but TV is not. 

Music

I bought 2 CDs this week: Nocturne by Wild Nothing and Midlife: A Beginners Guide to Blur. I am also a CD defender at heart. Physical media 4 lyfe. These are both very summery records and I love them. I spend more money on CDs than I spend time listening to them. I bought a new walkman to try to make up for it.

My SOTW (linked at the bottom of the page) is currenly Killer Whale by Boyscott. I'm noticing I love short and sweet songs. This song is the sweetest. I'm also noticing I love songs about home. This song sings:

Just promise me you'll be here when I get back // I swear I will be here when you get back // home

This may be a subconscious little trick on my part. I think home is secretly on my mind. I am at home, but some other people aren't. I did buy a copy of Emily Wilson's Odyssey last weekend. Maybe a poem/verse/vague paragraph will be coming soon.

🤖🤖🤖

I think I need to start writing shorter stuff. Posting little writings. Even just posting my favorite works by other people. I'm going to the Met this week, so maybe I'll have some material then. 

weekly update

its been a week! what have i been up to?

First, I've been reading. I finished The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller and started Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes. I really liked The Song of Achilles and how immersive it was in the classical world, so much that I knew I had to pick Pandora's Jar back up. Pandora's Jar is a series of short essays exploring women of Greek myth. I read half of the essays last year, but I'm reading it again because since then I have learned so much more about Greek myth. I was especially excited to read the Eurydice and Medea chapters after reading Medea by Euripides and translating the Georgics by Vergil. I could write a lot about The Song of Achilles but the most I will say right now is that I probably would have liked it more if I hadn't translated Book 22 of the Iliad and wasn't enrolled in that Greek class in general. It inhibits my enjoyment because it makes me nitpicky. I want to just enjoy it raw and unknowing.

Second, I've been writing? Today I drafted a new song that I'm titling Motherboard as of right now. It's about knowing people who don't seem human but you really really want them to be. The melody needs some work, so maybe take this verse as a poem or something instead:

words in a voiceover scream

you're not part of this machine

not the mother of the board

not the power to the cord

Of course it has robotic elements. this is robotics club after all. maybe I've been heavy on the motherboards lately but I just love them. 

Third, I've listened to some music! Recently I've listened to the album Masterpiece by Big Thief in CD form because I just bought it and was too excited to wait. I love Big Thief and it truly is a masterpiece. My favorite song on the album is currently Humans or Animals. I also listened to To Pimp A Butterfly by Kendrick Lamar last nite. I listened to it because my little brother loves it and I love my brother. And I can't lie, this Kendrick vs. Drake beef has piqued my interest in Kendrick. It was such a journey of an album, it genuinely felt like watching a movie. My favorite songs are probably Wesley's Theory for the jazz and King Kunta (it's my brother's favorite) and i. 

Lastly, I took some flicks. Not many. This week will be more prosperous. 

I'm planning on making a collage for a mixtape this week, so if I complete it I will be sharing. Also I have the strong urge to write poetry lately so maybe I'll make some of that. Until next time. 🤖