Diner (short story)
Luckily I wore black jeans, because under the table, blood is gushing from the knuckle of my left thumb. I went too far picking my cuticles. I flip my hand and press it on my thigh to attempt to clot it up before Sonja notices. I keep the throbbing hand under the table while flipping through the menu with my right.
Diners. I’ve always wanted to like them. The movies make them feel romantic: red booths, checkered floors, couples sharing a milkshake and shy, fleeting glances. The jukebox spins something warm and the coffee flows endlessly. There’s an old regular at the bar with his morning paper and a plate of ‘the usual.’ A pie of the day sits irresistibly in a glass case behind the counter. The low chatter and clanking of dishes lulls patrons into a state of stay a while, you got no where to be.
I want to be in that state. I can do this. My thighs stick to the vinyl booth and I try to focus on what Sonja is saying across from me. Something about a gallery walk next weekend. I nod along, the sizzling of the grease in the deep fryer and butter on the skillet interrupting her to remind me that those oils alone add upwards of 100 calories and about 12 grams of fat to a meal. A boiled potato is only around 100 calories, but a plate of fries is a whopping 300.
“Tristen is showing for the first time so it would mean the world to him. Oh, and there’ll be free wine!” Her voice is drowned out by the all-caps headings of the thick menu. BREAKFAST SPECIALS OFF THE GRIDDLE HOT SANDWICHES COLD SANDWICHES.
“Oh no way, I didn’t know Tristen was an artist,” I manage. CLUBS SPECIALTIES KIDS MENU SIDE ORDERS.
“Duh! He’s a painting major. I thought you knew that! Anyway, do you want to come? We can get ready at my place before.” PASTRIES BURGERS OMELETS SALADS.
I nod and smile at her. My eyes feel vacant. What do I order?
I lean back in the booth to steal a glance at the oozing thumb in my lap. It’s still bleeding. I pull it up to my mouth as subtly as I can and wrap my lips around the knuckle, hoping a quick suck will serve as a better tourniquet than my pants. I’m still sucking and looking down at the menu, hardly taking in any of the six hundred options, when I hear the dreaded question.
“Are you girls ready, or should I give you a few more minutes?” The frizzy haired waiter is at the end of the table, pulling her notepad and a pen out of her apron. I look at Sonja, who, to my utter dismay, is giving me the yeah-I-know-what-I-want-if-you-do nod. The nod that I have never been capable of giving genuinely. So I fake it and nod back.
“You go first,” I nudge, giving myself approximately 45 seconds. If I’m lucky and Sonja forgets the options and has to denote how she likes her eggs, white, wheat or rye toast, and hash browns or coleslaw, I could have up to 60 seconds. But either way, I have to make a decision fast.
Pancakes. I’ll do blueberry pancakes. They’re a diner classic so they won’t taste bad, that’s for sure. Mom used to make Dad and I blueberry pancakes on the weekends when I was little. She wouldn’t have any, of course. The last time she made them I must have been younger than six, because Dad was still there. I remember my little hands getting sticky from the syrup, smiling ear to ear as I indulged in the fluffy goodness without a care in the world. Today, I’ll allow myself about a teaspoon of syrup on top because pancakes are sad without syrup. But no butter. They’re already cooked in mounds of butter. Too much butter. Those extra hundreds of empty calories and fat. I can’t do pancakes.
Eggs and toast, could be safe. But they’re charging $9 because it comes with hash browns. I definitely don’t need bread and potatoes. Two carbs before 10am? No way. I think about a sandwich, but most sandwiches come with mayo or sauces, which are throwing calories down the drain. I’d have to ask for no bacon, which might raise questions. And what if it ends up being one of those huge sandwiches with a third slice of bread in the middle and I know it’s too much but I can’t stop eating and before I know it I’ve eaten three slices of bread and the whole sandwich, and fries?! I can’t risk it.
I look up and around briefly, like I’m coming up for air. Two skinny runners are intently chewing at the booth across from me, munching on well deserved post-run burgers and a Belgian waffle to share on a plate between them. Commands and smoke pipe up from the kitchen. The ding of the bell indicates that someone’s food is ready. The cashier holds the landline to her ear while notating an order to go. The teenage bus boy scurries by and dishes clink and clatter in the big black tub.
I’m running out of time and a boiling frustration starts to travel up from my empty stomach into my throat. I need to scream, I need to cry. But I can’t, not now, so I swallow and scan the salads. Dad would order salad at the Metro Diner whenever Mom made him diet. He’d complain about it the whole time. How lame is it to get a salad at a diner? He’d sulk. If Mom went to the bathroom, he’d sneak fries from my plate and I’d giggle. I’d always get grilled cheese and french fries back then. I can’t imagine putting that in my body today.
Focus on the menu. A salad won’t be tasty on its own; the most interesting ingredient will be an olive or a banana pepper, so it’ll no doubt be smothered in a fatty, sugary salad dressing to hide its depressiveness. I could ask for dressing on the side, but if I don’t put it on Sonja will think I’m crazy. She’d already think I was crazy for ordering a salad in the first place. No to a salad.
Mom used to order cantaloupe with cottage cheese. She’d kept taking me to the Metro Diner every Friday before ballet down the street, even after Dad was gone. She said I could get anything I wanted, but I knew better. The French toast would make me look fat in my leotard. The omelets have three eggs, not two. A muffin is not practical: 500 calories, 600 if I add butter and jam, and more like 8 or 900 if you add in all the snacking I’d do later, after it wouldn’t put a dent in my hunger. That’s almost half of a grown man’s suggested daily caloric intake in a baked good I’d devour in seconds.
One time with Mom I thought about getting the yogurt parfait, but after she made her if you really want it face and I asked what was wrong with the yogurt parfait, she reminded me that granola was practically all sugar, and that most places used full fat yogurt. I asked her, well what about the cottage cheese, isn’t that full fat? And she got defensive and said that the protein content was higher. But then she didn’t order cottage cheese. And she ordered second, after me. I didn’t change my order because I was scared it would make me look obsessive, like she is. The waiter asked about sixteen times if she was sure she didn’t want anything else, and she replied sixteen times back she was sure. Then she picked at a sad half of a cantaloupe on its white plate before her, while I guiltily ate mine with full fat cottage cheese.
I lift my head up from the menu to find Sonja and the waiter blinking at me expectantly. I don’t know how long I was spaced out for. The panic has taken me prisoner, and I realize every muscle in my body is tense. I wriggle in the booth and my thighs sound like they’re ripping off the vinyl. I clear my throat.
“You know what, I’ll just do a black coffee.” I close the laminated pages and hand the waitress my menu. I look at Sonja, “I’m actually not hungry,” I say. She shrugs. I accidentally start mindlessly ripping at the already bloodied knuckle on my left thumb. My stomach grumbles.
Van Life (a short story)
The second hand ticks and it’s 3pm. Go time. My coat is already on and I slide my headphones from their resting spot on my neck up over my ears. I slam my textbook shut and throw it in my bag. I am the first one out of the lecture hall.
I swerve through the quad, narrowly avoiding death upon impact by a group of lanky cross country boys, only to slam into a short, plump professor with circular wire-framed glasses. His coffee completely empties out onto his white button down. There is nary a drop left in his cup, but I don’t have time to rectify the situation.
“Sorrysorrysorrysorry!” I plead with a tone that displays the dissonance of I know I’m an asshole but I also really don’t cope well with anyone being displeased with me and I wouldn’t normally do this but I just really have to be somewhere. I’m in too much of a rush to dwell on his stained dress shirt and possible third degree burns for more than the five seconds it takes to pass the poor flustered man.
My key card is ready to go and I’m flying up the stairs the second I hear the beep that tells me the door is unlocked. I start sweating while I get stuck behind a dude taking up the whole stairwell trying to haul a massive guitar amp up four flights, but as soon as we’re at my floor I squeeze behind him and I’m sprinting down the hallway, key card, again, ready to go. I barge into my dorm and don’t even clock weather or not my roommate is there. I slide into my desk chair and whip my computer out of my bag.
His page is already loaded on my web browser, so all I have to do is hit refresh, and there it is. Uploaded 15 seconds ago. I click on the new video and my shoulders drop. The stress of my three minute sprint from art history leaves my body.
The shot is of his van at what looks like the edge of a cliff. The sun is starting to poke over the mountain ranges behind the 2015 white Dodge Ram. He opens the passenger door and hunches over to exit the vehicle, shutting the door behind him. He walks up closer to the camera.
“What’s up everyone, it’s your Boy in a Box living in the unreal Sierra Nevadas. I mean - just look at this.” He steps to the side of the frame and gestures with his arm to the scene behind him. Wow. I quickly avert my gaze away from the screen and out to my view of another brick building with icicles hanging from the window sill tips. I hear shuffling from the twin bed next to me that reminds me that I am, indeed, living in a small dorm room with a stranger who naps constantly.
“I mean, come on! Come. On. Not a day goes by where I don’t feel so extremely lucky to live this life.” He smiles, closes his eyes and takes a loud inhale through his nose, and his nostrils whistle a little. He exhales, “so lucky,” he repeats in a whispery tone. He runs his hands through his hair, pushing it on top of his head and a small lock bounces bounces down in front of his right eye. My vagina quivers.
“And I’m so lucky to have all of you guys here with me. Thank you to all you beautiful humans for tuning in week after week. I’m seriously eternally grateful to all of you. And I want to give you something in return for your dedication.” I’m quite literally on the edge of my seat.
“This Valentines Day, I want to find my special someone from the comment section in this video. You’ll get to spend the night right here parked in the Mountains with yours truly. It’ll just be me and you in the DreamBox. Paradise, baby.”
My stomach is speeding down the runway, ready for takeoff.
“So drop those comments! Introduce yourself, make me laugh, whatever, man. I’ll know it’s you when I see you. I trust the universe will find my perfect match this VDay.” My thoughts are darting like the a Brick Breaker game at a high level. I have to win BoxBoy’s heart.
“Peace and love to all of you watching! Like, comment, subscribe. BoxBoy, out.” He flashes his signature peace sign and dimpled smile while reaching out to turn the camera off.
Ho. Ly. Shit. A date with BoxBoy! In the DreamBox! I am shaking all over. It could be because I haven’t eaten anything except a half frozen toaster strudel at 7am, but how could I possibly eat anything else now? I can’t put any more food in my body until this competition for BoxBoy’s love is closed.
I chew my fingernails off instead. What could I possibly say? I stand up, pace back and forth the three strides between my bed and where my roommate sounds like they’re choking on their own spit. I sit back down, my knee bobbing up and down. I open my notes app.
I’m Addie. I’m 19, born and raised in Iowa. I’m a Sophomore at Iowa State and I watch your videos every week.
Delete delete delete. Boring. BoxBoy spends his time parked in deserts and on beaches, taking in the wonders of the natural world, being all spiritual and loving in order to free himself, breath by breath, of society’s handcuffs. Why would he want to spend the night with a girl who couldn’t afford to go to school out of state?
hey sexy. ur van is perfect but it’s missing 1 thing…me
I cringe. Too much, too desperate. Plus, I’d show up and he’d expect me to be the kind of girl that pulls of an oversized sun hat and does perfect yoga poses. Despite my hardest attempts, I am not that girl. I hold down the backspace, and try for something more earnest.
hi boxboy. long time fan here. you inspire me week after week and to get to experience you irl is fr a dream of mine. plus, i’ve always wanted to hike in yosemite.
I examine my work. It’s good, I think. Casual, but not too nonchalant. Stroking his ego a bit can’t hurt. And then I show off some personality. I haven’t actually always wanted to hike in Yosemite, but it seems like something a girl he’d be attracted to would want. I take a dramatic deep breath and copy and paste my three sentence pitch into the comments and feel like I’m going to vomit.
~
The air in California is only slightly warmer than back in Iowa. I’m waiting for BoxBoy and the DreamBox outside of the Fresno airport. I don’t feel real anymore. The past three weeks I’ve been continually pinching myself: literally squeezing the skin on my hands or forearms, often with nails, sometimes drawing blood. I never understood the whole ‘pinch me, I’m dreaming!’ thing, but now I get it. I have to check that this is all happening; that BoxBoy chose me out of all 2,633 comments on his Valentine’s Day sweepstakes video. He responded to my comment on January 17th at 2:04pm PST asking for my number. He texted immediately.
him: hey, it’s jake (boxboy). u wanna come hang on vday?
me: hey boxboy! 100%. packing my bags already lol
him: lol
him: fly into FAT on feb 14. send ur flight info i’ll pick u up
me: omg. u serious?
him: ya
him: ur gonna be my boxgirl
I responded with the heart eyes emoji. A week later I completely depleted my bank account on a roundtrip ticket to Fresno. February 14th to 15th. A middle seat, no checked bags or add ons to the flights. $638 gone with the click of a button. But it doesn’t matter that I’m broke now, because I’m going to be Mrs. BoxBoy.
I hear and smell the DreamBox before I see it. BoxBoy’s videos never mentioned how bad he needs a new muffler. He passes slowly, looking around for me. Behind the wheel, in the flesh, it’s him. The van sputters and screeches to a stop a few feet in front of where I am frozen, gaping, clutching my backpack straps. He hasn’t see me yet. I watch as his ringed fingers turn the key counter clockwise and the car stops wheezing. He disappears into the back of the van and comes out with a paper supermarket bag. He does his signature duck to step out of the van and flicks his hair back. I let out a small gasp.
He walks right past me with the trash bag and begins to attempt stuff it into the tiny hole of the airport’s trash can. Something is leaking out of the bag. Wrappers are flying out. I squirm a little watching my longtime crush fight a trash can. When it’s clear he’s not going to be able to fit it in, he just leaves the bag on the ground next to the receptacle. He wipes his hands on his pants as he walks away. He then looks up and right into my eyes. Mortified, I quickly put my head down. I just watched BoxBoy fail to dispose of a bag of what very well might have contained his bodily fluids.
“Hey — Addie!” It’s too late. He must have recognized me from my profile photos. And I just pretended not to recognize him. I’ve completely fudged it. $638 spent for absolutely nothing.
“Oh, h-hi BoxBoy,” I blush.
He laughs, “call me Jake.”
I just nod, too nervous to say anything. He’s standing right in front of me, the 6’2 boy with the dimples and beach-y blond hair that I’ve been watching every week since I was sixteen. I tuned in for over three years as he saved up to buy his van, built out the inside, fixed up his engine, and drove it up and down the California coast. He’s wearing the signature outfit - white T-shirt, baggy light blue jeans held up by a worn brown belt, and scuffed up adidas Sambas - that he wears in his videos. And now he’s coming in for a hug. BoxBoy is squeezing me.
I tense up because he smells very sweaty. I’m still paralyzed, but I manage to lift my arms up to reciprocate. We pull away after what feels like just slightly too long. He’s nodding vigorously and smiling as if we were old friends and everything is right again now that we’re reunited.
“Thanks, for um, inviting me.” I manage, to break the awkward silence.
He pulls out a Go Pro and points it at me. “Man, it’s nice to meet you!” He turns the lens around to face the van and starts walking over to it. I follow. “Thanks for making the trip out. Come check out the DreamBox!” His vocal inflections are exactly the same as they always are on YouTube.
I feel the need to pinch myself again, but refrain. I’ve seen the van on video, but not for a while. He did a lot of van-tour content at the beginning, but lately his channel has been more about documenting his travels. I follow him inside.
My heart sinks immediately. It’s dark. He must have gotten rid of the fairy lights, and the curtains, much rattier than they looked years ago on video, are drawn. Up close, I see the poorness of the paint job on the van walls. His clothes are everywhere, and splayed across the counters are empty ramen containers and plastic spoons that didn’t fit in that singular paper bag of trash he ‘disposed’ of. The bed is unmade and has dirty rags on it. The van smells like mildew and, vaguely, pee.
I’m honestly repulsed, and shocked that BoxBoy didn’t clean up for his BoxGirl. I’m even more shocked that BoxBoy lives in squalor.
~
BoxBoy has been setting up the shot for forty-five minutes now. I can tell he’s getting frustrated, because he keeps grunting. He runs back and forth from the camera to where I sit on the grass. He sits down next to me for thirty seconds, then goes back to the camera, tells me to move or adjusts the angle, then tries again. We’ve done this at four different spots.
“The sun’s gonna set soon, I gotta get this right.” He’s huffing and puffing. We’re in a field in the Sierra Nevadas, at a campground. There’s lots of people everywhere, some of them doing the same dance to get their sunset scenes right for their own channels. But BoxBoy sets up his camera to make it look like we’re the only ones here.
“Yes, got it!” He watches the last test shot. He then comes back and sits down next to me, lets out a big sigh and shakes his head, giving me a look that says we were in that fiasco together, and we did it.
We each pull a can from the plastic six pack rings holding the Modelos he bought at the gas station along with $80 of diesel. He asked if I had any cash on me to pay for the tank, since he had to drive an hour to pick me up from the airport. I blinked at him, thrown by the audacity of the question, for what felt like five minutes, then replied that no, the flights wiped me clean.
“Well, cheers!” He says now, and holds his can up really high so the camera can see, clearly, the toast.
I have to get up on my knees a little bit to clink my can to his. “Cheers,” I reciprocate. I just about chug my first beer. BoxBoy keeps taking really theatrical inhales and looking up at the sky with his eyes closed before letting out the loudest sigh accompanied by a satisfied smile. I pull another can of Modelo from its plastic ring. With half of the second beer down my gullet I decide to pull out a metaphorical ice pick.
“So, like, where are you from BoxBoy?” I know the answer - Orange County, LA - but it’s the only question I’ve got.
He looks at me with a soft smile, then throws his head back and let’s out the fakest laugh I’ve ever heard. He didn’t even seem to process what I’d asked, only that I said something that the video could register as us having a Good Time. I’m so in shock that I don’t even have time to hide the reaction on my face. He doesn’t seem to notice my furrowed brows and generally offended expression, and goes back to smiling and sighing. Is he a NPC? Placed in this weird simulation where he all he can do is look at the sky and sigh and smile and laugh at nothing?
The sky is blushing pink and the sun is about to touch the tip of the mountain range. BoxBoy scoots closer to me. Oh, no. He leans in, eyes closed, lips puckered. I don’t even feel like I’m in my body anymore; no amount of pinching will make this moment feel like it’s actually happening. Only now, it’s not fun or exciting. Now, it’s deeply uncomfortable. I watch from outside of myself, as if I’m seeing it on my 13 inch computer screen days later on his channel, as my head tilts and my lips meet his.
~
It’s 3pm and everyone begins to pack their bags and file out of the lecture hall. I slowly put the cap on my pen and put it in my pencil case. I close my spiral notebook. I stack the pencil case and the notebook on top of my textbook and neatly slip all of the materials into my bag, careful not to crumple any of the other books in there. I stand up and put on my coat, hat, scarf and gloves and walk back to my dorm. I stop my stride and move out of the way to let the cross country boys pass. I reach my dorm, calmly remove my key card from my wallet, and make my way up the stairs.
I open the door to find an empty dorm room, my roommate’s bed unmade and unoccupied. I sit at my desk and pull out my computer to start in on an essay that’s due next week. But, out of sheer habit, I open my web browser and type in YouTube instead. Uploaded 14 minutes ago. I click on it.
“What’s up everyone, it’s your BoxBoy living it up in the gorgeous Sierra Nevada mountains. Life literally could not be more of a dream.” I roll my eyes.
He’s at the same spot where, a month ago, our terrible kiss happened. Where I stayed up, wide awake in the stench of the trashed Dodge Ram until the alarm went off and it was time for him to drive me back to the airport. I know there are people parked all around him, but all the camera captures is BoxBoy, the DreamBox, and the Sierra Nevadas. Since Valentine’s Day, he’s uploaded three videos, including one vlogging our ‘date’. I have told nobody about my trip, and have hardly processed it myself. It is going to take me a long time to come to terms with the fact that that video will exist on a server somewhere until the end of time.
He’s added a new signature line to all of his videos since I went to visit.
“This video goes out to my BoxGirl. Love you, Addie.” He blows a kiss. I slam my laptop shut.
Stacked
I always knew I would be burned alive. That’s how it was destined to end for me. Most of us know, deep down, how we’re going to perish. It’s just not something that we let ourselves think about often enough to realize that we know exactly how it’s going to end. But, I knew the day would come. I am waiting to be burned.
I am lying in a circle with the others. We are completely covered in snow, and have been for months. It’s been a particularly snowy winter. We watched and waited while dozens of us were lifted from the circular stack we were arranged in back in Fall. Before this, our together-form had been dead for a full season, so we were prime for individualizing.
I’ve enjoyed being an individual. When we were in our together-form, we of course wondered what it would be like to be individuals. As an individual, I’m way lower to the Earth. I’m actually on top of the Earth. Not under it and over it like in our together-form. The main difference between being together and being individual is that I feel a lot less and see smaller. I know that sounds confusing. It’s really hard to explain. The others and I have spent many a late night trying to make sense of it all.
No one wants to talk about where we’re headed after this state of individualism. Like I said, before, it’s not something we like to think about as individuals, let alone share with others. But it’s hard to deny now, what with our stack dwindling. The snow has coated my top completely, whereas weeks ago it was only on my sides, until the individual sitting on me was removed.
I hear excruciatingly loud crunching. The snow is being depressed under large fluffy snow boots. The human is coming. This is really happening. This is it for me. I’m strangely calm. I thought I’d be a lot more frightened.
The human kicks me, ow. Kicks again. I realize in this moment, I am not only on top of Earth, I am frozen to it! The human kicks a last time and I am set free, lose from the ice cage I had lived in, unbeknownst to me, for god knows how long. The human picks me up. I am cradled in the human’s arm with one other individual, and I see two more swinging in the other arm. Long human hair brushes my ends as the arm swings back and forth. The human is a girl, and while she is walking with us, she’s huffing and puffing. She is even muttering to herself a little, cursing I think. She does not like the snow. I know because I heard her say “fuck this fucking snow I am so fucking done with this shit.”
I remember being moved back in Fall. I got a sense of where we were stacked compared to where our together-form was. Our together form was deep in the woods, way behind the human house. Our stack sits at the far end of a clearing, quite a distance from the human dwelling. It takes just over a minute for the girl to trudge from the stack to the cabin. She struggles to open the door, what with both of her arms carrying us. She’s still sputtering and moaning. She really does not sound like a happy human. She throws us - with no consideration - to the ground of the cabin, beside the wood stove. It hurts when we smack the ground, and I bounce once. I think I lose some bark. She begins to lift the four of us, one by one, into the stove. I am last.
The stove is quiet. There is no rushing of leaves from wind. I feel and see even less in here. We are sitting on top of newspaper and smaller individuals outside of our together-form. We do not speak to them. We do not speak to each other. I gather that this day, despite it being our final one, is for individual thought only. Except I bet we are all thinking the same things.
Now that we’re in the dark stove, the fear sets in. There is no warm sun on my bark. No wet rain. No critters running around and over me. Just me and the other ones I am going to die with: the ones from my together-form, the ones from another tree, and the crumpled up newspaper - our ancestors who perished, but were preserved in paper form. I don’t know which way I’d rather go. If I feel and see this much less in my individual form than in my together-form, imagine being newspaper.
Thinking about the newspaper makes me deeply sad. I think I’d rather meet the flame and become ash, because at least I am natural this way. The flame. It will come soon. I am not ready, I realize. I don’t feel or see all that much but I do not want to leave yet. I take in my surroundings, thinking it may be the last time.
What I see gives me a glimmer of hope. The human, in her disgruntled state, made a grave mistake building this fire. She has compressed us together. There is no air between the individuals from my together-form, the individuals from the other tree, and our great, poor, newspaper ancestry. I stay more rigid than I ever have before, if that is even possible. I am not ready for the fire to start. I am not going down without a fight.
She takes the lighter out of her pocket. I slump, defeated. This is it.
Click.
Click.
Click.
I am relieved. More curses from the girl. She’s rubbing her hands vigorously around the lighter, breathing on it to give it warmth. Click. Click. Click. “FUCK! THIS!” She screams. “FUUUUUCK!”
Then she breaks down. Full blown ugly-tears. Her breath can be seen, a little cloud in the air, when she heaves out sobs. She tucks the lighter into her coat pocket to warm it, and puts her head in her hands. Her fingers are bright pink, poking out from her brown hair while she cradles her face. She is talking to herself between bawls.
“I’m s-sick of being freezing and unc-comfortable and having to do everything all by myseeeeeelf.” She’s rocking back and forth like a baby. I wonder if the other individuals from my together-form witnessed a similar display. She weeps and wails, guttural sounds reminiscent of the wolves that would howl in the woods where my tree lived its life. She is just another animal, I think. She is an animal that is cold and scared and alone.
“I just want it to be easier.” She whispers to herself, sniffling.
The lighter in her pocket will warm up soon. She will try to start the fire and my ancestors, the newspapers, will shrivel for nothing, because she stacked the wood all wrong. None of us will light in this formation. She will have to take us all out of the stove and crumple more newspaper, and stack us again. And we will all ultimately burn eventually. That is what my fate is. I’ve always known it.
I am the log on top. If I shimmy slightly to my right, I will fall, and likely knock the small individual from the other tree so there will be two pockets of air. It will be enough air to make this fire go, so that my ancestors don’t burn for naught, and so this poor lonely girl can be warm soon.
My tree lived its life. We had 106 rings in our together-form. We saw new growth come and go. We had human children climb our branches. We experienced 38,690 sunrises and sunsets. We made a giant crash when our top half was split from our bottom after The Storm. I am an individual. And I am going to burn serving my ancestors, and warming my fellow beings.
I make my move. The logs rock and settle around me, and the air pockets are created. The girl is taking deep inhales now, and her breathing grows less shaky with each one. She pulls the lighter out of her pocket and positions it next to a piece of newspaper.
Click.
Ode to Clubhouse Jiu Jitsu
This is a photo of Noah & I with our jiu jitsu coach, Kyle.
Noah started BJJ when he was living in NYC, and Kyle (who is also from Maine) was his coach. When Kyle moved back to Maine and started teaching in Portland, Noah was working for both of the days Clubhouse Jiu Jitsu (the name of Kyle’s program) met. So I decided to go on my own. And I went on my own for the first six months or so, and felt really comfortable doing so, despite the fact that I was often the only women and a white belt. I had gone on and off to other gyms with Noah, so I *sort of* knew what BJJ was about, but Kyle’s belief in me, and his teaching style, absolutely hooked me on jiu jitsu. The way Kyle teaches is excellent for the scattered art brain. At other gyms I struggled to learn and improve because I could not remember names of positions, and it just felt like no matter how many times I drilled moves when it came to actually executing them I never could. It really is a metaphor for life — you can prepare as hard as you possibly can for something, but when the time comes to actually do the thing life throws you a wildcard and it all happens in a way you can’t predict. So it’s much more useful to spend your time getting comfortable rolling with the punches than to spend your time learning how to combat any number of possible scenarios. Kyle teaches the former. He gets his students to trust their own intuition. With Kyle, we learn only through live rounds - no out-of-context drilling. So now my body can just flow with anything presented to it rather than try to control any given positioning or situation I find myself in. I hope to someday treat my life like this too and relinquish any sort of control I think I have.
I’ve always thought that maybe BJJ would be good for survivors of SA. Obviously it depends on the person, but it is a safe environment (gym depending, though I haven’t been to many gyms where I haven’t felt safe) not only to learn to defend oneself, but also to not panic when you are uncomfortable. It allows you to take control over your body, because you can tap out at any point you feel unsafe.
And it’s not always fun. I’ve cried at most every single gym I’ve trained at. It’s a specific type of panic attack. It’s the feeling of being an outsider, like everyone is better and bigger and stronger than me, and then on top of that I get choked out or something and it triggers a real extreme reaction where I can’t stop crying. I get personally offended by someone submitting me (when they trap you in a position you can’t escape, a position that will injure you if you don’t tap out). I like to think that now I am a blue belt there won’t be more tears, but I know that’s not true. There’s always bad days, days where having a big sweaty man crush me just makes me break out into tears. But that’s okay, because there’s more days where I feel powerful defending myself against that big sweaty man. Also, at most of the gyms I’ve gone to, those big sweaty men are total sweethearts.
The female camaraderie around BJJ is so strong. I was the only woman at Kyle’s class for quite some time, but now there’s a lot more regular ladies that come to the class. And whenever there’s a new woman at the gym, we feel an instant kinship with one another. I think a lot of women start BJJ with the intention of defending themselves. And while men may be joining for the same reason, it just feels more determined from the women’s perspective. No one ever told us it was okay to fight, it’s a part of male socialization. We have to empower ourselves to fight. That, paired with a woman’s size disadvantage, makes BJJ yet another activity we have to work doubly as hard to excel in. So there’s a real respect there amongst the ladies. And that feeling of outsiderness that has made me cry at BJJ gyms is always slightly diminished the more women there are in the class. There are also a bunch of free women’s classes at a lot of gyms. I’m always going to try to recruit more women to BJJ, because it’s done wonders for my self confidence, as well as for my psychical and emotional strength, and I want everyone to feel this! On top of that, it’s good exercise, and it’s just fun.
BJJ is a grappling sport. So you’re mostly rolling on the ground, getting into pretzel positions with your partner and either trying to escape/defend, or submit/offend. Noah likes to say that all fights lead to jiu jitsu. Because you will end up on the ground in real life combat. So you have to know how to get someone off of you, how to escape. In BJJ, like life, you have moments where you’re on top and moments where you feel utterly hopeless. But in jiu jitsu you always can start again, and you’re likely to do better the next time if you can stay calm; get comfy being un-comfy. It’s so hard to explain what BJJ is to people who have never done it before. It honestly took me over a year to feel like I sort of spoke the language and knew what was going on. Before that I was just thrown in blind. I don’t know if that was just me or if that is how a lot of people feel about it, but I always encourage new people to just keep coming back. And even though I sort of know what’s going on now, I will always unlock knew levels and feel like I actually had NO clue up until that very point. It’s a sport of endless learning. I hope BJJ is something I do for the rest of my life.
Concrete Seconds
“C’mon Rory. You know how tight money’s been, and Rose is on my ass about every little thing since I got laid off,” Liam takes another sip of the beer that I bought him while he continues to try to squeeze pennies out of me. He’s dressed in his normal ratty band shirt, dad jeans and black hoodie even though I told him the bar was business casual.
“Why would girls talk to us when you show up wearing that shit? This is Neon Bar, man, not Paddy O’s.” I vigorously brush lint off of my pressed button down and scan the place. Neon signs that say things like good vibes only litter walls that are coated in fake green leaves. Two blonds laugh at the chic granite bar, margaritas begging to be refilled. I want to be the one to offer to fill them, in more ways than one. But what does it say about me if my wingman has what looks like an avocado stain on his chest?
“Dude, I’m telling you. You do this for me, and we’ll both be so rich you’ll forget you were ever single.”
I honestly can’t believe he of all people would stoop to this. He’s heard me complain for years about how I’m fucking done being a guinea pig.
I shake my head, “get Shane or Mike to do it. Or, I don’t know - ask your kids or something.” The fucker shat all over my night the moment he showed up, and now he’s just rubbing it around. He wants me to test out his app. He only thought about making the app in the first place because I’m his friend, and thought I’d do him a solid. I peek back over at the blonds. One of them is shaking the ice around, trying to garner one more sip of her drink.
“No, no I can’t!” Liam says, “It’s gotta be the best option for consumers out there if we’re gonna do this for real, and to make it the actual best we need—“
“Seriously Liam, drop it.” I’m stern about it, and he throws up his hands. “All right, all right.”
I’m the worst singer in the world. It’s so bad that I was clinically diagnosed with severe tone deafness when I was six. The choir teacher would have me wait in the hall while she taught my section their parts, because she was scared I’d confuse everybody if I tried to join in. She asked my mom to drop me off to school an hour early so she could work on pitch matching with me. It didn’t work.
When I hear music I feel like I’m on a different planet. It’d be like if an American suddenly woke up in Tuvalu, or another country they’d literally never heard of, and all the street signs were in Tuvaluan. That’s how I feel when I actively listen to music. I can ignore it good enough when it’s on in the background. Forget about trying to sing it.
And I had but all forgotten about trying to sing it after that year in first grade chorus. But then after I graduated college, I was flat broke and up to my knees in debt and I saw an ad for a job on craigslist. Wanted: Tone Deaf Worker. So I applied.
The interview was pretty straightforward. It was in a rental unit of a commercial office building that was mostly vacated, except there was a freelance podiatrist on the level below. They had some munchkins and a box of joe from Dunkin’ in the waiting room, where I waited for around fifteen minutes. Then I was called and escorted into a sterile, fluorescently lit room. There were three people who all looked so similar I forget which one wore the pantsuit and which one had glasses on the tip of their nose, so maybe they all had glasses and pantsuits. They had me pick three songs and sing karaoke.
I have a long and hard history with karaoke. I am banned from a local bar to this day. The owner said my tone and song choices subconsciously aggravated the patrons and caused bar fights. So I had kind of sworn it off, but I figured this job could pay good money, so why not pick up the old microphone once more?
I sang Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac, followed by Build Me Up Buttercup and Sweet Caroline. All classics of mine. It was sort of hard to get into it though, what with the lighting, and the stoic pantsuit/glasses people behind their card table. But I must have done something right, because I became an app developer after that. That was my official title. I didn’t code or anything. I just went into a lot of fancy tech buildings and sang for lanky engineers. I’ve only ‘developed’ one type of app. It’s that one where you hum a song into your phone and the app tells you what song it is.
There’s a surprising number of companies that have apps that do this. For big names, there’s Shazam, Google, or Amazon. But then there’s lesser known applications like NameThatTune, SongGuesser, earWormdigger, TongueTipper and iForgetTheSong, just to name a few. And they all paid handsomely. I haven’t had to job search since I found that craigslist ad. I guess word of mouth has made me the guy. Because my voice is so bad, these engineers think that if they can create an app that can guess the correct song, even when it’s sung by the worst singer in the world, it’ll be foolproof. But the truth is that none of these apps really work. They’ve all still been produced and released even though not one of them have been able to figure out what I’m singing when I do my go-to stumper. It’s called Concrete Seconds by a band named Pinback.
I got burnt out and decided to quit a year and a half ago. I got tired of all these tech bros and app developers poking and prodding at me. I also think I may have developed vocal nodules, because it hurts to sing the high notes now. I have enough savings and investments where I likely don’t have to work another day in my life. When people ask what I do for a living, I tell them I was a professional singer. They ask if they’d know any of my work and I say probably not. The conversation usually ends there.
The girls are now looking around the bar, one of them twirling a bleached lock of hair, clearly wondering why no one has asked to buy them a drink yet. It’s killing me.
“I’m just saying, Rory.” Liam’s still on this. “We could really do this! You’d actually have ownership of this one. It’ll be me and you - 50/50.”
“Fuck, Liam. I told you, I’m done with that shit. I don’t want to be the guy with the terrible voice anymore! I want to, like, actually do something that helps the world. Those apps are probably the biggest waste of server energy out there. They probably account for, like, 3% of CO2 emissions.” I take a swig of my Heineken.
“No way, dude! Do you know how annoying it is to be singing a song and have no idea what it is?! We will be saving lives, man.”
I rolled my eyes, “If I had a beer for the number of times I have heard that pitch.” I shake my empty beer bottle,“I’d be shitfaced.” I stand up and head over to the bar.
“Get me another?” Liam yells after me. Broke bastard.
I haven’t been laid since I quit my job. My shrink will tell you it’s because my identity was too wrapped up in it and I lost my mojo when I stopped. I was the guy after all. I suppose it didn’t always feel good to be prized for something I couldn’t do rather than something I could, but still. All press is good press? Right?
Identifying with something I’m a total failure at is definitely part of the cause of my dry-spell. But the other reason I haven’t filled anyone’s glass, so-to-speak, is Bex. She’s the one who showed me Concrete Seconds by Pinback, my stumper song. She was into all of those obscure Pacific Northwest grunge bands. She had a record collection that would embarrass any beanie-wearing, penny-boarding, scrawny art school grad with an ironic ‘mom’ tattoo. Music was her language. And despite my inability to comprehend anything with pitch, we dated for six years. Concrete Seconds was sort of our song, as much as someone who is clinically tone deaf can have a song. When I listened to it with her, I didn’t get that same stressed-out, Tuvaluan feeling that I normally get when I hear music. There was something special about that song, or something special about the two of us that was illuminated when we listened to it on her dusty record player.
Deep in the throws of heartbreak and missing Bex, I looked up the meaning of Concrete Seconds. I found a post on a forum called songmeanings.com by a user with the handle wasteofwebspace. wasteofwebspace wrote the following:
the lyrics reference a play called ‘waiting for godot.’ its a tragicomedy about 2 dudes waiting at a tree for some guy named godot. godot nvr shows, and the play is existential. life has no purpose or meaning or whatever. its obvious bc the lyric tht repeats over and over ‘anything I say to you is gonna come out wrong anyway’ refers to one of the fundamental pillars of existentialism - the inability to communicate.
wasteofwebspace has done more for me with that lower-cased paragraph than my $250/hr therapist ever could. Through a single half-assed post on a clunky, antiquated forum, the legend made me truly understand why Bex and I broke up. The truth is, I think Bex loved music too deeply to be with me, the guy who can ruin any song if you invite him to karaoke. I was a disgrace to her language. I have that existential inability to communicate the song was referring to.
I’m standing at the bar a balanced distance away from the girls. I’m not too close to where I’m creeping them out, but I’m not too far where they won’t notice me. While I wait for the bartender to come my way, I glance at them fleetingly in a way that won’t make it obvious. One of them gives pilates mom, while the other has a septum piercing. I can’t decide which one I should shoot my shot with, so I decide to try my luck and go over there.
Tonight is a good night, I think. Even without a wingman, I’m feeling pretty good. I’ve been spending a lot of time on my physique now that I’m unemployed, and it shows. My hair looks just like the guy on the shampoo bottle and my new twelve-step skincare routine must be doing something. I look around. I suppose up against the other dudes at this bar, my guns are pistols next to their automatics. But, compared to what my arms looked like six months ago, my muscles are practically popping out of my sleeves! Anyway, I’m probably funnier than those ripped guys. I like my chances.
I’m next to septum girl, and I’m about to drop the pickup line of the century when the baseline seeps into my eardrums. It’s an iconic, treble-y line fingered high up the neck. It soars while the drums hold down a clean rock groove, and the flanged out guitars wash the perimeters of the sound map. I wouldn’t mistake that intro anywhere. It’s Concrete Seconds by Pinback.
I’m standing in front of these girls and my mouth is open, but the words have been snatched from my throat and I’m in fucking Tuvalu.
Sitting at a bus stop
Trying to take my shoes off
But my laces are all knots and you
Looking for an answer to an old question
So easy I can’t explain it
And anything I say to you is gonna come out wrong anyway
I shut my gaping mouth and turn away from the girls. I urgently flag the bartender down and get two more beers, not daring to look in their direction. I scurry back to our table. I just about slam the bottles down on Liam’s coaster. “There you go,” I mutter. I slump in my chair, arms crossed, and take a big gulp.
Anything I say to you will probably come out wrong anyway
“Please, Rory. I’ve never asked you for anything, all these years. This will be the last one you’ll ever work on. I’m just asking you to think about it.”
I sigh. “Alright, fine. I’ll think about it.”
Anything I say to you is gonna come out wrong anyway
I turn back around to look at the girls. There’s two bros talking them up, and their glasses are filled with fresh margaritas.
Don’t Worry Logistics
I don’t remember what month it was, only that it was 2021 in Sarasota, FL. Moon Kissed had been invited to play a festival there after having played at the Ringling Brothers estate the year prior. I remember we did a live video of our song ‘Dance’ before heading to the festival, a song about deep longing to dance with somebody who actually knows me. I also remember that I was wearing a lace leotard tucked into a completely sheer cheetah print maxi skirt.
The festival grounds were moderate, in a small field with vendors at the rear, a stage in the front, and a stationary hippie camper van somewhere in the middle that everyone took pictures in. There were a few tents backstage for performers and crew. I felt good that day — had gotten decent sleep and all my bodily needs had been met; a rare occurrence for touring.
One of the vendors read tarot, or maybe she was just a psychic or something. I actually don’t remember any tarot cards now that I think of it. Maybe she read palms? I don’t know. She was some sort of mystic. And at the time, I was really concerned with finding a deep connection, a life partner, dancing with somebody who actually knows me. I was worried - how it could possibly happen, this thing I want so bad when I had issues that closed me off and just felt generally unlovable? How could I possibly fix all of this shit in order to let someone in? She told me ‘Don’t Worry Logistics.’
After she said that it became a mantra for me. Don’t plan for a partner. Don’t stress that I’m not the perfect girlfriend material. Don’t think about how hard it will be to live with somebody. Don’t worry about how impossible it feels to open up. Just exist. Don’t worry the logistics.
Ultimately when I stopped worrying is when it happened for me. Which is such annoying advice that I hate hearing because you can’t just stop doing something. But you can say mantras until you change your brain train tracks.
I couldn’t have logistically planned it anyway because my love story is, quite frankly, a mess and continues to be. We’re so in love but it does’t look like anything I could have imagined for myself. We live in a camper van now, and before that we lived off grid, and between those things we’ve bounced around apartments. We’re still working on the logistics. But we’re together. And ultimately that’s all that I wanted, but could not have planned that it went this way.
The same will go for anything. It’s another way of saying ‘let go, stay present.’ Don’t worry the logistics of how I am going to become a well known artist. Just create, and don’t plan, because you can’t predict the way it’s going to happen or when it’s going to happen, or what is going to spark it. I cannot imagine the logistics of what my life will be like in the future. It will probably always be a mess. But as long as I’m doing what I love and what I know I want to be doing, then I am doing it. I am open to my life looking whatever it will look like, as long as I’m happy. I want some sort of validation from art making. But that’s the part I can’t logistically plan for - how I’ll get the validation. Just don’t worry logistics.
My Dilemma with Social Media
I have been off of social media for around three years now. That’s enough of a break, I think, to step back and say, with certainty, that social media is a dark trap. I have firmly believed the cons outweigh the pros, but lately I’ve been letting up on this perspective in my brain space.
Over the past three years, I have used my time to pick up new hobbies and create different types of art. I have also learned to know when my brain is truly in a relaxed state, versus a state of heightened anxiety. When I do the scrolling that I do now - which is lame, like, refreshing my email or going on cooking websites- I notice this slight unsettled feeling. I think Instagram is so numbing that I didn’t even notice this feeling, whereas something like email is boring, so my brain can have more space to nudge me and say, what are you doing? Go read a book or something. Being off social media has also allowed me to distance myself from performative activism, digest the news on my own accord, and have real dialogue with people who may not agree with my beliefs.
I’m working my last two weeks as a music teacher starting tomorrow. Then we go on tour and I transition to attempting to be a full time artist. I have roughly six months of money to figure out how to make it financially from art before I will have to get another job. I’m wondering if my stubbornness with being off of social media will continue to serve me.
From what I understand, and I’m not sure if this is brainwash, you need to be on social media in order to ‘make it’ as an artist. I suppose there’s an argument that says that the internet is where culture is now, and art is a part of culture. But the stubborn voice in my head says make it without it.
The part of me that wants so badly to make my art be a sustainable, full time practice, is willing to do anything. Especially the one thing that has a chance of getting my art out there. How can I truly know if I don’t try? Can I work a daily or weekly post into my art practice without succumbing to the machine? Does even thinking about it mean that I’m being sucked into the addictive vortex that these apps were designed to be? Should I be one tiny voice in dissent, or should I attempt to use the platforms to benefit me?
I really don’t know. My ideology and stubbornness is at war with my drive and deep desire to be seen and heard through art. If you’re hearing this - if somehow, against all odds, the algorithms delivered these words find you, what do you think?
The tour that f*cked sh*t *UP*
Hello from a snowed-in van stealth camped at a beach. Having a nice slow morning, and hope you are cozy somewhere too.
Writing a newsletter to let you all know we are TAKING THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD! That’s right folks, Telescope Club is going on tour. This tour is special to me because it’s the tour that fucked everything up (in the best way).
We got the idea from our friends to try to do a “30 Cities in 30 Days” tour for a youtube gimmick video, so I set out trying to book that. The tour planning video sucked and got no views (still trying to figure out this whole youtube thing…pls subscribe if you haven’t!) and I didn’t manage to quite get to 30 BUT we got a decent little tour going.
But yeah, when our friends gave us this idea, I was like I can’t take a month of of workand then I was like fuuuuck that, I wanna be a rockstar and I’m so burnt out of teaching little kids music….soooo I quit everything to go on this tour. Got some savings because Moon Kissed went viral on Meta (thanks to old-man-creeps on the internet who couldn’t get enough of shirtless ppl in a music video; sometimes going viral is dark) so it feels like the right time.
My last day of singing to babies is also the first day of this tour, singing to fully formed humans. It also happens to be valentines day, which I’ll be dedicating to ME because quitting my job to go on the road feels like the ultimate form of self love to me.
So this is the tour that fucked shit up (in the best way). And we hope to see you at one of the dates. Flyer up above and dates on our site down below.
SPUCK FOTIFY MUSIC VIDEO
HAPPY NEW YEAR everyone! I hope you all burned things you want to be left behind in 2025 and kissed a cutie at midnight. some new year’s resolutions of ours here at TC:
shorter drives for tour
become zen masters whilst living in a tiny box on top of one another
do the splits (i’ve failed at this like 5 years in a row)
more creation……… such as………
The vid we share with you today: our SPUCK FOTIFY music video. We filmed it in our tiny house with a really cool 360 camera Noah’s dad let us borrow. It captures lots of analog-ness, which sptify took away, and also a lot of insanity from being boxed in, which sptify gives us.
Still using sp*tify? It’s okay, we still love you. But Bandcamp is really freaking cool because you can actually support the artists you love, and support a platform that is generative instead of derivative.
So maybe it’s not too late to make switching from sp*tify a new year’s resolution? Starting with checking out telescopeclub.bandcamp.com.
Love you,
TC
Apocalypse MUSIC VIDEO
Hi Club,
Lot’s of news lately I suppose, which is good! Noah has gotten our youtube channel off and running. Subscribe for dumb content and van content. Music performs poorly on there. BUT today we said screw it because we want to share our ‘Apocalypse’ MUSIC VIDEO!
It’s a special video because it was shot at the top of our mountain <3 It was a meager 10 degrees outside, and we had to hike back up and down multiple times because we kept forgetting things down below. But it was worth it for this one shot.
‘Apocalypse’ is track two on our most recent release, APOCABABIES. I wrote all of the lyrics while on a snowy hike last winter, and here we are again, back in the freezing slush. It’s about this impending doom feeling that I’m sure I’m not the only one who gets when thinking about the future of things. It’s about how humans have continually wanted more more more and gone to get it, and it seems like it’s leading to self destruction. Things move too fast and I can’t keep up sometimes. I’d rather get off the train and walk most days.
Thanks for reading/watching/listening, and keep your fingies warm
-Khaya & Noah
TC
Irene II
Sup club. Screaming into the void here in honor of the release of APOCABABIES (telescopeclub.bandcamp.com). Writing this in the front seat of big ol Ireney Greeney. She’s the 2nd Irene, and she is our home. Noah’s currently installing a monitor of some sort for our solar set up. We officially live in this van.
It’s been a long road to get here. It all started when we saw St. Vincent at the State Theater and this awesome band Hello Mary opened and I was like fuuuuck I used to do that shit I used to have drive I miss performing and wanting to be a rockstar. I went on prozac and it numbed me out and killed my motivation and then I woke up a few years later realizing I was spending all my time teaching music, burning out and giving my creative energy away in exchange for money. Don’t get me wrong, I love to teach and I love (most of) my students, but I’m not ready to throw in the towel! I WANT TO BE A ROCKSTAR.
So I quit prozac and we bought a used van that used to deliver art. It had a van gogh in it once (the vanity plate VANGOGH was taken). We built it out and it is beautiful. Noah really poured his all into it. I was working too much to help out all the time, but I did when I could. But the beauty and functionality of this van conversion is all him; it’s a culmination of experience with projects from the camper to the tiny house to the greenhouse. This is his finest work yet. So proud of my baby <3
It didn’t feel like such a big decision to us to move in. We’re used to small spaces, and we’re both flighty people. Maybe flighty is the wrong word, too negative - it’s what people who judge us might say. The right word is that we’re adventurous. And I guess 27 and 28 are the years where we’d either decide to get locked into a mortgage and please the traditionalists, or fuck shit up and do our own thing. I’m glad we decided to fuck shit up. My parents are not. But alas, I’m a grown up now Mom and Dad. So yeah, to a lot of people it is a big decision. But Noah and I might just be wired differently than those people, and that’s okay.
Now it’s time to focus on the music. I want to feel that drive again. And a van is a good place to be feelin the driiiiiive
spuck fotify
Khaya here for my first ever blog post. I want to make writing these a regular thing for myself. As it always is, the topic spinning around the forefront is my mind is: how do I be a rockstar? But (as my mother says) I am self destructive. So even though I want to be a rockstar, I want to become one while somehow not participating in the very capitalist systems that define who the rockstars are.
I think a large part of my existence as a human being on this spinning orb is accepting that I can’t have my cake and eat it too. wait. What the fuck does that phrase mean? If I actually think about that sentence it is so fucking stupid. What else would you do with a cake besides eat it?
But if I for some reason couldn’t eat the proverbial cake that I have acquired (the nonsense of which is fitting for the weird ass time we’re living in), for the sake of this thought spiral, it would mean: I can’t be a rockstar without participating in the bizarre, insular, stale corporate-ness that is late stage capitalism.
I’m reading this book by Liz Pelly called “Mood Machine; the cost of the perfect playlist,” which is an expose all about the rise of Spotify, and how it contributed to the sterility of this corporate time we live in where apparently we all want to be treated like robots. Spotify’s only goal, like any big corporation, is making $$$$$$$. Obviously. They didn’t set out to be a music platform. They wanted to sell ads, and music was the ‘traffic’ that brought people to their ads. So they don’t give a fuck about music. They give a fuck about money, and this has evolved to mean keeping people streaming, ie. boosting easy listening, play listing in-house-made-royalty-free-songs, and other manipulative tactics that trap the casual “CONSUMER” into spending more and more time using their platform, so that they can collect their data and feed it back to them in the form of music that gets more and more boring and two dimensional. And as a result, music sucks now. Thanks spotify! You have altered the way that people listen and the way that artists create.
So. If I want to be a rockstar. If that were ALL I cared about, here’s what I could do. I could study the thousands of editorial (ie gate-kept) playlists on Spotify and literally replicate the songs in order to get on those playlists. My song would then stream super well, earning me enough to buy half a sandwich. Then because it proved itself to be very un-risky (boring) it would get bumped up to the next playlist, and then the next, and the next, until maybe it’s on a top chart somewhere, and I’d actually be making a livable wage. But before that happens, I’d sign to a major label that takes half the cut even though I did all the work, because, see, even though I have all those streams, no one would show up to my shows and I couldn’t have a real, lasting career. Because streams are mindless, robot listeners, not real people who like music. Those don’t exist anymore because we’re all robots, remember? I’d also have to keep making that flattened out easy listening bullshit in order to keep getting streams.
Obviously, being a rockstar is not all I care about. I want to be a rockstar on my own terms. I want to make art that is not always easy to listen to. I want to be a human, not a robot, and not a product either.
Rant rant rant rant rant. All we do here at TC HQ is complain. It just feels like the world is fucked because of big tech companies like these that use our own data to flatten us out into culture-less robots who don’t go listen to live music anymore unless it’s at some big venue where there’s an opportunity to get a clip of the show to post on social media to try to prove that I’M NOT A ROBOT EVEN THOUGH MY LIFE ONLY EXISTS ON THE CLOUD.
We do a lot of ranting here, but we also take action. Which is why people think we’re fucking weird. But whatever, losers. Here’s what we’re going to do: Write a song called fuck spotify and delete everything else on our Spotify except that song. who knows, maybe it’ll fucking go viral and we’ll be rockstars. just listen to us on band camp. or email us and we’ll mail you a cd.
i’m gonna go buy a fucking cake now. and then i’m going to eat it, like a normal fucking human.
hi computers
we’re not so big into the tech field. it radiates a kind of… negative-ish force that is strong, addictive and useful when framed up against other simple means. it carries the weight of something twice its size. we’re kinda into it and kinda not but you found yourself here if you are reading this.. maybe wondering why you are or not, but you are HERE now. so what do I have to say to you? hi. just hi.
we’ve lived OFF GRID like hermits or whoever you want to label us as. but we’ve come from big cities and normal towns and now we live in a small city call3d Portland (the maine version). GREAT! love the electricity and cars and great running water. nothing here to complain about. but as our need to focus on basic needs becomes a part of the background, our desire to express grows. money takes precedence more than we like, that’s for sure, as you may know. But we try not to let it take CONTROL any more than it has he power to do so.
we create a lot and will never stop TELESCOPE CLUB is one of the facets, sure.. and working on some visual stuff, personal sounds and songs, and now some sewing––making clothes cooler and more fun. we are also runners and ran a marathon together last year.
but now we’re in a different mode because it’s winter and it’s dark. we are in the annoyed artist mode, maybe more than ever. in a world of social media, AI, and big tech, we have struggled; as I believe many have. but we are growing with it (or against it). BEcause we’re not WITH it at all. we are growing in spite of it. getting rid of our home internet: because why have it? and getting rid of instagram: because why have it?
we’ve weighed the ups and downs and know exactly what we are missing. but we love to talk about it and certainly have heard our share of the other side: the pro-insta-pro-AI world of things. the dialogue is the most important thing.
so for now I begin writing a dialogue in preparation for something big: an earthquake maybe? which we did actually experience the other day in Portland (maine of all places).
we heard and felt the rumble. it was pretty cool.
-ng(tc)