#i spent like... around a whole 5 working days re-reading this during the commute from home to office and vice versa... always good

[februairy]

a part from Surrender Yourself (let me help) by @cheswirls :)

[crystalectomy]

I call this piece “leaving the groupchat”

I'm starting off somewhat small - I removed myself from the groupchat. I haven't told anyone yet (and the group settings mean there will be no notification that I’ve done it, people will have to find out on their own). 

I don't know yet the FULL extent of the backing-slowly-into-the-hedges I want to do with these people. I know, broadly speaking, that if I get invited to things from this group in the future there will be a few things I straight up say no to: 

most get togethers at [A]’s house

any camping trips

most parties in general, esp hosted by [A], [B], [C] , or [D]

Things I might say yes to:

a concert w [B]

a boardgame night (occasional)

a park hang, bar hop, or outdoor festival (anything it's easy to bounce from)

Things I will be pleased to continue:

some kinda relationship with [C]

maybe a reconnection with [E] some day

My brother’s advice was to leave the group chat and only explain myself to anyone who asks about it. He said leaving it would be good for gaining closure (as opposed to just turning off notifications, which I've tried many times already). From what I've told him it seems I have every reason to do so -- he did not try even for a second to talk me out of it. He said he had a similar situation where he left/was cut out of a friend group a year ago and he has had absolutely no regrets at all. 

He also said he thinks our Dad sticks too long with people / doesn't recognize when they've become harmful to be around, so if the goal is to not be like Dad (which, yes), then recognizing when to move on from people is one way to get there. 

I'm doing everyone a favor here (probably too aggro a thing to say)

I've been reading about people who've broken up with friends or left friend groups and a familiar refrain keeps coming up -- friendships should be with people who you trust, who uplift you, who do not leave you feeling stressed and drained. I cannot say that about this group, as a whole, anymore. At all. 

For a long time -- years now -- I've flirted with the idea of leaving the groupchat. It hasn't been a fun groupchat. A lot of it is people posting links and videos that I'm not interested in, giving life update announcements that don't need to be given in a group setting, or posting plan-making logistics, which always end up being a little awkward when some people can participate in them and others can't (which is always the case, b/c of awkward breakups in the couples of the group, east bay vs sf commute times, and now differing covid sensibilities and vaxxed/unvaxxed status).

All of that is innocuous enough, but if it's clutter, it's clutter. And there's no reason not to remove it. 

So what made the group good if not the groupchat? The hangs. The drugs, the alcohol, the games. The concerts, the movies, the camping trips. Since we've had a forced year without those things, I've gotten a better look at what the core of this group feels like to be in without all that -- and it sucks.

So why not just ride it out until we can hangout in person again (which will be v soon!)? I guess I'm just feeling like a spring cleaning attitude about it. Like, maybe I can spend my precious time in the afterlife hanging out with people who I can feel close with emotionally as well as physically? Maybe now that I'm in a very different phase of my life than I was when I met them (turning-30-realness) I should cultivate relationships that fulfill me where I'm at now -- people I can share exciting work news, poems, and pictures of my cat with, yes, but also people I can unravel the secrets of the universe and the pros and cons of major life choices with.

I've spent a lot of the quarantine either in solitude or staying connected to / reconnecting with friends who make me feel good. Who listen to my advice, who give me advice and encouragement in turn, who share similar interests with me, who do not call me "unique " "weird" "soooo alternative" over and over again (either in admiration or jest). Who have understood and interpreted and lived out the COVID thing in similar ways as me. 

And look -- I don't mean people who have had the same privileges necessarily! Some of the people I've gotten closer to were just as social as the folks in this group +/or worked jobs where they had to be on the frontlines and couldn't barricade themselves quite as much as me and my husband did. But they respected our decision to take as strict a stance on this whole thing as humanly possible, did not call us "sensitive" or "conservative" at any point along the way, and when they asked us to hangout, did so in ways that felt respectful of and empathetic towards our boundaries. It’s not that this group made different choices than I would have, it’s that they, by contrast to my other friends, treated me with judgment, derision, and disrespect for my decisions. I promise I’ve not done the same.

I'm purging a lot of things from my life right now. Leaving my toxic-ish job at the end of April. Trying to lose the last 5 lbs. Getting rid of as much clutter in the house as possible.

As I start to prepare and dream for a life outside of quarantine, I think about  who are some of the first people I want to grab a drink with, go for a walk with, celebrate an occasion with. And for the most part, it's not these people.

Y'all are funny, interesting, intelligent, engaging, and a good time. But I don't feel like I belong here. And I often leave hangouts with the group feeling stressed or upset.

Moreso, in my life I feel I've gotten much harder. Cynical, crabby, pessimistic, aggressive, barbed, judgmental. Like, really had those parts of me take over. And I'm almost certain this group being my main group was a contributing factor. It's behavior that's, if not required, then encouraged to be a member here.

I thought about writing a message in the groupchat to explain myself instead of ghosting but a few things occurred to me:

9 times out of 10 when I try to be earnest or express any feelings that aren't straight up enthusiasm for something with this group, I feel ignored at best or patronized and shut down at worst. 

given the pervading sense of devil-may-care cavalierness in this group, i figured most of you wouldn't notice/care anyway

I thought of folks like [X], [Y], and [Z] who have been in/out of this groupchat for years, all of whom have since faded away, and none of whom felt the need to say anything. Since there's a precedent, I figured I'd follow it

I'm extremely self conscious about this decision -- I'm worried it comes off as self-absorbed, self-righteous, selfish, etc. and I don't think I know a way to ensure it doesn't come off that way when trying to address it head on.

I'm kind of a coward about this kind of thing (awkward social interactions) anyway. So this is a kind of cowardly way to do it. It fits.

I've been thinking about doing this for so long that nothing anyone can say will convince me otherwise, so why invite a dialogue?

If anyone asks (which my husband assures me they won't): 

“Oh, I left the group chat a little while ago, so if you're trying to reach me, specifically, text/phone call is the best way to do so. Email works too. No shade to you or anyone in particular, I just found the energy of the group as a whole to be kind of toxic, and have so for some time now (even pre pandemic).”

Then, maybe:

“I thought about saying something but I honestly couldn't think of what to say that wouldn't come off as arrogant or dramatic or weird. Maybe it's weirder to ghost... but I never seem to accurately gauge how people in this group will react to things I do and say, and I didn’t want to be misinterpreted and cause more stress. There's no good or codified way to leave a friend group, so I just did the easiest, path of least resistance way I could think of.” 

And if there’s time:

“And that's the other thing, I didn't want to like, break up with any of you as friends. I'm not going to say no to every game night invitation or avoid people altogether IRL or anything. And I'm hoping and planning to have 1x1 or 2x2 hangs with some of y’all in the future. So I didn't want to invite any truly nasty energy between me and any of the individuals in the group. I'm just excusing myself from the overall 'zeitgeist' of the groupchat, and okay with probably getting invited to fewer outings as a result.” 

Or at least:

“I didn’t mean to offend, I just did what I thought was best for me in a way that I hoped would cause the least amount of harm to everyone involved. And I did think long and hard about it, so at least I hope no one can say it was a completely thoughtless decision.”

I'm taking this impending re-entry into society thing as an opportunity to prioritize the relationships that have felt enriching, healthy, fruitful during it. And I’m excited to chase down hobbies and events at work, post pandemic, with the goal of making new friends who I can be more myself with.

[fullfrequencycollective]

FFC002: ‘Yosemite’ by Jake Newcomb

I’m excited about FFC002. In April, Full Frequency Collective will release the album Yosemite by Jake Newcomb on cassette, marking the first (and possibly only) physical release of the 2018 album.

In my opinion, Yosemite is one of the best albums of the past many years. I spent my summer last year obsessed with it. I played it during many commutes to and from my many jobs, on all kinds of trains and highways in New Jersey, Manhattan, and Brooklyn. 

There’s no new episode of the podcast today--instead of listening to Jake and I talk about the album, go listen to the album, which is out now on Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp (links below). While you’re listening, you can read a track-by-track commentary on the record, written by Jake, which I’m publishing below. We’ll be back to the regular podcast schedule next week.

Per usual, 50% of the total that our Patreon makes over the next two months will by donated to a cause our featured artist believes in. Jake chose to support the Sierra Club with this release. The Sierra Club is a grassroots organization of volunteers dedicated to conservation; their stated mission is: “To explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth; To practice and promote the responsible use of the earth's ecosystems and resources; To educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives.” You can read more about the Sierra Club and what they do by visiting www.sierraclub.org.

Patrons at the $5 level for April will receive a green Yosemite cassette tape packaged in a sleeve made from 100% recycled paper. The whole thing will be tied with twine, and Jake will handwrite the title of the record and track listing on each of the 25 copies we’re printing.

Listen to Yosemite now:

Spotify

Apple Music

Bandcamp

I hope you grow to love this album as much as I do. I think it’s a special piece of music and I’m eternally grateful to Jake for trusting me with it.

- John

A Track-By-Track Commentary on Yosemite

by Jake Newcomb

Yosemite is my first solo album, and it was very challenging to make, both physically and mentally. I believe the album is good, but the stories of the songs themselves are as important to me as the quality of the music. I wanted to give some commentary on the tracks to anyone interested.

Track 1: “Troubles” (Summer 2016)

“Troubles” began as a few assorted slap-guitar riffs that I began developing while on a cruise with my family in the Caribbean, right after I graduated from college. I began playing the chorus guitar riff on a balcony on the ship while we were heading to the island, and really dug into the direction of the song while playing on a beach in the Caribbean. I wasn’t able to put down any lyrics, or finish the structure of the song until a year later, at the beginning of the next summer. But within that year long delay between first conceptualizing and finally finishing the track, I jammed on that riff weekly, almost every day. I knew that it was something special. Initially, lyrically, I imagined it would have something to do with feelings associated with NYC winters (originally I had a running title on a demo as “Winters in NY”). A similar theme survived into the final version of the song, and the themes of friendship and empathy emerged. When I was finishing the song a year later, I tried to write chorus lyrics every day for a week, obsessively. It wasn’t until I began vocalizing “Ooos” over the chorus that I realized that it needed no lyrics, that the guitar was doing all the work anyway. It remains one of my favorite guitar riffs I’ve ever written.

Track 2: “Cross Town Train” (Fall 2016)

“Cross Town Train” was way longer when I first wrote it. It was also slower; I wrote it as a ballad. American Part Two, the band I was in at the time, demoed an early version of the song for an EP we were conceptualizing, but we ended up not using it. I wrote the majority of what became the finished song in one night, and I instantly knew that I had something good. The lyrics flowed out of me. Looking back, writing this song seriously began the writing-process for the entire album. It had been a very long time since I had written a song that had felt as real to me as this song, since I wrote songs years earlier for my old band, Cross Town Train, hence its title. Lyrically, the song is me trying to reckon with the reality of aging, and the immense power of nostalgia, especially in regards to falling in love. There is a deep yearning in the lyrics for youth and freedom—two things I felt evaporating in the moment—and an attempt to explain to a significant other how those realizations came to be omnipresent in my mind. I tried to express the deep conflict between reality and idealism that affects many of us in our early twenties. Which gave “Cross Town Train” a new meaning to me in the context of these themes: an escape from the conditions that we are left with.

Track 3: “Pure” (Winter 2017)

“Pure” was a follow up to Cross Town Train and was, in effect, the reality of life pulling the idealism out from under me. While the lyrics detail a relationship coming un-seamed, for me the song holds a deeper significance. An abrupt end to a relationship was a factor, but the song was born out of a harsher climax of circumstances that terrified me. In that way, this song was a revelation that things as I knew it were wrong, that somewhere along the line I had miscalculated many other factors in my life, which made the end of the relationship all the more tragic. It was an epiphany. Writing it denoted the complete end of one era of my life, and the beginning of a new one. I had Alex and Fred from America Part Two feature on the track, because they were there when I wrote it, and we tracked it together as a band, but never released it. We recorded a version of the song together on a cheap acoustic guitar, but I re- recorded it on a piano while making the record.

Track 4: “Die Alone” (Winter 2017)

Die Alone is the most aggressive song on the album, and I was scared to write it. The lyrics grapple with a fear of death. Specifically, I attempted to elucidate not just a personal fear of dying alone, but the fear of a loved one dying a lonely death. The song begins in 7/4, which I think starts the song at a frantic pace. It dovetails with the lyricism in a way that I love. I wrote the vocal melody following what the lead guitar is playing, which I do not often do, but I think worked well in this case. The vocal takes I did on the track were some of the best I’ve ever done, and are probably my favorite takes from the entire album. On most of the record, I sing softly, but I had to belt this song to match the intensity of the instrumentals. I wrote it maybe a week after I wrote “Pure,” and in my mind, it is a direct response to that track. This was another song that we demoed for America Part Two but didn’t make the cut. When I brought it back to the table for Yosemite, I changed some of the lyrics and made a few tweaks. Those tweaks were the last real changes I made to the album before I went into the studio.

Track 5: “Sparky” (Fall 2016)

“Sparky” is the centerpiece. In the fall of 2016, my family’s yellow labrador retriever, Sparky, passed away. The next day, my dad and I jammed on D Major and this song came out of that session. To me, D Major sounds like how sunshine feels. Sparky had been suffering for months before she passed, and we were all worried about her. We were very upset when she passed, but relieved that her suffering was over. Of every song on the record, this one brings me the most joy.

Track 6: “Warped Tour” (Spring 2017)

“Warped Tour” was written as the winter was finally ending, and I could finally sit on my back porch and play guitar outside again. For some reason, as I was playing on that porch I began to think back to about a decade earlier, when my friends and I first started to get into music. Events like the Vans Warped Tour superseded holidays in our minds, because we could experience live music and the culture surrounding it in abundance. It was a whole new world, and one that sent myself and countless people I know on long journeys playing music, touring, philosophizing music, worshipping it. While writing, I was unaware that the Warped Tour would come to an end in 2018, but by that point, I had stopped attending, as my music tastes had shifted significantly from what the festival was promoting. With the lyricism of this song, I tried to contrast the present I was living with the rose-colored past of experiencing music for the first time. I got one of my best friends, Eoin, to sing the bridge. We were in Cross Town Train together, and many of my memories of pure love of music are from experiences with him. The song wouldn’t be the same without him.

Track 7: “Little Things” (Summer 2017)

“Little Things” was the first song I had ever written on the piano. At the time, I had a keyboard in my kitchen, and my friends and I would often gather around the table and play songs around it. Through that, I started practicing and learning the chords and transposing songs from guitar to the keyboard. There is an early recording somewhere of myself, Eoin, Fred, and Mike playing “Little Things” around the keyboard, everyone with their own instruments (guitar, maracas, harmonica.) I had just heard a news report that the ice in the Antarctic was melting at a way faster rate than scientists had been predicting. It was pretty big news that summer, and inspired me lyrically. I knew from an early point that I wanted to have a guest vocalist sing the second verse, and was extremely lucky that Avery Mandeville was available to sing it. Her takes were perfect, and I couldn’t believe the harmonies in the second chorus were real. We met at an open mic that she hosted. I would go there to practice playing by myself, which seriously helped me prepare to record a solo album. In that way, she helped out more with the album than just lending her voice.

Track 8: “I Wish That We Were In Love” (Summer 2017)

“I Wish That We Were In Love” challenged me as a songwriter more than maybe any other song I had written in my life at that point. Several of the riffs I had been playing around with for years, but when I finally sat down that summer to write a song using them, it was extremely difficult. I knew that the song was going to be long, but for a few weeks, I constantly edited the song, added new parts, removed others, wrote new lyrics. It is the only song on the record in Drop D tuning, which was awesome. The song is in D Major, and downtuning the low E to D made the D chords sound more substantial than they would have sounded in standard tuning. At the time, Alex, Fred, and I had a garage where we would practice. Every night, I would work on this song in the garage, trying out new additions and subtractions. I wrestled with this song for so long until I finally got it to a place where I felt comfortable with it. And then I got to the studio, and Adam made some seriously incredible suggestions on further changes which gave the song much needed brevity and action. Lyrically, this song was an attempt to tell the story of a complex relationship, and I think the transitions the song moves through accentuate those complexities. Out of everything on the record, I think this song is in its own little category for me, as the experimental one.

Track 9: “Yosemite” (Summer 2017)

I wrote “Yosemite” overlooking Yosemite Valley in California. A few days earlier in San Francisco, I bought a miniature acoustic guitar with nylon strings, which I tuned to A instead of E. On my final day in San Francisco, I started playing around with the guitar by the Bay, jamming riffs, looking towards the Golden Gate Bridge. A few days later, I turned those riffs into the song Yosemite during my final full day in Northern California. I knew as I was writing it that I had just completed something significant. And when I stood up after writing the song to take a picture of the Valley, I knew I had just taken the album cover of my first full-length album. Up until that point, I had never conceptualized any of the other songs as belonging to a whole. Following that experience, the entire previous year had become reframed in my mind, and all of the songs connected as a record. I will never forget it.