#what preconceived ideas of her is she going to blast into pieces

[itspileofgoodthings]

I JUST LISTENED TO HITS DIFFERENT FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A WHILE—-

[survivor-kuwait]

ROP

In preparation for Final Tribal Council, the final 3 reflect on those who have fallen...

Matt:

I can’t say I know much about Brandon, but I can say it’s pretty fucked up that a Sagittarius was the first elimination in a Zodiac themed game

Madison:

We didn’t really play together, but you’re a sweetheart and I’m sure if I knew you I’d believe you were robbed too soon!

Maynor:

I’m not sure if I got a message from you or not. I wanted to get to know you but Warzone twist was very nerve wracking twist.

Matt:

Willow! My Solomon Islands friend/betrayer. I was very excited by the prospect of getting the chance to reconnect with Willow and I was so bummed we only spent one Oasis together. At first I was worried that maybe she would think I was out for revenge, but I have only good blood with Willow and I absolutely wish her so much luck in Montenegro.

Madison:

MY NORTH CAROLINA KWEEN! I was SO sad to see you voted out. You were so kind to me, and I really appreciate the time we did get to spend together!

Maynor:

You were very nice. And we worked together in warzone for a vote or two. I was hoping that we could have worked together in this game.

Matt:

This game definitely would have gone a lot differently if we didn’t get Nehe out when we did. I genuinely enjoyed getting to know Nehe even though I already had the preconceived notion that he would be a schemer. Also, by far the best Tik Tok that anyone made was Nehe’s solo piece. It was so *Chef’s Kiss*

Madison:

Oml Nehe! I’m so sorry we blindsided you so hard but it had to be done and I think you know that. But I love you you crackedt legend.

Maynor:

oh Nehe. You were a blast to talk to. Game wise I never really knew where your head was at. At our first tribal you lied to me and voted Renee. Would love to talk to you though and get to know you more.

Matt:

I’m sorry I never got the chance to meet Taylor, because I will always have a good impression of someone with Gillian as their avi.

Madison:

Didn’t really communicate with you too much, and I think this warzone I wasn’t present for, but I’m sure you’re lovely!

Maynor:

You were someone I could have see  playing this game with. I still feel like maybe there was a way to save you but everyone seemed set on you.

Matt:

Jacob was a sweetheart, we share a lot of similar tastes in games and music and I definitely could have seen myself working more closely with Jacob if things didn’t go down the way they did. Nothing was more pure than trying and failing to explain moon phases with Kait to Jacob because I realized about halfway through I didn’t know nearly enough about them either.

Madison:

MY FELLOW CANCER CRUSTACEAN CWEEN. I love you..so much. You had to fall so I could sprint to where I am now I suppose, and I hope I represent our emotional mess of a sign well here at the end. I miss u.

Maynor:

I hope one time we are able to play a game  and work together. I really want to get to know you more, we dont really talk a lot during these games. So lets talk hopefully you want to.

Matt:

Adrian my Aquarius pal, sorry I had sacrifice you to the Survivor Gods when I heard people were targeting sign partners. We absolutely slayed the sign partner stage of the game, not going to any Warzones and it certainly was in no small part thanks to Adrian.

Madison:

I was truly really sad to see you go. you always brought such a good energy to every conversation we had, and I love that so much. BUT OUR SEASON IS GONNA BE SO GOOD EVERYONE APPLY TO OUR SEASON!

Maynor:

ugh. You were gone too soon. We worked together with Nehe vote and then taken out couple rounds later. I wished we could have worked together more. You were awesome and really nice.

Matt:

Stevie and I chatted a whole bunch when we got the chance and I can’t think of a bad thing to say about him, although I can apologize that I never answered the message he sent me after he got eliminated saying “How’s it going?”. It was going good but I didn’t wanna cheat. I’ll answer it soon I promise.

Madison:

YOU’RE SO SWEET OML. I just miss talking to you.

Maynor:

I didnt get to talk to you much in this game. We were kinda not in many warzones together. But your awesome.

Matt:

I think I inherited Chloe’s cockroach energy after she was eliminated. Truly everyone was constantly throwing Chloe’s name out there and I was NEVA happy about it, and I was even sadder about voting her out. Chloe and I had a very underrated and secret friendship and we voted together about every time until she was eliminated. I literally hope she’s finally feeling better because she was so sick and sleepy for the whole game and people didn’t get the chance to know her like I did.  

Madison:

The odds were truly stacked against us women and I was NOT a feminist player bc I vote for you..several times. Also really sad that we bonded right before you left. but you have bomb taste in music and I’d truly love to talk to you after the season is over.

Maynor:

We never got to talk much. There were a few times we did but it was mostly just hi and then convo died. He seemed really nice.

Matt:

Although I only know Matt B as the reason I still have to use my last initial in my confessionals, I have heard from everyone else that Matt B is a great guy. I hope that if I do win, nobody is disappointed to find out that it was me and not you.

Madison:

we didn’t interact too much honestly! would love to chat after the season, but unfortunately I don’t have a ton to reference right now!

Maynor:

I was extremely sad when I found out you were voted off. You didnt deserve that. I think you were one of the few people from first impressions that I wanted to work with. I really wanted to play this game with you after you co-hosted me. It was nice getting to know you during the first warzone.

Matt:

Renee was the vote that started it all for me. My very first Warzone that really taught me how much of a fucking warzone it actually was. I felt bad about betraying Renee, but it absolutely kick started the relationship I had with Maynor and Madison because we bonded over missing her and were really pulling for her to come back from Lagoon.

Madison:

my actual fucking queen oh my GOD. your vote was the ONLY one I didn’t know what was happening. I had no idea you were leaving and it honestly broke my heart.

Maynor:

My heart. RENEE playing with you in the beginning of this game was so awesome. Talking and us planning on making it to the end. I would have gone to the end with you. I was rooting for you to come back. But I was happy to meet you and I hope we can continue to talk after. ❤️

Matt:

Stephen was a super nice guy, and I always appreciate the Aussies who are playing on an entirely different sleep schedule than the rest of us.

Madison:

I feel..SO BAD FHJSJDJS. I’ve robbed you from so many games and I SWEAR IT’S NOT PERSONAL! I truly love you as a person! we just ALWAYS end up on opposite sides. you also terrify me though bc you’re SUCH a good player. I always have to have an open eye on you, and I really respect that. you’re a gem, never change.

Maynor:

ooo Stephen  this vote was sad but it was everyone saying your name. In this game we talked but it was as good communication like our other game. You know you mean a lot to me because we been through a game n you hosting me.

Matt:

Trace and I played Maluku together like 100 years ago and when I look back at the games we played then and the games we played now I’m very proud of the growth. I had some very nice genuine conversations with Trace about relationships and life and Survivor and I never thought that back in Maluku when I was dumb and petty that I would end up saying I found a friend in Trace. I’m sorry our Queer Eye alliance fell apart almost immediately but I realized he was such a big threat.

Madison:

Trace omg. I loved playing with you and working together while we did! Our alliance was SO cute. I’m sorry if you hold me voting you against me, but you scared me so much, and I feel like our games would’ve inevitably ended before FTC if we’d both stayed in the game. But I have so much respect for you as a player and a person. queer eye til we die.

Maynor:

I was working with you in this game and I was glad to have met you. You were like a very scary player to me for some reason. Your vote off was the start of the game really starting to be more strategic.

Matt:

Corey was one of my favorite people to talk to in the game because I felt like we could literally gab about absolutely anything. We bonded almost immediately at the very first Oasis, and had emotional motion sickness ™ ever since then. It was a sad day when I had to do Corey in the revote after that nutty partner tribal and even sadder when I found out he wasn’t coming back. Genuinely to this day Madison and I talk about how Corey would have hands down won the game if it was judged on music taste alone.

Madison:

my FATHER/SON. voting you out made me legitimately cry! I LOVED working with you and you were truly my ride or die until there was nothing I could do. trying to save you that night is probably one of my worst moves this game but I don’t regret it for a second. I love you so much and I’m so glad we got to play together again and be the cutest alliance..ever. queer eye til we die.

Maynor:

Your vote off was one of the sad ones. You coming to me to try and save you was really heartbreaking. I wanted to save you but during that time there was an alliance and wanted to be in good terms  with them until there was a time for a move. Also timmy and I were really nervous we were getting votes. Im sorry  ❤️ stay in contact. I went to lush andnit was amazing.

Matt:

Thomas went out in a blaze of glory and it was a lot of fun to watch. Anyone that Kait vouches for so vehemently is good in my book. “Fuck you Timmy” is our “Fuck you Brad Culpepper”.

Madison:

THOMAS U SWEETIE! I feel like I’ve said this a lot but there are truly so many kind, genuine people in this cast and I’m so grateful to have been a part of this season with all of you. you made me mad nervous in this game because I never quite knew what you were doing, and we weren’t close, but I felt like we were pretty chill until your vote. you may disagree ofc, but that’s how I see it! I can’t wait to talk after this season omg.

Maynor:

i really liked talking to you and you were an awesome person. I want to get to know you more so lets talk after the game. That twist was kinda an oof one. Im sorry that was how you went. Hopefully we can play another game together.

Matt:

KAIT is honestly the LOML. I absolutely would have gone to the final 3 with Kait even though I probably would have lost. I’m just excited to finally be able to play Smash and Pokemon Sword and Shield with the Paradise Hotel alliance. Besides doing the Logic Puzzle with Kait and having the WRONG clues, having to let Kait go was the hardest thing I had to do in the game but at the same time it really catapulted me to play the rest of the season without the comfort of having someone I trusted so implicitly.

Madison:

love. of. my. fucking. life. there are 2 people I made a conscious choice to not vote for despite knowing I’d be in the minority, and you’re one of them. I knew you were going and that there was nothing I could do without risking my game, and you knew that too, but we had each other’s backs from day 1 and I’m so so so glad I got to play with you. you’re also just a fucking dope person. I just wanna be ur friend after this no matter what you’re so fun.

Maynor:

You were super nice. We mainly talked in our alliance chat. You were a threat in my eyes because you were really tight with Owen. I really want to talk more as well after the game.

Matt:

Owen was the other ⅓ of the Paradise Hotel alliance and my Chicago friend and I think was the only person besides Chips who everyone agreed would absolutely win in a Final 3. I should’ve been mad that Owen sunk ⅔ of the advantages that I had original hit, but I knew they were with someone I could trust.

Madison:

WE FINALLY GOT TO WORK TOGETHER! you’re the other person I consciously didn’t vote for despite knowing you were going. I knew you had to leave when you did for me to slip through the cracks to get to where I am now, and no one would’ve let you make it to the end, but I’m so grateful for our alliance and for you as a person and that emily wasn’t here to fuck us up!

Maynor:

ily. You were one of the people I talked to the most in this game. It was really hard to write down your name twice. I realized and so did everyone else that you were a huge threat in this game and if we didnt take the opportunity to take you out, you were would have been winning this game. Lets continue talking after this game because I really miss talking to you.

Matt:

Ian and I were both great pals and bitter rivals. There was a point after the double idol play at the partner tribal where the two of us really aired all of our differences and talked about how we could move forward in the game with a mutual respect for each other and a mutual love of writing graphic novels, and naturally it came down to another tiebreaker between us, and I enjoyed every moment of it.

Madison:

literally the happiest we got to play together again. we were never QUITE on the same page, but never QUITE on different ones either. you’re so intelligent and that..scares me!

Maynor:

I loved talking to you as well. Me you and corey talking about how we all loved each diff starter. It was very difficult to right down your name but you were also a big person that could have won this game if they reached the end. We also need to stay in contact after the season. ❤️

Matt:

Cullan is like 18 years old and I was absolutely terrified of him as a player. We got along fairly well in the beginning and it was a shame that we ended up at odds with one another in the game.  I told Madison I chose to vote Cullan over Chips because I was afraid she was gonna self vote at Live Tribal, but truly I knew the only way for me to advance was to get rid of the guy I knew was a threat with advantages, challenges, AND jury votes.

Madison:

omg you’re so nice. I’m so glad we got to play together, and although it had to happen, I was sad to see you go. (Im running out of time typing my ROP’s but I hope you know I love you)

Maynor:

you were soo nice and very precious. We had a working relationship with each other but towards the end or some votes I couldnt let you in on which felt really bad. You are an awesome person and I hope we can talk more after the game.

Matt:

I started out very wary of Timmy during that isolation twist and after the Owen/Kait blindside, and especially when we had an actual polite disagreement about voting Owen out instead of Ian, but Timmy really came through for me in voting for Ian instead of me and I ended up actually really bummed that we cut him at final six. He was an undeniably good player.

Madison:

TIMMY. WE DID IT. sort of? we talked more than we have in any other game I think? and we actually worked together on some votes! also I’m gonna say that me flipping the vote onto you was claiming my IOU for not voting against you during the Corey round.

Maynor:

❤️❤️❤️❤️ i was sooooo sad when you went home. Like i didnt talk to anyone that night because i was so heartbroken. You were my longest ride or die in this game and im sad we didnt get to make it to the end together. You know i love you and your the best person and im glad i have had the honor to play 3 games now with you. We gotteb way closer since my first org were we first meet. And i hope our friendship growers more.

Matt:

Sweet sweet Chips. Thank you for sharing pictures and stories of your actually adorable baby Calvin, and even more so for saving me at the Ian vote. I like Chips and trusted him so much that I was willing to take the risk of bringing him to Final 4, and even Final 3, but eventually I had to take off the rose colored glasses and realize that everyone liked Chips way too much.

Madison:

that first boot to FTC character development could NOT happen and I know you know that, but I’m so impressed by the game you played and I hope you are too. you crushed it. I can’t wait for our best duo award.

Maynor:

i am happy that I got to meet you. I was sad when you left in the beginning. We also had a working relationship together but never a solid thing. Im was glad to talk with you about baking and I will let u know when i try to make the tie dye cookies. You are very nice and just plan great.

Matt:

Going against Devon in that tiebreaker was very poetic, because we truly made for a great pair of “frenemies”. I admire Devon’s resilience and the way he sticks to his own guns, and the fact that a man over 10 years older than me slayed me in a balance challenge was pretty hardcore.

Madison:

oh..my gosh. our alliance was a ROLLERCOASTER! like we were chill during the warzone phase, and then we weren’t, and then we really pulled it through at the end for BOTH OF US. you really turned the tables for your game after losing Ian, and I’m really impressed. I really hope we can talk after this season because I love you as a person.

Maynor: 

i dont know where to begin. We gotten really close since the merge started. It was never easy writing your name down and I wish I could have taken you to the f3 but in my eyes you were a threat based on your relationships with the jury. It may be a mess because Matt might win but the fire was like the best chance to give it a fair shot between you two. I hope you understand the game move. But we need to stay in contact after the game. 

[throwinggrapesoffthebalcony]

preface to PARIS GUILT

Most of my works were written to escape the realities that exist in life, realities that always hurt more than the abstraction of those realities. Literature’s a craft, nautical in nature, a method of escape. It’s easy not to shed a tear writing novels, creating distance between myself and the work. Not so easy when writing about the dry lucid heat of life and what had me wanting to write the novel in the first place, a task that engulfs so many hours of life. This preface concerns the writing of Paris Guilt, written in D.C. and placed in Paris, where it felt easier to express it. It was years before and the outer shell of the matryoshka doll was her son. I remember meeting Ivan in Texas. A tall good looking boy. My best friend growing up had met him in D.C. and Ivan came to visit. I’m pretty sure it was during the summertime. Strangely he was quickly one of the closest friends in my life. He liked Texas a lot, so he decided to move there. I was living with my girlfriend in Austin at the time and was keeping an extra room with Ann and David, two that I’d known from high school in Corpus. I’d agreed to rent a room in the house they’d been renting in Hyde Park because Kelly and I weren’t getting along and the fights were agonizing. Kelly and I’d been together so long I think we were more friends than lovers at that point. Then we were getting along again, so because I was rarely there at the house Ivan took the room, on the condition that when and if I wanted the room back he would find another place. It was a wonderful time, a wonderful summer. Jake was bartending at some place that had opened up called Cedar Street. It was a martini bar and being someone who grew up with all the run of the mill beer, whiskey, cheap wine, etc. it was like walking down into a garden of spirits. And when you’re poor, having a best friend bartending isn’t the worst thing that can happen. I had no real job, I was working for Greenpeace at the time. But going down into that martini bar was a chance to feel sophisticated, and the live music there was a blast. When the time came and I wanted my room back Ivan refused to vacate. We had a huge fight over it. We could fight like dogs and just as fast have a drink and be friends again. My favor had somehow become a democracy, and he won the consensus. I think he’d been romancing Ann, not sure, but that’s what it seemed like. What the hell, it was a mixed blessing, I wanted to get out of Austin anyway, and the weather’s always nice in California. I loved it there, so when I was sure that Kelly and I were through, it wasn’t hard for me to leave. Ellis was there, another close friend growing up, and was telling me over the phone to hurry up and get the hell out there. I sold my 70’ dodge dart swinger to a guy that lived down the street who couldn’t believe how cheaply I was selling it, and he still talked me down a hundred dollars. I was anxious to leave, just another chapter in Black Holes and Revelations; my child, ink, between the pages of spiral notebooks. And I hid my indiscretions, like a child myself. There was a lot I couldn’t tell Kelly about. I think she would have understood, but at the time I didn’t think so.

Some years later, at another point of disenchantment, I think 1997 or so, I decided to head to D.C. Jake was there at the time and I thought it would be nice to run around with someone I could trust for a while. LA’s always a metaphysical deathtrap and I hadn’t become numb to it yet. Every weird happening was still like a shock to my system, and D.C. felt as faraway as I could get from it. Jake was at his family’s house in the Palisades right along Battery Kemble Park that’s like a forest. What a beautiful place, definitely a breather from a Los Angeles apartment, but of course there would be weather, real weather, but I’d arrived in time for the cherry blossoms. A high screened-in patio, great coffee, and gin and tonics. It was one of those moments when you set your work out and the birds are twittering and it’s all peace and quiet and you think to yourself, if I can’t write here I can’t write anywhere. At the time I was pounding away on a little grey plastic apple laptop that I’d bought in Los Angeles, that had felt so futuristic compared to a typewriter or handwriting. It was my first laptop and I’d already spent a lot of hours on it and it felt like as great an instrument as the pen itself. I disappeared into that first afternoon clicking away. Some days later I met Deborah, a beautiful redhead that worked at a flower shop close by and I thought I was in heaven. She had this mentality that had me kicking myself for not being as spontaneous as I could have been. I’d told her that I’d wanted to lock the door of that flower shop and make love to her that afternoon that I’d wandered in and found her there arranging flowers by herself. She asked why I didn’t, as if she were disappointed. And it’s like a cold sweat in the middle of a warm afternoon. And amongst the smell of cut roses, would have been memorable. And it wouldn’t be the same if we planned it. So I was just getting settled in and the regrets were already piling up. That was one kind of love; natural, youth on youth. Ivan’s mother was a different story, in fact a kind of love, a variety of love that I would experience for the very first time, one of companionship and intellect. I hadn’t met Alona yet. But Ivan was coming for a visit and a dinner was already planned. His grandparents and mother lived just outside of D.C. in Virginia. I’d already heard the names of all the Russian dishes. I thought I was headed for just another life experience, but the Russians know how to do two things very well, love, and suffer.

I was curious to meet Ivan’s grandfather who was a famous Novelist, Vasily. He’d written a novel called The Burn. I thought it would be a privilege to have a talk with him about the craft and the works he’d accomplished and what I was hoping for myself, already referring to myself as a novelist. He spoke nothing of the craft to me. He already had that look on his face, that I’ve since had on my face. Disgusted by the weight of all the hours. And I don’t think there’s a novelist alive that actually takes another human being seriously as a novelist. It veers so far from the surface that I think there’s very little to speak about. Every novel is unique and so personal that it just leads to the silence of someone reading it. Alona, for me was the main attraction. I’d had borscht before, but not like that. And vodka had always agreed with my blood, so that was nice. Right away I knew we were going to be friends. That it wasn’t going to be dinner and then back into the beltway. We were all there, but I felt like I’d spent that evening with her. I didn’t dare say how I left the house feeling that night. I didn’t want to hear what Ivan would have to say about me being attracted to his mother, regardless of the reasons why. And I’m sure he would have cursed me in that mix of Russian and English and laughed. Vanya. I don’t know if he and Jake even knew that I was capable of loving an older woman. I was a strange boy just beneath the skin, and she knew it. She knew I wasn’t out of my element and only a few people I’ve met in my life had ever understood that so quickly. I lived in the filth and squalor of preconceived ideas, misperceptions, and underestimations. Maybe I didn’t mind it. Low exceptions can sometimes be freedom. To know her was more than what I wanted, it was what I needed, to evolve in this craft that I loved. Our conversations put my thoughts into perspective. You don’t know if what you’re thinking about literature and how it pertains to life is even valid until you speak to someone who has experience and a love of those same interests. It’s like speaking a language and you can’t speak it until you’re with someone else who speaks that same language. And then it’s just like an open window. Then it’s just like a glass of vodka. Then it’s just like wanting someone who you need.

And because of her experience I was nervous about her seeing my work. I wasn’t just shopping it around, throwing it to the breeze. I’d be putting myself beneath the eyes of a woman who read professionally. Not only for enjoyment, but also as a reader for Vasily and other authors, authors on the world stage. So I knew her comments and criticisms would be the most constructive criticisms that I’d ever had. I was anxious for that, but at the same time afraid of it. Of what she might say. Our phone calls would stretch into hours sometimes. Jake was like a brother to me, so it was nice to have Alona as a friend, someone I could talk to. I was living this vital life. D.C.’s a beautiful place full of fun spots, but I couldn’t wait to see her again. And just meeting her had already caused me to pay closer attention to my work, now there being a deadline a reason and goal. Meeting her caused me to slow down, to refine, to polish, to try and get her something that could be bound and printed. And it was amazing how when trying to polish one of my pieces, how easy it was to overlook mistakes. And that’s the most tedious stage of writing for me, the last few passes, when having to look at it closely, while considering what I’m trying to say more carefully and clearly. And in my opinion, a novel is never finished. It’s never like finishing a song or placing a period at the end of a sentence. I can never say, okay, this is perfect. And that’s possibly due to the enormity of the process, or that every one of my novels or novellas is my life. I could never call Paris Guilt, finished, because I don’t even know if she’s still living, and afraid to know. So my life lives in me, unfinished, until I’m dead. 

Deborah lived in Georgetown, but had met some woman at the flower shop and was house sitting for her, or maybe it was the woman who owned the flower shop, I can’t remember. The house was in the Palisades on the other side of the park close to the river, not far from the flower shop. She impressed me one night with candles and a bath. And I was really amazed that she’d taken the time to do that. She was creative, she arranged flowers after all, so she was that type of girl. And she expected the same. I remember her being upset one evening when after spending time with her on the patio I didn’t walk her to her car that was parked a little further down the street. She’d parked there just to make sure Jake’s grandmother wasn’t waken up. I thought it was ridiculous how upset she’d become, but I loved it at the same time, it was a measure of love to me, as well as an indication of what a gentleman I wasn’t at times. She had this friend Kat, that she lived with, and a little friend, Frannie, Francesca, this young hairstylist from Italy, who I ended up playing tennis with. Deborah had a get together at that house she was sitting. We sat outside to eat and drink wine, talking about music and life that evening. Frannie liked that I liked Laura Pausini, but mentioned that it was sad that I didn’t understand all of her lyrics, because I wasn’t fluent in Italian. I didn’t say anything, just watched her go back into the house. Girls can try to make you want them, even with a slight.

Alona and I finally arranged a time for her to pick me up at the train station in Virginia. If I was super early I could always call her from one of the pay phones there. She said she was pleasantly surprised when she saw my work. They had connections in New York and I was on my way and we even talked about going to France, where they had another house on the Atlantic in a little seaside town called Biarritz, and we could stay there and I could write. The pictures of the place were beautiful. I’d grown up on the water and it would have been perfect, and I thought from there, I could explore Europe. We had these conversations that were vital, horrible, lovely, but always conversations. In-depth, meaningful conversations. She’d read most of the authors that I loved and turned me on to others that she thought I should read. I remember her giving me a few books by Iris Murdoch, I hadn’t read her books yet. She was pulling them from the literature that they had there at the house. The conversations about novels with her were as wonderful as the novels themselves. The way she’d describe the styles of writing helped me understand my own way of writing, understand what I was doing. She said these things to me that made sense of what I only had a vague sense of before, unable to define what I was trying to do with certain techniques and methods, finding my way naturally. And because of my temperament, I wouldn’t be able to show her works that I’d spent the most time on. How to Grow Roses, was this hateful book at the time, about not being allowed, regardless of talent. The knife is not like a kind hand slowly closing off the air supply. You can’t cut through paper with the strokes of a ball point pen and expect it to be published that way, with the way that you really feel. Reality is unpublishable. So instead I found myself reading her something from Head Amongst the Flowers, this piece that I’d kept trying to turn into an epic novel but that had kept falling apart on me, into a novella or just a short story. And there was something that she said to me that made perfect sense of that. And that was there being the necessity or the importance to hold the thread. And when she said that, it was so clear, so perfect. That’s the feeling I was having with that work, there being this delicate thread that couldn’t survive the entire novel. It was a metaphor that suggested patience and that a novel could never be forced. Maybe it was my trying to write about a wealthy world in a place I’d read about as a kid. It was romantic and then I wanted to tear it apart with the human condition, psychology, love, the flesh, the abstraction that I’m prone to at times.

Eventually when speaking more freely and openly about our feelings, Alona was polite when she understood what my mentality was like concerning this world. She was disappointed but polite, especially concerning what I had to say about Los Angeles. We’d drink together and being lubricated, I’d say these hateful, terrible things. She was from another world, a serious, heavy, historical world, bestrewn with immense human tragedy. She attributed my way of seeing to youth, to a lack of experience, etc. etc. The word fascism to her was a bitter pill. I loved that she wasn’t the type to just turn to aversion. She grabbed me and wanted to shake my way of thinking out of me. She didn’t want me to be a Nazi, she would say, in her Russian accent. She wanted to confront me, she wanted to save me. But like every young man my way of thinking was hard and true. I’d already seen how the world worked in certain respects that had given rise and validation to my acidic way of thinking. I think she still loved me, even while I wasn’t of the same mindset as her son. He had a more beautiful take on the world. We enjoyed this life just as much, but Ivan and I had such a different perspective on poetry. He believed in poetry. And so did I really, only I called it language or the distillation of something, not as pretty. I shied away from that word poetry. In my opinion, when you called it poetry it was an attempt to elevate, to artificially heighten the sense of what was written. Calling something poetry to me was like wanting some line of words to take flight. Get that word poetry out of my fucking face. Ivan’s hand reaching and playfully messing with me, knocking it away while trying to take a drink. What happened to make you not want to live so much? Was that poetry to you?

If we were there at the house, Jake’s grandmother would expect us on the patio at a certain hour in the early evening for gin and tonics and cheese and cracker plates. The patio was spacious, the size of a living room with couches and all. Jake would whine about it but I would actually look forward to it. He’d become tired of the routine over the years, while it was new and exciting to me. Gin has its own unique buzz and the early evenings, before dark, were breezy and warm. It was the kind of routine that I could easily get used to. So for an hour or two Jake, Jakes dad J.R., and his grandmother and I would sit out on the patio and talk about life and politics. She’d lived a traditional and prominent life and wanted to keep that going, even in modern times, and I had a lot of respect for that.

Deborah was a free spirit and I could never pin her down on a moment when I could call her my girlfriend. She was at Georgetown and college is college. I don’t know if every beautiful girl knows she’s beautiful. But she was the kind of girl you could say, was beautiful and knew it.

Ivan came back into town during that summer. I made a point of not telling him that I was giving one of my novels to his mother to try to move myself up in the world. I could predict the comment. If she’d already told him about her helping me along with my aspirations, he never mentioned it. We drank for a while and then went to the mall to watch the fourth of July fireworks, just in time. The whole scene, the trees, the park, the monuments, the people, were already lit with the array of the fireworks. I could tell he seemed different that entire evening. He wan’t himself. He was never the type to cut the evening short, ever. I don’t think the three of us had ever gotten home before two o’clock in the morning when going out. After the fireworks display we were walking amongst the departing crowds. Ivan was yelling something about no tax without representation. But when we started talking about what bar we were heading to, he let Jake and I know that he was getting on the subway and heading back out to Virginia. What the hell are you talking about? He didn’t even want to argue with us or explain himself.

I cut through the woods to get to the flower shop on this bright afternoon. I got close and I saw they had customers and didn’t want to disturb her while she was busy at work. I would never find her there again alone. I was always hoping I could have that afternoon back. But real life isn’t literature where we can correct mistakes or missed opportunities. I knew there was something she wasn’t telling me that was holding her back. I would have liked her as a steady girlfriend.

I remember getting back to the house one afternoon, when Jake’s grandmother had received the call and she informed us of the accident. Ivan had fallen from the roof of his apartment building in San Francisco the night before. We couldn’t believe it. During our first drink over the matter, we debated whether he could have actually jumped or if it had been an accident of some kind. Maybe he was balancing along the edge of the wall, like a young man in a drunken mood might do. We went over the possible scenarios, including foul play. You never know. It doesn’t matter why, he’s gone, was the conclusion. But the look on his face and the way he was acting the last time we saw him, made me think it was suicide. Supposedly, a couple of girls he knew were over him while he was still breathing his last breaths while trying to speak to them. Jake had spoken to a few people on the phone, some friends of his there, and it was said that what he was saying to the girls was, to let him die.

For Alona it wasn’t a turning point, it was her own death, a before and after who she was, what she looked like, what she sounded like, what she felt like. I was hesitant to see her. I knew she’d be different. I’d already heard her voice on the phone and I knew we wouldn’t converse in the same way ever again. She wanted me to write something for the wake. I knew he always held a secret contempt for me. And I’d thought his suicide was such a selfish act, that now I held a secret contempt for him.

I think a year had already passed since I’d arrived and Jake’s grandmother had given subtle hints as to her wanting us out of the house. The hours we kept were erratic and she’d always wake up when we’d come home late, and insisted on getting up herself and going about the house. Jake agreed to share a place with me that I found on Connecticut Avenue in Van Ness, and so we found ourselves in that neighborhood, which I thought was wonderful. It was right near Politics and Prose, and spending time in bookstores was high on my list of things to do. I would miss the house of course. It’s a gift to live like that. I’d have to find a new writing place. That expansive patio, high up in nature was nice, and had spoiled me.

And of course Alona was going to be obsessed with her son’s death. That was to be expected. She wanted me to tell her everything about every moment I knew him. She just wanted to hear as much about him as she could. Funny moments, furious moments, everything, anything he might have said. Please, you have to remember, she begged me, what did he say, exactly. I couldn’t tell her what he would have thought about anything or what he would have become if he’d lived. She was still in shock, asking me things I couldn’t possibly answer, at times forgetting that I wasn’t Ivan. She would laugh but they were absentminded laughs. Just skin deep over what was really turning in her head, ceaselessly turning in her heart and head. Every moment for her became a challenge to find some way to escape the suffering. The Russian water of life wasn’t enough to cure the pain she was experiencing. It was sinking in and she was every bit connected to a boy who’d passed away. Sometimes she seemed dissolved into that afterlife looking for him and at other times like she’d hit a wall, completely forbidden, curled up against a gravestone. I didn’t even mention my writing again. And anyway, I was already filling my journals with the life I was currently living, not forgetting that I needed to leave room for the reader. That advice really freed me up. I remember spending so much time on description before. And after she’d said that to me, I felt like I had permission never to have to describe anything ever again. The reader falling between the lines doesn’t necessarily mean that all is lost. A story can mean something different to a million different people, and that can be even more beautiful, than a story perfectly conveyed, and that was beautiful to me. I’d written for so many years before, but sitting with her I finally felt like I was part of the literary world. It was so sad to watch what was happening to her. She’d lost her zeal for just about anything she spoke about, unless it was about Ivan.  

You couldn’t watch Alona suffer. You couldn’t stay removed from it, her suffering was so potent. I could feel it radiating from her body, with the sun in her eyes. If she was drowning in the unseen then so was I. Our screaming voices, turning into something beautiful. Conversations in a trance, speaking so calmly all of a sudden, about something from our past that we remembered in finite detail. We took turns dwelling in those moments. Like the sex of words and memory. The smell of some girls sweater. The shape of her beneath. My lost love was petty to hers. I knew that. But she allowed me to suffer with her, to acclimate to her suffering, to live in the weather of her world. The advice she was giving me was as if to save her very own son. Move on, if the girl didn’t love you then she’ll never love you. She’d say Vanya, and I wouldn’t say anything. And even while she was trying to save me, her suffering was exacerbating my own misery. I felt this immediacy after one of our conversations to call Jill, trying to convince her to move to D.C. I felt at the time I could make a move into a more professional life and live properly with her and our son. It’s much more accessible in D.C. or at least it seemed like it was, compared to the counterfeit place like Los Angeles, where a straight man has no chance. The misfortune of living in this ephemeral era, with their spandex safety net and pastel tribal mentalities. She wouldn’t interrupt me. She wanted to understand me. I’d had the patience to try to understand her. But it was very easy to understand, that she’d lost her son and was dying of it, surely dying of it. She loved and hated me. Why couldn’t I have been like Ivan, or one of his sweet little friends. I didn’t want to say it, but I was thinking about how afraid they’d be of a woman suffering like this. Her suffering was the most beautiful, horrible, dirty experience I’d ever had. Not dirty in the typical sense, dirty in a mental sense, in a disturbing truthful sense, that caused me to think more deeply about the human being. It wasn’t poetry, or for anyone with the love of poetry. It wasn’t an experience with a neat bow wrapped around it that would leave you unaffected. The sound of her voice, her strong hot hands grabbing onto me, not wanting to fall completely into hell, wanting to hold herself in life, not seeing anything in life to stay for. Her reading chair seemed like the only safe place that she had, not the flesh of an imperfect world. She was reading as much as she could to rest her mind in those passages. Fantasy to keep from thinking about her own circumstance. Reading as a means of escape, a way to stay alive. Alona was a beautiful woman and I couldn’t believe how fast and how drastically what had happened was changing her. Sick of me, or human of me, to consider how desirable a woman is while she’s suffering like that, wanting her to keep her figure. Suffering from the inside out, from the outside in, I don’t know where that pain truly laid in her, whether in the spirit or in the body itself. Just as I couldn’t tell at a certain point, whether all the vodka she was drinking was killing her or keeping her alive.

I’d waited on a woman one night, who lived right down the block from the restaurant I was working at. She had this apartment, something larger than an apartment, you couldn’t call it an apartment, with large paintings resting against the wall. I was laying there in the morning as the sun was just rising in the french doors open to the balustrade. It felt like another place. She was laying on the bed falling to sleep. Who was this woman, maybe in her late thirties to early forties, and how did she end up living like this. She asked if I would want to see her again. I wasn’t sure. I started my walk, down the street, over the bridge into Woodley Park and then down Connecticut avenue.

There was this girl on my mind and as I got into Van Ness I was hoping to see her walking along the sidewalk like I would at times, maybe heading to work. I’d already told Alona about her, Anna was Russian too. She was young and smart, worked for the IMF, and was blessed with an exquisite beauty. I remember when I first saw her, it was in Giants grocery store, when after I’d done all my shopping I walked along the isles looking for her. I’d asked her if I could walk with her and found she lived in the building right next to mine. I wanted to believe that it was some kind of a sign. So close but so far, I knew the feeling. There were times when I’d see her walking blocks up in the heat of the summer and I’d sprint to catch up to her, in hopes of just saying hello. Oh no, here he comes again, she must have thought as I caught up with her, wiping the sweat from my forehead and upper lip. She was always very cautious, but would still talk to me. And I suppose a man like myself had every bell and whistle and red flag going off in her head. As the months went on I’d run into her on several occasions, and felt like I’d already fallen in love with her pretty much. She was that pretty. There was an evening when heading back to my apartment one late afternoon when I passed a schoolyard playground. I saw her there and went over to talk to her, and that’s when I found out why she’d been so careful about me. She was looking out for someone besides herself. The glamorous life that I’d previously imagined her having, dinner with diplomats, champagne corporate parties, did indeed evaporate, opening up numerous more profound dimensions. She pointed her daughter out to me. She was up on the deck of a slide. She’d stopped what she was doing and was looking over at us. She was blessed with the same natural beauty that her mother possessed. We spoke and I watched as she bolted off occasionally to run after Barbara, tying to keep the active little girl contained, as she went this way and that with the energy of a firecracker. At one point, she was teetering dangerously at the top of the slide, where she’d dragged her scooter up and was going to attempt to ride it down the slide. It would have been an impossible feat. Anna and I ran over to catch her before the little girl plummeted to what would have been numerous scrapes and bruises. At another moment, when Barbara had abandoned her scooter further away on the blacktop, Anna went over and retrieved it, riding it back. Those two were a joy for me to spend time with that evening. Barbara stood just at the tips of my shoes, looking up at me, her face full of sweat, her hair slicked back. I did everything I could to keep from crying, over real life, real beauty, a mother and her daughter. And as the sun was going down, my own life began to settle on me. Come on, leave him alone honey, Anna said to her after she didn’t want to leave me, as they prepared to walk across the side street to their building. All the joys that I've missed in my life, while chasing plastic butterflies. I smoothed my hand over her hair. She stared up at me and smiled, the sweetest little smile, and asked if I could come home with them. I laughed about it, as did Anna. I would have in a second. Little Barbara even picked flowers for me. She held in the palm of her hand these tiny flowers and these tiny micro strawberries that she’d picked from among the blades of grass. When getting back up to the apartment I put them in a book to keep them as a memento and as a reminder of what true beauty really is. I pressed it closed, then I pressed my face into the pillow so my moans couldn’t be heard. I wept for the life that I couldn’t have, that I maybe would never have, while I fell off to sleep.

Alona thought that my love for Anna was ridiculous, that it was a convenient situation, one that I could just step into, to all of a sudden have two Russian dolls. Her second child could always be mine. Alona laughed at me. It was only the second time in my life that I had the feeling of wanting to propose with no questions asked, without knowing any more about the girl other than what I saw or felt, so quickly upon meeting. She told me to invite Anna to dinner so she could meet her and tell me what she thought. Maybe Anna would be impressed that I already had a love for Russia.

I think most writers probably one time or another have had a romantic notion about the process of writing. There’s nothing glamorous about it. The fakes, usually make an effort to look like Hemingway or to look like a writer. My obsession was never with the aesthetic, but with the location, places where I could disappear and write. The apartment on Connecticut avenue wasn’t such a place, and sometimes the why is mystifying. So the Library of Congress had become a nice routine. Not the typical place anyone goes to write novels, but it worked for me. The other place that I loved, that I’d get to once in a while was a bit of a journey away.    

It was called Le Refuge, a little French bread and breakfast way up, removed from the world. I’d board the Chinatown bus from D.C. to New York, then get on the six train, then on another bus from Pelham station, the headlights of the bus illuminating the small rusty bridge that crossed over a short span of water onto City Island. The bread and breakfast had the smell of an old place with a lot of history. I climbed up the wooden stairs inside the house, wondering if I should find the girl that stayed in the room downstairs and took care of the place, but I just found one of the rooms with the door slightly open. I opened the door and turned on the lights and there was no one there. It was nice that it overlooked the water. The bathroom was separate from the rooms, the kind of place that made me feel like I was living in the Tropic of Cancer, in better times of course. I walked to the end of the hall with the boards creaking under my feet and I sat in the bathtub. I ran the bath so hot it was nearly burning my feet. But I needed it that way, if the tub was going to stay hot for any length of time, and I just wanted to set my head back for a little while. I swirled the water around with my hands. It felt sinful every time I even had a thought about not being able to go and stay in France, or the literary career that had failed to materialize. The high expectations, diluted. I’d refused that path anyway, after she’d described the process of giving up the rights to my work, like signing my life away, and their being able to do whatever they wanted with my material after, even in bad taste.

I went to my room and stood before the mirror on the large black lacquer wardrobe. I was suffering emotionally at the time myself. Alona was a bad influence, it’s like two alcoholics together, twin flames, the room already heavy with the smell of Grand Marnier while looking out over the river through the tapestry of curtains. I looked over at my small grey apple laptop that was plugged in with blinking cursor ready to go, that grey brick that I'd already grown to love and hate so much. Like a tool, already worn down, used at trying to get to the middle of the meaning of life, of love, of death. A tool in the search for happiness, contentedness, peace. Another title, Paris Guilt, and the way I start every new novel, with the essence, in a stream of consciousness.

Breasts, mouth, skin, hair, eyes, ass, vagina, sweat, tears, disinfected from the inside out, pure, the smell of vodka

Fumes from the womb, the taste of the skin like the perfect taste of the skin

The spirit washing over, disconnecting from the body, then trying to disconnect from that

So difficult to keep the energy from becoming a mutual hell when in her presence

Suffering, a selfish indifferent erection, not wanting to penetrate a woman suffering so much, but wanting to cum into her so badly

The electricity of suffering, of still being desirable, in descent

Animals fallen from civilization, due to a tragedy, a real tragedy

A cut rose in vodka, life or death? Watching carefully for the wilting of the petals or some new vibrant color

From what point of view, from what perspective

Dropping an entire experience into water, crystalline, or a dream

Alona didn’t want to live anymore. She’d already tried it. I felt like it was just a matter of time. I went to the cemetery with her. She didn’t get out of the car. We just sat there. What does it matter. What does everything mean? Everything means everything. I’d never seen anyone dying that way while still fairly young from emotional pain. It was excruciating to even watch. Her mother and Vasily were also suffering over Ivan’s death, but her mother sounded as if she was staying strong in order to keep her daughter alive. Ivan was so pivotal in their lives. Expectations befallen. He was kind of what held them together. Their future was placed on him.

A German girl who’d known Ivan, who’d been his girlfriend, contacted Alona, and was also trying to help Alona survive. She was living in New York at the time and came down to stay in D.C. with Jake and I. She was an artist, we got along and began seeing each other. I’ve always detested when people get together over the death of someone else, and I always had that taste in my mouth when seeing her. Someone dies and it brings people together, it just seems so disingenuous of nature to work that way. The excuse of people to reach out to one another. Like life born from death, fresh flowers on the grave. But she was great for Alona. Alona needed a girl like that to spend some time with, who could possibly help her more with the healing process. Perhaps a woman knows more intrinsically what to say to another woman, I couldn’t reach her. I went and stayed with her for a few days up in Washington Heights. I was becoming more entertained with the idea of moving to New York at the time. We talked Alona into coming up for a visit during those days. She agreed, found a hotel, and her even feeling like taking that excursion gave us hope that she could someone how pull out of it. There was some miscommunication about where to meet her. I remember we took the train down and couldn’t find her and had to take the train all the way back up to Washington Heights to play the message she’d left on the answering machine. We left again, this time with clear instructions to meet her at the Russian Tea Room. She was waiting for us outside, she’d had her fill there and we ended up going to Greenwich Village. We walked a lot and she seemed better than I’d seen her since Ivan had passed away. She looked like she was finding some happiness recalling past moments there in New York. We finally ended up at a pastry shop having coffee somewhere along Houston. I saw her laugh and I actually thought that it had passed, the moment at least gave the impression that she was fine. Was it possible, like some new scene and that’s it, it’s over, she’s okay and off to the next stretch of life. It’s amazing how deceptive a moment, a new setting can be. She even looked happy, a woman who still had a girlish side to her, like when I met her. Alona was no longer Ivan’s mother to me. She was Alona, this woman that I knew and loved. In my opinion she should have stayed in New York. The energy there was so much better for her. But there was the house there in Virginia with her mother and Vasily that she had to return to.

There was this snowstorm that shut the city down for days, everything was closed in silence. I walked along the snowdrifts and the only place that was open was this Chinese restaurant across the street from Politics and Prose. They were staying there and serving anyone who might have made their way through the blizzard. I was the only one at the moment, sitting down to have my usual. I was thinking how much more enjoyable it would have been with Anna and Barbara there. They’re what I was dwelling on at the time. I’d always laughed when thinking about Barbara and her having that name. I’d always thought it was so purely a woman’s name. She’d have to grow into her name, though meanwhile it was so cute. If this was a novel, I would have made love to her and helped her raise her little girl. But this is the preface for a novel. I started seeing a girl who lived with her parents in Chevy Chase, and they had a first edition copy of Perfume on the bookshelf that I wanted. We took her father’s luxury car out one afternoon losing traction in the winter thaw. 

I don’t know what the cherry blossoms meant to Alona that springtime. The love of literature and the playfulness of words and the desire to paint a picture no longer existed. She was left with this denuded necessary language. The child in her, no longer there to run to those clichés. I wanted Alona back, the woman I’d first met, not these conversations that took our lives. Cherry blossoms. There’s nothing magical about this world.

 -Alan Augustine

Every pass I make on this preface sucks me deeper into the emotional circumstances of those years. Emotion leads to memory. I could go on, but I won’t, if only because I’m getting close to wanting to stay there with her.

[joneswilliam72]

The 405 meets Jessica Pratt: "wherever dreams or your unconscious lie, all my music comes from there"

Even though we were scheduled to meet, it was still somewhat surprising to bump into Jessica Pratt in a Stoke Newington pub on a quickly darkening November evening. The California songwriter's music is so ethereal and ephemeral that it often seems like its creator could surely only exist under specific conditions, in short pockets of time, that only precipitate once every few years, during which she might produce another 30 minutes of delicately exquisite music and then disappear once more into the atmosphere.

Of course, Jessica Pratt is not a mythical being, even if her gorgeously unique recordings might conjure that impression. In conversation, Pratt proved to be a considerate and contemplative mind, speaking with the softness and openness redolent of her North Californian origins. Our discussion of Quiet Signs, her excellent new album for Mexican Summer, revolved mostly around the difficult and "bloody" process of its creation; two words you wouldn't at all associate with the spectral final product. This is where the cognitive dissonance rang most loudly; how could something that sounds as if it's musical condensation collected and concentrated on tape actually need a serious amount of time, effort and struggle to create?

Read on to my conversation with Jessica Pratt to fine out how she grappled with bringing Quiet Signs into the world.

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It's been 3 or 4 years since the last album, what are the big changes in your life and musical approach that we should know about going into Quiet Signs?

I don't know if there's anything incredibly specific as far as milestones, but I think one notable item is that I basically went on tour for a year playing the songs from the last record, and I think that playing that consistently night after night after night you learn a bit about how you sing and play, and you just naturally evolve. I feel like that definitely happened; I learned how to sing a little better or more effectively in certain instances. Anything you do that repetitively hopefully you get better at it, so I think there's a little bit of that at play.

It was interesting because there was this intense period [of playing shows] and then I just took a bunch of time off, it wasn't really planned it just sort of happened; I just couldn't do anything else, I just kind of had to stop. Then I sort of worried that my abilities had atrophied a bit, I felt very out of practice when I came back into trying to make music again. There was sort of a bit of an extended rehabilitation into feeling like I could really be in the zone consistently. Honestly, that took up the majority of the last year and a half at least, when I was making a concerted effort to make music again. I was pretty much just doing that like a full-time job.

I met my boyfriend Matt, who plays on the record and was a big emotionally-collaborative figure with the record. Music making has always been very private for me, but we definitely developed a really intuitive back and forth where I basically showed him any fragment that I thought was valuable and we would have a small dialogue about it. I wouldn't call it collaborative in the sense that he didn't write anything, but this is the first time that I've ever had anyone involved, first time I've even just had someone sharing an opinion before the finished product. We lived together at the time too, so it was a very fluid thing.

Do you have a regular practice, like a specific area or time when your write, or does it happen all over the place?

It's definitely home-based, I've never had an outside practice space or anything like that. Usually you find your places. The last record I just had my tiny bedroom, I did everything there. But I moved into my boyfriend's house, and it's a 3 bedroom place, it's not huge but there's definitely various rooms, and he works 9-5 pretty much, so I had a lot of time alone in the house and I would just go from space to space - and not every space feels good, there were certain rooms I never really went into.

Is it usually the case that you know what you want to sing about before you start writing the melodies?

It's a very unconscious process; it's like a weird divining thing where you just play the guitar and sing at the same time and at some point hopefully something gels. It feels a little bit like channelling something, there's never a preconceived idea.

Does it often surprise you what you end up singing about?

Maybe not the lyrical content; the words are always last, the shape of the words will be there but then I have to flesh them out with something literal later. But yeah I think melodies can be very surprising, you don't always know where they come from.

You actually recorded in a studio for Quiet Signs, how was that experience?

It was maybe scary at first; I initially began it on a trial basis because I was really unsure of how it was gonna go. I'm very used to recording at home, but I was having some technical issues, because I had rigged up this new setup involving a big tape machine that was really problematic. It was making me not want to work on music because I was afraid if I tried to record something it might get messed up.

Then I signed with Mexican Summer and they have this studio that artists can use, so I thought I might as well try it just because it's a good resource. Then very unexpectedly it worked out really well. It took a little bit of work to get the sound I wanted, but I was working with the engineer there Al Carlson, and he was very in-tune and really good at listening and then helping to develop the sound.

I guess not every song I brought in worked, and I think maybe it might not have been true if it was done like the last record, because cassette tape is very small and it's a forgiving world and you can do a lot within that, but at the same time there were things on a grander scale that might not have worked on smaller tape. It goes two ways.

In the notes for Quiet Signs it says you believe this is a more cohesive record than your previous, so what makes it feel that way for you?

I guess cohesive because it was the first time I'd ever begun writing songs with the idea of it being one object at the end. My last record there was a few scattered bits and pieces that were a few years old and a certain chunk that was written all in one blast. I think thematically [On Your Own Love Again] all makes sense together, sort of on accident. But this was the first time I had ever really known that everything I was working on was going to be part of a collection, so I sort of picked and chose based on that, so cohesive in that sense.

What are the themes that you see in Quiet Signs?

It might be too soon to say; it took me a long time to see those themes on the last record, and sometimes people pointed them out to me, which was interesting. I definitely see broader themes, for sure; it's more open and less guarded than the last record.

Yeah! There seems a lot more obvious emotion on the surface. I also hear a lot of escapist ideas.

That's interesting. I think I'm a big escapist. I'm trying to be less of one. It feels realer to me; the last one feels more like a dream imprint or something, and maybe had some more evasive lyrics on some level. I think I was just in a very different headspace [on Quiet Signs]; a more conscious headspace.

I also notice a lot of images to do with flight on the new album; birds, wings, aeroplanes...

Yeah, yeah, you're right. Again, not a conscious move. I think it just kind of happens like that, it naturally bubbles up. I don't know if you remember your dreams a lot, but you can go through certain phases where you have certain symbols that keep popping up, and maybe it's like your brain trying to process one particular idea or something, and I feel like it works in the same way with song imagery.

Is that what the title Quiet Signs refers to, these images popping up?

Quiet Signs is something that's half an intuitive phonetic thing and also a stand-in for some type of musical intuition; really listening to where things are coming from, sort of like the channelling thing that I was talking about a bit - it kind of relates to that experience, I still haven't quite figured out what it is.

The album starts with 'Opening Night', which was inspired by Gena Rowlands' performance in the John Cassavetes film of the same name, what was it about her that spoke to you?

That's again a bit of a loose, abstract grab. But at the very beginning, when I first writing songs for this record - there's a lot of theatres in LA that play old movies - and the Beverly Cinema was playing two Cassavettes movies. One was Opening Night, and I had just started seeing my boyfriend then and we went to see them; it's one of my favourite movies and I'd never seen it on the big screen.

Sometimes when you see a film, especially in a theatre, it'll stay with you for a while in your unconscious space, and it definitely did. I think whatever struggles you're currently going through, it's a pretty human thing to find yourself in a character or to relate to aspects of a character's experience, and there were definitely elements of that.

It's a really good film, but it's a very anguishing thing, and I feel like you should just watch it, but it's basically a person trying to muster a performance through this extreme personal hardship, and it's basically watching her unravel and then come back again. It's really intense and sort of this bloody battle - I know that sounds very melodramatic, but I think there were aspects of that that I related to in this period where I was trying to figure out how to feel comfortable writing again after taking so much time off.

You have quite a lot of moments in your songs where you sing wordlessly, and those are often the first bits that catch my ear, I find myself singing along to those parts first. Are you trying to convey emotion in those moments or is it purely melodic?

I think again it's just purely instinctual thing. I definitely grew up in a really musical household where people weren't necessarily playing instruments a ton, but there was a lot of singing and a lot of very confident singing all the time, just as a joke or just singing whatever comes into your mind. I feel like that comes naturally to me, and sometimes I want to vocally sing something that might be the equivalent of a horn line or something like that.

There's flute and few other instruments on this record that you haven't had before, did you have that intention before the studio?

No, I had no idea what was gonna happen. The studio thing was on a trial basis; Mexican Summer does free studio for artists on the label (and you pay the engineer fee), but that's an amazing resource, obviously. Al, the engineer, he's a multi-instrumentalist, but I had no idea we'd be working together in any capacity other than him being engineer, but it happened in a very natural way. Now I don't even really remember how it exactly all began.

He plays the flute on 'Fare Thee Well’?

That was one of the earlier songs we worked on, and I had this long outro that was really unusual for me, and I wasn't sure what I was gonna do with it. I thought maybe I would layer some things, and I think he was like "maybe we could try some flute," and I was like "alright..." I wasn't sure it was gonna work, but year I really really like what he played, this extended flute solo.

It's awesome! Lyrically, do you think your songs have narratives or are they kind of emotional movements?

I think that there's a narrative. It might not be a perfect story arc or anything like that, I think my lyrics have always been a bit impressionistic. But I prefer that, I think. Again, there's nothing preconceived, I never do anything super consciously, it doesn't work like that. Some of the songs on the last record have a bit more structure, as far as following a train of logic, but it doesn't feel necessary. There's just a core essence to the music that is there, and everything is just built to maintain that; I think that's the most important part. There's definitely meaning to all my lyrics, but I don't know if I'll ever write a song that's totally discernible from beginning to end.

How do you feel about explaining lyrics, or do you prefer to leave it to the listener?

That's a really good question. I really like hearing about other people's lyrics, but I'm also afraid about spelling things out too clearly for people, because maybe it limits their ability to interpret them freely. So, I sort of want to, but maybe don't want to.

OK, well, all I say is that I hard relate to the line in 'Here My Love' where you sing "try to keep my worries safe from where they'll do you harm," that one really gets me.

See that's a very literal lyric, they sneak in.

That's autobiographical?

For sure.

Are most of these autobiographical?

I'd have to think about it. I think in some shape or form, yes. This goes back to the stage actor playing a character that you're watching in a film; the emotion is there and real and based on something, but the form that it's presented in might not be a super straight-up literal thing; it might be put through a few lenses. I think sometimes that happens with my lyrics, where even perspectives will change or tenses will change, but it'll all be going toward the same general thing.

Do you ever think twice about some lyrics because they might be too honest?

I don't think my lyrics are ever so blatant that they take you out of it. I think generally, even the lyric that you pointed out, within the framework of the song it doesn't feel jarring or anything like that. But I do tend to avoid, just by instinct, anything that's too jarringly real in a way that isn't fun for me.

I have to ask about one more lyric, if I may, but it's the image "you're a songbird singing in the darkest hour of the night," is there a symbolism there?

Ooooh, it's very personal, and again I don't know if it's best to elucidate every bit of every song, but I think that sort of references singing to no-one, you know? Very alone.

'Crossing' isn't on my lyric sheet, and I can only really make out bits and pieces of words, was that purposeful?

'Crossing is actually a wordless song! The way that I write songs is always the same; it's melody and words that come at the same time, but it's generally phonetic structure of words. Sometimes I get lucky and some real words come in that feel good and work with the song, and I'll take those and work off them, but generally I'll write the structure of the song in full and the melody in full, and I'll just have all these weird dream puzzle-piece parts that I'll have to go through and systematically put words in.

But ['Crossing'] was just one that was very, very, very resistant to it. There are some real words in there, but it felt more than anything like a song from a dream, and I think because I was working very intensely on these songs for a year and a half, I was trying to do it like a day job, I would pretty frequently have dreams where I was playing a song, where I was hearing a song and then you wake up and you can't quite recall it. It felt so much like that to me, where the words are indistinguishable and the melody is just barely there when you wake up. I feel like that place is where all of my music comes from, wherever dreams or your unconscious lie, it all comes from there. It's very representational of something really important.

Interesting. It also sounds a little bit different, was it recorded differently?

I guess there are some slight production differences, it might be a little thicker than the rest of the record, because the rest of the songs are pretty straight-up. That one was just kind of like a weird slapping paint on a canvas, and even the piano in it is very choppy and pounding and maybe just a little bit cut-and-paste. It was the last song we recorded, so it was a real blow-out.

Did you always know that 'Aeroplane' would be the last song? It's such a perfect ending.

Yeah, it does feel like a perfect ending, but no I didn't. It's weird because that ending, the little coda, was just improvised in the studio, and I feel like that is what makes that song a good ending on the record. I didn't really have a super strong idea of the sequence until pretty far into it, but I'm happy it's the last song because it works really well.

What do you hope people feel when they get to the end of the record?

I guess I want people to feel whatever they naturally feel, but I hope that what I get from it makes sense to them. I feel like that last track, especially the last section, there's some desolation but there's also some hopefulness as well. I feel like it's really 50/50, and I feel like that's a good note to end on.

Very cool. Were you reading much around the time of writing and recording?

Yeah, I was trying to read a lot. I read George Saunders' Lincoln In The Bardo; I was reading that for the longest stretch while I was in the studio. I was there for three weeks in New York and it was really cold and snowing and it was the perfect headspace. I love George Saunders, and that just felt very appropriate. I also read James Baldwin's Another Country, which was amazing.

I read that Oliver Sacks book Musicophilia, but I think I stopped reading that right before the end because I was so frightened thinking about developing any of these weird neural problems where you hear music involuntarily, it was starting to trip me out, thinking about the way that your brain processes sounds. Some of his patients have auditory hallucinations they can't control, especially when it's looping songs like national songs or children’s songs, things they heard when they were a kid that are super-ingrained that aren't necessarily the most pleasant to listen to. I think about that a lot, how long that stuff stays in your head, and when it comes out. That's a really interesting thing to me.

from The 405 http://bit.ly/2StjrEM

[wmucradio]

Avril Lavigne, NPR and the Future of Femme Musicians: A Conversation with Diet Cig

Pop-punk duo Diet Cig graced D.C.’s Rock And Roll Hotel last week in front of an eager sold-out crowd. Front-woman Alex Luciano, known for her contagious energy and sweetly provocative lyricism, left no one disappointed with her hyperactive splits, kicks and jumps while drummer Noah Bowman held down the fort by keeping time.

Diet Cig’s latest release Swear I’m Good At This made up the majority of the set, grabbing the audience immediately with “Sixteen,” then progressing through hits like “Maid of the Mist”, “Barf Day” and “Tummy Ache.” Woven between the new material were classics “Harvard” “Dinner Date” and “Sleep Talk.”

Diet Cig was supported by Seattle-based rock group Great Grandpa and Scottish queer-punk band The Spook School for a night of powerful rock and roll, laughter and occasional intimacy.

WMUC had the privilege of talking to Diet Cig before the set, affirming that the cheerful persona Luciano and Bowman maintain while performing, is a reflection of their authenticity even off stage:

Jordan: This show brings you to the last leg of the tour! How does this compare to tours you’ve had previously?

Alex: It’s been really different because we’re traveling as a four-piece, so playing as a four-piece has been probably the biggest change, which has been super fun. It’s still the same songs and the spirit of Diet Cig is the same, but it’s just more stuff.

How has being a four-piece affected your normal dynamic?

Noah: It’s definitely a fuller sound. It feels like we can actually do a lot more of what the record sounds like—like having the synth lines on the record that we couldn’t do before, having the bass to fill in the low end—it feels really powerful now.

Alex: I have to be more careful on stage to make sure I don’t kick anyone.

Noah: The first couple shows, you and Anna hit headstocks.

Alex: I knocked myself out of tune. But it’s been really fun to have more people on stage to goof around with.

And this isn’t the first time you’ve been to D.C. You just played an NPR Tiny Desk not too long ago. How was that?

Noah: It was wild. It was one of those things where you’ve seen it so many times and then you’re there and you’re just like “whoa.” Kind of an out-of-body experience.

Alex: We were so excited and honored to have a Tiny Desk performance, and so we wanted it to be perfect and so good. I think we were pretty nervous because we love and respect it so much, but it ended up being really fun and cool. We’ve never done anything like it before so it was really special.

—It looked like you were having a lot fun standing on the desk. Has that happened before? Did they say anything?

Alex: I don’t think so…maybe like one time before.

Well that’s an honor then, you should get a plaque for that.

Alex: Yeah haha. And for not breaking the Tiny Desk…

This is random, but I was reading around and learned that Avril Lavigne was one of your favorite artists growing up.

Alex: Yeah, I love Avril! That was my first concert ever.

In what ways do you think she inspired you?

Alex: I think the thing with Avril Lavigne was she was the first rock artist that was not a white-cis male. And I don’t think I necessarily currently take a whole ton of inspiration from her music, but I think as a kid it was really important for me to see a femme person rocking out and doing their thing unapologetically like that, and I think that was like very formative.

Speaking of your music, Swear I’m Good At This got an unusually negative review from Pitchfork. How do you respond and bounce back from opposition like that?

Alex: Honestly, it definitely sucks, but we have such incredible, sweet fans of our music that their support means more to us than anything a publication could write. Even when we get great press and people are like “Oh my gosh you got this write-up in The New York Times you must feel so validated!” Honestly, the press is not the thing that validates us. It’s really cool, but the real stuff that makes us feel good is seeing our fans at shows and interacting with them. 

The Pitchfork thing was a bummer, but we don’t do it for the press because we love our fans and we love making music, and that interaction is the most validating part. So we just brushed it off and were like “Okay, cool, let’s go play a show and be with our fans who are on the same page as us.”

Have you noticed a change in your fanbase from when you started making music to currently?

Noah: I guess it’s just growing. More and more people are coming out and more people know the words. The cool thing is what songs resonate with different cities. Sometimes “Bite Back” will be the song that everyone is yelling, and then “Sixteen” is always the one everyone misses the cue.

Alex: Everyone always beats me to it…it’s really funny. It’s been really cool to watch our fanbase grow. It feels so wild and amazing to return to cities we’ve been to and sell them out, and meet folks who like our music from the very beginning, and meet folks who are like “I found you on Spotify three days ago and I’m obsessed with your band.”

Noah: Or the ones who are just like “I found out about you just now. My friend brought me here, and I had no idea and now I’m a fan.” That’s awesome.

Alex: I feel like the demographic of our fans isn’t necessarily changing, but broadening. It’s interesting to see the newer groups of people who gravitate towards our music. We’ll have moms come and be like “I love your music. I’m going to show it to my kids who can’t come tonight” or really young kids who love it, or bro dudes who are jamming to “Tummy Ache” and I’m just like “How does that even resonate with you?” But they love it, and it’s kind of a funny thing to see how so many different people have been coming to our shows and like having a blast all together.

You guys are from New York, right? How does it feel when you play back home—is it any different from your other tour destinations?

Noah: It’s just kind of a special thing because all of our friends are still there. We don’t live in New York now, we live in Richmond, so going back is a treat.

Alex: And our family comes.

Noah: It’s always a special show every time we go back to New York.

Alex: And most of the people we work with professionally are based in New York, so our whole team is there. It’s almost like when people at their wedding joke that they never get to talk to everybody. It’s almost like that. We have so many friends and people we want to talk to and hang out with, but it’s so hectic. It’s like a tornado of love.

Alex, you mentioned The New York Times earlier, and in their piece they released last fall about women making the best rock music today you mentioned how you feel that there’s a preconceived expectation placed on you as a “small girl” on stage. What are these expectations for non-male musicians, and how do you combat them?

Alex: There are so many expectations put on non-cis-male musicians, especially contradicting ones. Like, you can’t be too bitchy but you have to be tough. It’s like you’re never enough as you are. I think our record especially is super honest and emotional, and it really covers a lot of ground across the spectrum, and I think I wanted to show that every emotion and every nuanced bit of myself and others is important. Even the stuff that is not super powerful. Even the stuff that is gross and annoying and angry.

I think just being honest and vulnerable on stage and in my writing is a really radical way to combat this view that women and non-cis-men have to be some type of way. And it’s bullshit. Rock and roll is for everybody, and your feelings are valid regardless if they aren’t easy to swallow. I think being unapologetically yourself as you make our art is a really radical way to combat that sentiment.

On the flip side, Noah, what kind of things have you experienced on this topic from your perspective?

Noah: I feel like I’ve become more aware of what is going on now, having Alex be the front person and dealing with everyone around. I kind of hate dudes sometimes. I get really almost defensive and protective. The other night this guy came on stage while we were playing. I immediately stopped, and it wasn’t a malicious thing at first, but I was just like “I don’t know what’s going to happen because when a guy comes on stage, we’ve all seen the worst that’s happened.”

Alex: I feel like you totally have our backs in a really important way.

Noah: I hate too when people come to me to ask questions about what Alex is doing, about the guitars. I’m just like “I play drums. I don’t know the answer to that question. Maybe you should ask the person who’s playing guitar.” It’s a lot of going to the guitar store and the guy’s talking to me and I’m like “I’m with her. You should ask her.” I hate that most men just go straight to the other dude. I don’t even play guitar, I can’t even have a conversation with why are you coming to me? Alex could talk you out the freakin door about guitars. I can’t. That’s what I’ve noticed.

What can you say about the community of female artists right now? Is it tight knit?

Alex: I think it’s tight knit, but not in a way that feels cliquey or anything. It’s super supportive, and the internet is really cool because we can all have each other’s backs even if we don’t live in the same place. Like Karli who plays keys with us plays in a band called Plush, who we’ve met through playing shows in San Francisco where they’re based out of. It’s really cool how connections like that have been forged by playing together and collaborating now because we’ve always supported each other’s projects.

What does the future look like for gender diversity and femme presentation in the music scene?

Alex: I think the future is looking so hopeful and amazing, and I think there has always been incredible femme musicians. I mean, women created rock and roll, and the presentation in the media and in major outlets will keep increasing. Women and femme folks will get more coverage in a way they’ve always deserved.

I feel super privileged to be making music in this time because of that, and am thankful for everyone who has come before me. I feel like it’s coming to a time where women are even more recognized for their achievements, not only as artists, but as team members: management, booking agencies, and the parts of the industry that you don’t hear a lot about. The ones that have been traditionally run by men at the top for a very long time, and I think changes are being made in big ways right now in the industry, and more women are running shit and more femme folks are taking over management and giving artists an experience that is inclusive and safe and I think that more than anything is going to change the face of music in general.

And just wrapping up, what are your plans for after tour?

Noah: We go home, and sleep in our own beds for a second, have a couple shows at some colleges, and then we’re pretty much writing our next record. So, that’s the next big thing we’re thinking about.

Written by WMUC Music Director and Socks And Sandals DJ, Jordan Stovka.

All Photos by Jordan Stovka.