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i'm listening to yo la tengo for the first time right now. i've heard of it lots from one friend in particular, and i always loved the way the band name sounded. something about the three words roll into each other so well. it feels sort of tangy, almost, but still soft & rumbly & low. for some reason, though, i never gave them a listen until now
i'm actually only listening to them now because i just bought a donut called 'yo la mango' from a store that names all theirs after bands [and it was fantastic]. we also got a couple pints of ice cream [roasted strawberry & sea salt truffle] from a vegan softserve place, plus a little ice cream cone from another place. it's sort of funny-- i think we have a little routine every time we go around there, now. my mom & i check out donuts, and then her partner & i check out this one ice cream place with weird flavors, and then i run out early with my mom to see if i want anything from the vegan ice cream place, and then her partner meets us there. i love it so much. it feels like a silly little tradition & i likee how natural it is
i've been pretty exhausted the last few days. i started working at this awesome sew shop/fashion company the same day they started a photoshoot for their new website layout, and it's been incredibly hectic, but also really fun. everyone there is so sweet & weird & lovely, and i adore the atmosphere. it's been a lot of learning inventory & colors, helping customers, and changing the cases on pillows for new photos, but today, i got to model, too. i felt excited & freaked out at the same timee, but it was fun being in front of the camera and letting my role in the world be to feel confident & good for a little while. i never got to see the pictures, which freaks me out a bit, but they should go up on the site this friday... we'll see how it goes, i guess
it's been seven hour work days mostly on my feet, though, which is a lot for me to handle. i'm trying to get used to it, and it really is worth it, but i'm just very exhausted. i started martyr! by kaveh akbar yesterday, though, and it blew my mind right away-- reminded me a lot of tommy orange's style [who i later realized is one of the 'praise for' quotes on the back cover]. i just know it's one of those books i'm going to blow through, and that's going to inspire me to no end. i'm so entranced already and only 50 pages in
i've only read a couple books like that. there, there was one, and so was stone butch blues. kitchen [banana yoshimoto] changed me in some pretty big ways, too, but i don't think that it was as immediately & intensely inspiring for me. i don't know. reading is so beautiful. finding those stories that sit with you forever is like nothing else. at the same time, though, i feel like there's so much value in that not being every book you read. i've found so much wisdom in all the books i've read & stories i've heard that didn't resonate strongly with me, but gave me something new all the same. i'm thankful for every story i've ever encountered, y'know?
i forgot to ever say in my last little blog that i watched this incredible movie with my girlfriend when i was in guatemala called 'ya no estoy aquí' or 'i'm no longer here'. it's one of those that really just stuck with me, and i know it's going to continue to. something about all the aesthetics, and the quiet of it mixed with the beautifully liud music & how ulises likes to listen to distorted versions of it by keeping his music player on low battery. something about the connections he makes with his beautiful friends, the music they make & dance to, and even people he doesn't share a language with. i love that the ending wasn't a conclusion, either. it isn't a story for your entertainment-- just sharing a story for the sake of sharing it, and the importance in that. you should watch it
my ears keep filling up with air & refuse to fully pop, and my eyes are blurry from tearing up with every yawn, and i feel very grounded in my body, for better or for worse. it's sort of cool this time. i usually just feel frustrated, but i sort of appreciate how it all encloses me in my body right now. i'm not sure what's different. maybe i just feel safer & more comfortable right now-- listening to 'little eyes' on my bed, in my new trap girl shirt & comfy flannel
i bought this flannel on monday, actually, from an old middle school choir friend. they told me they were happy it was going to someone they thought would take care of it, and i had to keep myself from melting. there's something about being viewed as safe for loved things that's so special. i honestly thought that was all, and then they told me they never got to say it, but wanted to let me know they once read my writing and that it really struck them-- that they didn't think a lot of aspiring writers have all the skill, and that i really do. it was one of those moments where you experience so much kindness, it feels sort of surreal. i don't even know what to say about it
the flannel has been really comforting the couple days since then. it's too hot to wear it to work, but when i get home, i just put it on & sit & read & write & call my friends, and it feels like a companion or a hug or something like that. it's light & airy, but also so warm, and i feel at home in it. i hadn;t been sure about buying it, but now i'm so thankful for it
'you are here' was playing while i wrote that, and now 'saturday' is. yo la tengo's really wonderful. i've been more into punk rock lately, but it's been very comforting writing music, and i think it'd be good reading music, too
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evelyn 🏳️⚧️ rebranding
i read this like a week ago and thought it was the sweetest thing ever but didn't comment so now i am! this is the sweetest thing ever :)
awwwh thank you sm !! that's rlly sweet :]]
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allt
having bands and musicians i have heard of a lot, but never had the motivation to listen to is something i very much have as well, though i tend to forget most of them: this was very much the situation with me and the band yello earlier this year. i found out about their existence four years ago (i have talked about this in a bulletin post once, but, funnily enough, through the russian-language wikipedia article on the year 1994 in music, which mentioned that, in that year, dieter meier (the vocalist of yello) came to stand near a plaque he set up in 1972 stating that he would stand there twelve years later) and only listened to them when i saw one of their songs mentioned in an issue of nme magazine when i found a partial archive of them from the 1970s and 1980s. remembering a band you have been meaning to listen to through a donut is, arguably, much more memorable and exciting, though!
i agree with you on what you said about books: i also cannot say that every single book i read and liked resonated with me a lot. thinking about what i have read and what i have really enjoyed, most of my favourite books are my favourite books because i found them entertaining or funny (this applies to most things i read and i have enjoyed things that were written chiefly for being light entertainment (such as “the three musketeers” and “the count of monte cristo”) “waiting for godot” is a good example of a play that hooked me entirely on the first few pages chiefly due to the humour and “at-swim-two-birds”, which got me hooked similarly, is memorable to me because it was fun to read (i just realised i never really talked about flann o’brien on here! “at-swim-two-birds” is about a university student in dublin who is writing three stories, one of which is a cautionary tale, one is about a person writing a western (and then, there is, of course, the western itself) and one is a celtic mythology retelling, which eventually blend into one. the range of genres (and their subsequent integration into one piece of work) was so funny to me and combined ideally with the more subtle humour (such as the fact that the book, technically being made up of five intertwining parts, has five beginnings and the student states, literally on the first page of the book, that one beginning and one ending for a book is something they did not believe in and the fact that the book ends when the student graduates)) or i found the narration or plot in them unusual or intriguing. there have been quite a few books i disliked before because they did not resonate with who i am, but ended up loving afterwards because of just how memorable the characters were and how well the story was established (“dancing at lughnasa” is an example of such. it is incredible to me about how well this play develops what is, essentially, a few weeks in the narrator’s early childhood and i feel every single thing in it just fits) or that i did not expect to like at all (i usually dislike literature concerning the two world wars and disliked the fact that this book’s main character is a landlord (i have no idea how soulless one has to be to be a landlord), but, wow, was “group portrait with lady”, which i only decided to read because i decided to read another heinrich böll book last december rather than just “the lost honour of katharina blum” (which i ended up finding boring) because i had a lot of time over the winter holidays, well-written and what unique narration (the book has a distinct narrator who refers to themselves as au. and seems to be examining the quality of life in post-war and pre-war germany (i interpret it as such due to that one part of the book where au. treats things as tears, laughter and smiling as quantitative) through leni, the main character’s life, and interviews a lot of people. there are a lot of sub-plots (which is why i disliked the book’s german tv film adaptation) it has!) honestly, the only book that i did not like (i dislike certain books mainly for the fact that i find them boring or find the ideas they present harmful) solely due to the fact that i felt it was definitely not written for me was “a portrait of the artist as a young man” (the topic of religious trauma was very new to me when i read it and, combined with joyce’s writing style, which took me a while to get used to, and it being well, james joyce (i needed to research catholicism and the charles stewart parnell adultery scandal in between some parts), the reading experience of this one was simply exhausting). i feel this is not really the place to infodump about literature so much, so i hope you will enjoy the rest of “martyr!”
omg thank you so much for sharing yr experience with reading !! also, all the books you mentioned sound SO interesting and i'm absolutely going to check them out ! never apologize for infodumping :^) it's so much fun to hear about all the things you're interested in !
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