MUSIC BOX NO. 10
inpatient programs, salons, and five songs from late spring.
UNTITLED JOURNAL ENTRY, 04/01/2026, 2:41 A.M.
Sitting around and bruising the top of my mouth on hard candy until all I can taste is peaches and blood. Keep listening to nothing. Keep getting distracted. Don’t get distracted. Peaches and blood. Peaches and blood. Peaches made from corn syrup and sugar and blood that comes from flesh rubbed raw. Scraped, not slashed. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere but I think the poem is already written. Don’t know when it’ll happen but it’ll happen soon. Don’t know what I’ll say. Yes, I came to you because I saw you in a dream. I came to you because I am dead meat. Like a little kid being bullied in a coming-of-age movie— dead meat. I suppose it all goes back to that Baldwin quote on wondering about the dead because their days are over and you don’t know how you’ll get through your own. I fear the stink of love for sure. My soap, my rubbing alcohol, my careful solitude. Peaches and blood for sure. For sure. I hope I don’t become a casualty of whatever is wrong with me. Of course, if wishes were horses, I could run forever. And I would.
ONE. 24 PRELUDES, OP. 28: NO. 2 IN A MINOR. LENTO BY FREDERIC CHOPIN, PERFORMED BY MAURIZIO POLLINI.
It couldn’t have happened earlier or later. Regret is a funny thing— a lot of people seem to stake legitimate belief in it, the idea that you can somehow absolve yourself of past suffering if you just wish that it didn’t happen the way it did, but I don’t wish for absolution. I don’t regret anything. Every petal of my life unfolded exactly the way it needed to. Any earlier and I would never have accepted the change; any later and it would be too late to receive it. So even though I’ve known since I was a preteen that I would end up where I did, I wasn’t in a rush to get there. Do you understand me? No, I can’t see the future, but I can still recognize when the pieces have yet to fall into place. They fell eventually, of course, because they always do. Now we’re here. It’s as simple as that.
Frequently asked questions: no I don’t believe I wasted my time by staying in the house for such a long time, no I just generally don’t believe you can waste your time, yes it was dark, no it wasn’t horrible, yes darkness can be a good thing, no I wasn’t doing anything in particular besides waiting, yes I knew it was coming for me, no I didn’t care, yes it was ecdysis, no it wasn’t a funeral it was more of a reception, yes I was busy turning all that sand into pearls, no it wasn’t about love it was about time, yes I was a big flat sheet of ocean-nothing sitting pretty in the eye of a hurricane. I lived the same day over and over for four years. It was an exercise in detail and the grace of God, who is mine, who is me. I learned a lot about myself, and in doing so I learned about other people and the world. And I don’t necessarily believe in fate, but I think there are certain places that you have to move through at one point. The years in the house were one of mine. So if you asked me what it was like, I’d tell you that it was a piano in a darkened room being played quietly by no one in particular, and I’d just have to hope you knew what I mean by that.
When I try to conjure an image of Chopin’s time in the Balearic Islands, the result isn’t dissimilar to my little un-salon. In November of 1838, after having been lovers with Aurore Dupin (better known by the pen name George Sand) for about four months, the pair absconded to Mallorca for the winter. The trip served two purposes— the first was to improve the health of Sand’s fifteen-year-old son Maurice and of Chopin, who was already ill with the early stages of tuberculosis; the second was to escape from the threats of one of Sand’s former lovers. Only one of these goals was successful. Upon arriving, the deeply Catholic community disapproved both of an unmarried couple living together and of Sand’s preference for wearing masculine clothing1, refusing them housing and hospitality. They eventually found lodging in a former Carthusian monastery, but it didn’t provide much shelter. In turn, Chopin’s condition only worsened.
Despite the abject misery of his surroundings and health, it was still a productive period for Chopin. He was able to work on a variety of pieces, including his Ballade No. 2, Op. 38, the Scherzo No. 3, Op. 39 and two Polonaises, Op. 40. He also finished Op. 28, his series of Preludes— most of them were already done by the time he and Sand left Paris, but Mallorca was where the project saw its completion, finally resolving at 24 pieces of music that span every major and minor key.
The first time I heard No. 2 in A Minor, I thought it was Capricorn by Mary Lou Williams. There’s a very similar melodic pattern at the beginning— this is also found in the 13th century Gregorian chant Dies irae, which is one of the most famous musical motifs in history and appears literally everywhere, so that’s no surprise. You know what also wasn’t surprising? No. 2 is often referred to as the “Prelude to Death”, a title attributed to both the somberness of the piece and the Dies irae motif. It does sound an awful lot like the kind of piece they’d play over a funeral in a film, especially if it’s a funeral that involves someone you have a shaky history with. But I digress. The second time I heard No. 2, I had already solidified the visual metaphor of the un-salon in my mind— unpolished but smooth concrete floor and walls, black grand piano, eight-pane leaded window with the curtains mostly drawn; a disused room, not quite fallen into disrepair but certainly neglected— and it immediately took its place as the un-salon’s theme. I needed something plodding and solemn, a song with tension but no turmoil the same way that I had tension and no turmoil. I needed something that sounded the way I was.
Ask me what it was like and I’ll tell you that every hour was quiet and singular. I woke up, I ate sometimes, I burned my time like kindling for a fire that would never start, I stayed alone. If I worked, I worked hard, but I rarely worked; the same goes for living, because I had an occasional habit of throwing myself to the day and coming back half-broken. It didn’t have to be that way— I just wanted an excuse to lay on the concrete and listen to the funerary piano— but it was and I did and I don’t regret it. It’s my party and I’ll destroy and betray myself if I want to.
Eventually, though, it gets boring. Labyrinths of un-torment are awfully dull after a while. So what do you do to a room you can’t remove? How do you live?
You remodel, of course. You sweep up, put down a carpet, paint the walls, hang art and tapestries and things to make the walls less unforgiving. You invite people in for the evening. You turn the un-salon into an actual salon, somewhere with a little more seduction and comfort, and a different song will start to play. Can’t say I’ve gotten that far, but the curtains are open and my piano now has a single flower on top of it. A zygocactus, of course. It’s a matter of inviting color back into your life. I’m taking it slow, trying not to break myself again, but it’s coming for me.
The quick of it is that a dear friend made me a playlist and sent it to me on March 1st. I hit play. I made up my mind on inviting color back in, because I had been on the fence about it— it’s hard to navigate life solely relying on dreams for instruction, you know— and then I transferred as much of that playlist onto a cassette tape as I could and then I dropped off the map for about two months to go to inpatient. As one does. And I’d like to say that it wasn’t only the playlist. I had another dream, and there was a sensation in my chest that told me it would lead to better things, and I also got a horoscope that told me stray cats survive. That last one was kind of stupid; I already know that and I’ve got the fleas and scars to prove it. It still counts, though. And of course all the doctors I’ve seen recently thought it was a good idea and my parents thought it was a good idea and my therapist, who suggested it, clearly thought it was a good idea, so why not? It wasn’t one of the intensive psych ward situations that I had seen friends come out of worse off than when they went in. Insurance covered it. I had nothing better to do. What the hell, man. Sure.
Do you want to know a secret? I was always going to be completely fine. I knew it because I know myself, and if there’s one thing I can say with full confidence, it’s that self-knowledge will open more doors for you than you can possibly imagine. And I’m not talking about being able to put neat little labels on every experience you’ve had, although I suppose that does have its place— I’m talking about figuring out and coming to terms with your capacity for harm, because the sooner you stop hating or being afraid of your shadow, the sooner you can form a self-image realistic enough to trust. The traumatized are unpredictable because we know we can survive. There was nothing they could’ve thrown at me that I wouldn’t have been able to get out of and I had faith in that and I was not afraid of pain or color or anything, because how could I have been? I hate feeling trapped. Because of that, I’ve become a human fire escape. Problem solved.
If you’ve ever seen a snare trap, you probably know what a deer stop is— it’s either a metal bit or a crimped part of the wire that prevents the snare loop from tightening past a diameter of 2½ inches, used with the intent of making it so a deer won’t trigger the snare the same way a smaller animal would. If a place allows snare traps, they likely have deer stops as a requirement. Most places prefer to ban snares entirely. I can’t say I blame them, either, because no matter how many failsafes or breakaways you have, there’s always a chance that something is going to die a slow, horrible death, stuck in slow motion until the light leaves its eyes.
With that in mind, it’s easy to see why Goldfrapp’s Deer Stop isn’t exactly a love song. Although the lyrics are vague, it’s clearly got a sense of sexuality to it— shoot your thousand stars over me, love to come home, say my name, whisper it. This is only furthered by the composition, a solemn contrast of light strings and heavy keyboards with distorted vocals fading in and out of proximity, switching between frighteningly childlike and intensely sensual. Singer Alison Goldfrapp alternates between sounding like she’s screaming at you from across a field and breathing directly into your ear. It’s unnerving. I’m in love with it. And the deer stop only adds to it, because what deer is it potentially setting free? Is there a failsafe you’re not sure works? What illusion of escape do you have— is there a tunnel painted on a cliffside for you to Wile E. Coyote into? The alternative is taking the line previous to the deer stop mention, “don’t you call”, into account. Don’t call deer stop. Don’t cry wolf. Don’t bother leaving yourself an exit; just give up already. It’s terrifying and I know it’s true and I’m not scared of it. Isn’t that wonderful?
Deer Stop is track five on Felt Mountain (2000). More importantly than that, it’s track six on the playlist— right above Nouvelle Vague’s cover of The Killing Moon, which is deliciously thematic— and the second-to-last track on side B of my cassette tape adaptation. It was important to me that it made it onto the cassette. I think you understand by now why it’s a song sympathetic to my heart, with all its wretched little nooks and crannies. I’d be lying if I said I’ve never glamoured over my darkness with sex and the illusion of closeness; I’ve heard that it’s just part of the charm of being a stray cat. It’s not like it’s particularly hard to weave a web of faux intimacy with a couple strategic holes to disappear into without the other person even noticing. I don’t necessarily want to do it, but it’s not hard.
That’s not the point, though. The point is that I walked into inpatient with a tape player, a distinct lack of fear, and a few threads of easily-weaponized connection. I knew I would win over any threats I encountered because I’m fucking crazy. By the time I left, I had almost worn the tape out, was still fearless, and thankfully never needed to turn those threads into snares. Again, I didn’t want to have to do it— it was a safety precaution, and believe me when I say that they wouldn’t have had deer stops.
Next week, I’ll paint the walls of my un-salon. Week after that, I’ll probably be trying to find better lighting. Who knows where time will take me next— new seasons, new eras, new colors, new songs. The zygocactus flower is still on the piano. I don’t think it’s ever going to die. And, hidden in my pretty little shadows, I find that I’m perfectly happy with that.
THREE. SUMMERTIME - ALTERNATE TAKE BY SARAH VAUGHAN.
I didn’t see the summer coming until it was already here. We’re past the solstice, now, and going on a week of the kind of heat that suffocates without ever getting that hot— the air has grown thick hands that sit on your body, covering every inch of skin, and then they slide fingers up your nose and down your throat while you try to breathe. Even when the sun sets, it still hangs around. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t erotic. It’s inevitable, completely impossible to escape; what’s more sexual than something that can never be denied? So a lot of my spare time goes to napping in that cocoon. Being awake just means I’m half-dazed and languid. If I can, I leave the window and the balcony door open to try getting some air moving, desperate for something that’ll take the density out of the room. When that doesn’t work— and it never does, considering that these apartments just weren’t built for this kind of weather— I go sit outside and wait for it to pass. It eventually will. I just have to wait for it.
There’s jazz in the street on Sundays. I can’t see the players, but with how close it sounds, it can’t be more than a few blocks away from me. It fades in and out throughout the day, but they only start really going for it once the sun begins to set— not stylistically speaking, because they never move out of that slow shimmy groove, but they’ll play until there’s no light left and then they’ll go a little longer. Which, for the record, is also erotic. I usually don’t go anywhere on Sunday evenings because I’m too tired from the week and the heat to actually do something, but it’s a hell of a feeling to stretch out across the balcony and slowly cool down with a backing track of live jazz. Kind of makes me want to dance like a girl from Twin Peaks. Hips, arms, neck, hair. This isn’t the kind of weather that promotes fast moving.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that my life is simpler than I previously would have thought. If you told me in January that I’d be spending over three months living separately from my parents, I would’ve assumed that some massive shift in my health would have happened to make that possible. It didn’t. I feel the same. I just came to terms with something I already knew— I’m physically capable of much more than I say I am, because why would I tell someone my actual ability level if they’re just going to exploit it?— and then I started moving. Inpatient. Partial hospitalization. By the end of the summer, I’ll probably be volunteering on a farm just so I don’t have to live in the city anymore. For now, it’s program-provided temporary housing, going to lectures, and becoming boneless.
And honestly, what was I expecting? That I wasn’t going to like it? That I would crumble when it got hard and end up running home the way everyone told me I would? That my long, long history of stubbornness and being able to fall in love with everything, even the terrible things, would suddenly just not kick in and I’d be trapped in a place I couldn’t stand, despite having never found something I couldn’t stand in my entire life? This is much easier for me to do than I thought it would be. Of course it is; I’m spectacular at being alone. Most of the problems that someone might have in my situation are things that aren’t even available to me. I suppose I was just taking the medicine everyone else was giving me, but that’s alright. It’s already over. All I have to do now is sustain momentum, and right now, that looks like jazz in the night.
Summertime, composed by George Gershwin for the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), is one of the most popular jazz standards of all time, having been recorded upwards of two thousand times. I don’t think there’s a single jazz vocalist who hasn’t done a rendition of Summertime, to be honest. And why wouldn’t they? There is no genre, no style, that Summertime can’t be done in. Much of that flexibility comes from how versatile the original is. Despite being an aria sung by a soprano, Gershwin also placed a lot of emphasis on adding jazz and folk elements, deliberately drawing on southern Black traditions (specifically those of James Island Gullah community) to adhere to the plot and content of Porgy and Bess. The result is something in a league of its own. Stephen Sondheim, considered one of the greatest theatrical composers of the 20th century, has referred to it as having “[some of] the best lyrics in the musical theater”.2
I wish I could say more, but trying to describe the feeling of Summertime is something I know I’ll never be able to achieve. It just has an untouchable sense of magic about it, frankly. Like fireflies and thick heat and the old ghost stories my grandmother would tell around the dining table. It comes off as very old and very much a living thing, like a big tree. If you’ve heard it before— any version, Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald3 or Miles Davis or one of the thousands of others who have covered it— then you know what I’m talking about.
I think the best way to explain exactly what Sarah Vaughan adds to her versions of Summertime is to tell you that Frank Sinatra, in a 1972 interview with LIFE magazine, said that “[Vaughan] is so good now that when I listen to her I want to cut my wrists with a dull razor.”4 And in all honesty, I get it. Even to the untrained ear, it’s evident how much control and variety Vaughan has, and it makes the ease with which she sings both obvious and astounding. Vaughan had both a rare talent for interpretation and the technical skill to match it, which isn’t a combination that comes around very often. The contrast between her first version and the alternate is palpable because she knows exactly what she’s doing and how to work with the music. While her original is brassier and more sensual, slinking along like a big cat, the alternate has softer delivery and a string arrangement that makes me think of the fireflies I mentioned earlier, something nocturnal but still innocent. In Porgy and Bess, Summertime is a lullaby; Vaughan’s alternate truly captures that spirit. If I was Sinatra and heard her sing Summertime like it was a reprise of a childhood, I’d want to kill myself, too.
So it’s past two in the morning and it’s still almost 70F outside and I’m swaying in the bedroom with the lights turned off, because it feels sacrilegious to have a lamp on when the night is so dark and the jazz is so rich. The players on the street went home a long time ago but that’s what recordings are for. I can hear the train calling out in the distance through my earbuds. Hips dip one by one, arms go outstretched. This bedroom and its ancient shag carpeting are so fucking ugly but I don’t care. I put my hair up. I take my hair down and shake it out. I am moving as quietly as possible because my roommate might not be here tonight, but there are still people sleeping in the other bedrooms to be considerate of. One, two, three, four. One of these mornings, I’m going to rise up singing. Probably won’t be tomorrow morning, considering how late it is, but it’ll be one of them. I feel a bit untouchable. Mostly, I feel very warm and loose-limbed. I can’t tell if I would be impossible to hit with a rubber bullet or if I am the rubber bullet, because it’s just that kind of night, you know? Yeah, you do.
Hit repeat. Do it again. The first line is apparently Sondheim’s favorite— summertime, and the living is easy. Because it is the summer, which isn’t necessarily when the living is easy, but it does just happen to be easy right now. Hip shimmy. Roll the neck. Hush, little baby. Don’t you cry.
FOUR. SATELLITE BY ELLIOTT SMITH.
They say that oftentimes, the only reason you feel estranged from other people is because you’re not around them enough. When you move into the world, you will suddenly realize just how unextraordinary you are— all of your suffering, your trials, the emotions that seem foreign to you now will come into focus, contextualized by the people near you having gone through parallel experiences. You are simply continuing the traditions of our species, our rich history of living, the patterns that were set into motion millions of years before you were born. There is nothing that you have felt or gone through that someone else has not also experienced. You’re never alone. You are a finger on the hand of humanity. This is one of the most terrifying and validating experiences a person can have.
“They” will also, after getting degrees and decades of experience in the field of psychology, turn around and call you strange or abnormal or tell you that they’ve never met anyone who thinks or feels or interacts with the world the way that you do, and then where are you? You’re sitting in the chair opposite of them, legs crossed and your hands resting awkwardly on the peeling faux leather while you laugh and say oh, come on, you’re going to give me a complex if you keep saying that, and then you’re both laughing and then they keep fucking saying it. Because you are, in fact, strange and abnormal and all the other words that your peers tried to bully you with on the playground. Clinically speaking— and this is according to multiple sources, at this point— you are uniquely alone in the all-together world.
Or maybe it’s just me who they’re saying that to. I get the impression that might be the case, due to the years (and now three continuous months of hearing it almost every other day) that I’ve been told this. I guess I’m lucky I’m me. It’s a funny place to be in, really— there are people who would die to be told what I’m being told, but I know I would die of loneliness on the spot if I was capable of feeling lonely. And I’m unique because I don’t ever feel lonely, amongst other things. Checkmate. I’m the specialest girl in the world because I am the only one who can survive it. This is also why I have to be very careful. I’m not kidding about developing a complex— the last thing I want to do is gain a sense of grandiosity or forget I’m not actually that unique, even though that seems to be the direction everyone keeps pushing me toward.
And how do I talk about it without seeming like I’m bragging? How do I tell you that it’s not in my head, it’s not one of my laundry list of diagnoses acting up or an exaggeration, that it’s something no one is letting me forget? How do I get through the cultural wall of individualist messaging to properly convey that being one of a kind is a horrible thing to be?
So I laugh and shrug it off because I have no choice. I know damn well there’s nothing I can do about it. They’re saying it like it’s a type of compliment, not evidence that they’ve made the entirety of human experience into a monolith and have put me in the out group. And that’s what it comes down to, in the end. It’s not about being unique or excluded or alone or anything like that— it’s about how placing someone on a pedestal is just as dehumanizing as shoving them into the dirt, albeit in a different way, and I can’t stand it when my humanity is denied. I just can’t stand it. Every bad thing that’s happened to me was excused because I was considered either more or less than human; every time someone has unfairly lifted a hand against me, it was always pardoned because I was Other. Kitten, baby doll, sweetheart, fairy creature, princess. Satellite. I wonder if there’s a universe where I was never made to feel like I was looking down on the planet from my own little prison in outer space, but I digress.
It’s hard to talk about Elliott Smith without getting maudlin. I suppose the best way to explain it is to say that there are just some people who your heart reaches out to in defiance of space and time, even if the paths of your lives have never intersected in any way or if they died before you were born. Smith was gone for over a year before I came around. I can conjure lines between myself and anyone, really, but it comes easily when I reach out to Smith. It’s a form of resonance, I think. There’s plenty of things in his music that ring around my chest, most notably the thread of alienation that runs through all his work. It’s hard not to feel like you’re stranded on your own little island when you’re walking through the city at night, feeling the neon signs and headlights sunburn some fragile part of your soul, and I think Smith understood that. You can hear it in his voice, his hands, every spiderweb melody he strings together. You can hear it.
Satellite, track seven on his 1995 self-titled sophomore album, has one of those melodies. There’s something undeniably dreamy about it, only grounded back into darkness by the faint bitterness in Smith’s voice— why do you get to have this and I don’t? Why don’t I understand it? Because, at the end of the day, something seen by others to be as beautiful and natural as the moon is just a satellite in your eyes. It’s pale, it’s orbiting the earth, it can’t be reached. Why can’t I tell the difference? I guess someone has to be the machine in a field of stars, but why does it have to be me? Yes, realistically speaking, I know I’m not a satellite. Smith wasn’t a satellite either— I don’t know that much about him, but one of the things I do know is that he was surrounded by people who would come over every time the night got dark just to hold his hand and talk to him. That’s something that only happens when you’re made of outer space, not made for it. None of us are singularities. It’s an imagined feeling that other people give us. But why us? Why weren’t our moons and stars and asteroids enough for you?
And Smith is an asteroid, by the way. I discovered while writing this that, as of June 15th, there’s an asteroid named Elliottsmith.5 What a beautiful bit of serendipity. Smith was born on August 6th, 1969; Elliotsmith’s numerical name is 861969. I’d like to think that even though the asteroid was discovered in 2014, it waited almost a decade just for the chance to be named after him. No hunks of metal floating alone in space. It’s motion, it’s burning, and it’s part of a larger group the same way that we all are. Everything is just stardust. I am. You are. Elliott Smith was. Elliotsmith is. That’s why my heart can reach out so far— like calls to like, and I know we’re all alike. That similarity is the only true thing that’s ever existed.
In the daylight, freed from the hands on the clock pointing to midnight, I am laying under a tree with my head on the lap of a girl I know. She’s scrolling on her phone. I’m staring at nothing while I listen to the life in her leg.
Did you eat enough lunch? I ask.
What?
Your pulse is tinny, I say. Don’t think your blood is happy. You might want to grab a snack next break or something, you know?
She looks up from her phone, looks at the place where my ear is touching her thigh, and pats me on the head as she returns to Instagram.
Right, I forgot, she says. You’re special. She’s petting my hair because I am beloved. And then the alarm on my phone goes off, so we stand up and head to our sessions— she’ll be trying not to fall asleep, I’ll be getting called weird in a dozen different ways— and we don’t talk about it. Because why would we? I’m the question mark. That’s the narrative. And I haven’t been around that long, but I’ve been around long enough to know it’s not going to change. Oh well. I guess I’m just lucky.
FIVE. TAKE THE NIGHT OFF BY LAURA MARLING.
I wake up at 3:27 a.m. and, lacking anything else to do, I go sit on the balcony and try to remember what I was dreaming about. The textures and colors are still there— sheer brown silk, smooth stone, polished dark wood, plaster like clotted cream— but I can’t get the setting or plot straight. It might’ve had something to do with moths. I think there was blood at some point, but not in a bad way, just in a pleasantly ritual sense. The number three? Animal fur, certainly. Regardless, I can’t arrange the elements into any sort of coherence, so I surrender the details to the world and let it rip them away. It’s the first cold day in a while and it smells heavy, like distant rain. Thick clouds crawl across a blooming sky. It’s quite lovely. I stay in the cold until I can’t bear it anymore.
Time passes. The sky gets a little lighter. I put my shoes on and leave the apartment. It’s a ten minute walk to the ocean and the only sounds aside from my earbuds are the wind and the birds— robins, spotted towhees, crows, dark-eyed juncos, chickadees. Main Street is totally deserted at 4 a.m., unsurprisingly. There’s at least an hour to go before any of the coffee shops even think of opening, and this isn’t exactly the kind of town where you’ll be able to find a night shift, you know? But I still find it odd. The absence of movement can be equally as uncanny as movement where there should be stillness. Traffic lights blink through their colors for cars that aren’t there. Window displays sit in darkness. When I look through the storefronts, searching for signs of life, the only thing I can see is my own reflection. My eyes wander. I refuse to look at the ground, especially when there’s no sun or other people to avoid. The ocean is a flat dark sheet to the west. East and south are invisible. If I look north while crossing an intersection, though, I can catch glimpses of the clouds beginning to tint orange and pink, little hints of what’s coming.
It’s interesting, I suppose. I like the emptiness and the slow light. I like the smell of the air— I’m close enough to the ocean that it’s gaining speed, the scent of time and cold death washing over me. That slippery film of human residence is starting to fade into the background. Right now, I feel tired-eyed and womanly; not more mature, but certainly older. Sometimes I understand why so many creation myths had humans created from clay and earth. It’s like loud noises will never exist again, or like I’m really touching the ground, or like a crying baby woke me up in the middle of the night. So I feel like I’m an animal. Which I am, obviously, but you know what I mean. I’ve been bad and an angel and real and a beast in a forest and dead and none of that really matters because it’s not happening. Baby cries. Someone wakes up. Sun goes down, sun rises, it happens all over again the next night. Action and reaction, call and response. It’s a simple equation. I think I understand.
I make it to the beach in record timing, unbeholden to traffic laws or slow walkers. It’s low tide. Take The Night Off starts playing. This is also a kind of call and response.
Laura Marling (or more accurately, her side project LUMP) was introduced to me about four years ago by someone who is no longer in my life. It’s not a tragic story on either side, really. She started logging on less and less, I switched blogs, and we slowly faded out of contact. Earlier this evening, I looked up her username; it turns out that she hasn’t been online in over two years. I hope she’s alright. I still consider her a cousin on the Tumblr side. So now the story is over— the book closed very gently, with more of an exhale than a flash of pain— and I was left with Laura Marling and a few hazy memories, which I found peace with a long time ago. Very Poem by Langston Hughes,6 if you know what I mean. But that’s not the call.
You could argue that the call happened whenever I made my first friend, or when I started listening to music instead of just hearing it, or when I made my original blog a literal decade ago in 2016. None of that would be wrong, but they also wouldn’t be accurate. Let’s bring out the Langston Hughes again. I loved my friend. Or, for the sake of accuracy, I love my friends. To the extent that I can feel love, I love my friends. I love everyone whose life I’ve faded out of. I love everyone that I met in inpatient, who refuse to let me fade out of their lives— my old roommate who calls me almost every day, the girl whose lap I had my head in earlier, the group chats that never shut off. I love everyone who I met online, because their recommendations and conversation kept me from managing to fade out of my own life. That’s not even an exaggeration. It took me a while to recognize the degree to which Tumblr kept me from disappearing inside myself forever, but I can see it now and I love my friends. I love everyone whose number appeared in my contacts one day and never left. I love you. That’s the call.
The short of it, of course, is that I was making a playlist and now it’s three separate concept playlists, and there’s a chance there might be more before I’m done. (Or less. It all depends on what I can get my hands on.) This is the response. Funnily enough, it also sounds a whole lot like I love you. Obviously, Take The Night Off has ended up in one of my concept buckets. Is it a love song? Maybe. The lyrics are pretty ambiguous, but there’s an unmistakable amount of tenderness in Marling’s voice— her airy vibrato, her quietness, the conversational aspect of her tone. I think, more than anything, that it’s a love song in the way I find myself talking to my friends. Don’t bother behaving with me. Be bad if you need to. Take care of yourself or I will, and yeah, that’s a threat. I’m probably not getting a good grade in communication, but the point isn’t getting a good grade— it’s that if you think you’re horrible and evil, then I guess I just like you horrible and evil. Throw all your wretchedness and depravity at me and watch me still love you. I fucking dare you. Come be bad for me.
So it’s 5 a.m. and then 6 a.m. and then 7 a.m. and I’m still on the beach and it’s still low tide and I’m still turning songs over and over in my head until they’re smooth like the pebbles shifting under my boots. The sunrise was beautiful and so is everything else. I feel heavy and very sweet right now. I’ve been woken up by children crying before, and it really is a similar feeling— how can you be mad at your exhaustion when something you love so much gave you the call? I never could do it. I just don’t really have it in me. And, of course, now I remember my dream. I was in the un-salon, but it had been redecorated— furniture, curtains, art, a bit minimalist but with rich textures and colors, the zygocactus on the piano in full bloom. Leather and fur and soft carpets and earth tones. The song had shifted because a guest was sitting on the couch and playing guitar. It was nice. I don’t really have nightmares, but I don’t have many nice dreams either, so it’s a welcome surprise.
I’m around the bend of the shoreline and no one can see me, so I loosen my shoulders and shake every possible weight off like a wet dog. A train is coming on the tracks next to me. I run after it, trying to keep pace, and I nearly eat shit on rocks and dead fish and seaweed a few times but I’m laughing to myself because I love this train and the tracks and all the dead fish, their spines jutting out of the sand like rotten fingers. Don’t bother saving me because I like it here. I like my strange and my bad and my beastly. If anything is a sure sign that I’ll be okay, it’s that. I shake it off and yell into the screech of the train whistle. What a time to be alive in my little salon amidst all this misery, you know? What a time.
BONUS TRACK. BLACK IS THE COLOR OF MY TRUE LOVE’S HAIR (LIVE IN NEW YORK, OCTOBER 1969) BY NINA SIMONE.
The day passes— don’t ask me what I did or what homework I have to do because I don’t remember— and the night comes again, surprisingly temperate considering how cold the day was. It wasn’t so long ago when the air felt like syrup clotting the veins of the room. I leave the balcony door open just because I want to feel it move without hesitation. Other things have slipped in beside it, coming inside to sit next to me and do nothing at all. The light from the neighbor’s porch across the alley, which reflects off the mirrored doors of the closet and goes right into my eyes. The sound of sirens. One very confused robin, who almost made it through the door but thankfully pivoted. Bugs, occasionally. The low whistle of a perfectly lonesome train. My hands sit in my lap like tired cats; they have also come in through the open door, looking to pace and twitch and be still. And they do.
The moon is full tonight. It won’t be long until June is over, and then what? Crone’s Day, more nights swimming in and out of warmth, a collection of moments that I likely won’t remember in a few days, much less years. A dozen calls for anomaly and black ribbons and fire. Another train. Here’s one now, howling for all those intent on dying by railroad and the nightbirds who are awake to hear it. I close my eyes and imagine separating out the frequencies the way they’d appear on a spectrogram— the high flares of the whistle and unsettled wheels, middle pitches from the impact of metal rolling on metal, the low scrapes that I can feel in my heart despite not being close to the tracks. I can feel them in my heart. I’ve been given another heartbeat. It’s such a sad thing.
Outside, two crows sit on the telephone wire, picking at their wings. It’s molting season— a dark feather begins to float downwards before the wind picks it up and drags it into a tree. The crow doesn’t care. Two means mirth, after all. How can you not be happy with someone so lovely at your side?
I feel extra-lucid and hyper-real and strange and I’ve done everything right, nothing changed or neglected, so I’m led to believe it’s something outside me. The veil must be thin. I would’ve noticed it happening if I had paid attention to the signs— the nights of unexplainable irregular sleep, the way the birds won’t settle, time not moving how it should, crossed winds and pennies on the sidewalk— but I wasn’t and now I’m here. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing, you know. Just strange. Superstitious, perhaps, but I never claimed that I was rational (and it would do you good to remember that). I want to cover those massive mirrored closet doors so I don’t have to deal with the reflections. I want to run my hands around a Spanish chord. The night is in the key of E minor and, more than anything else, I want a cigarette or maybe strawberry ice cream, some sort of indulgence to make the colors even richer.
Number 3103 in the Roud Folk Song Index, Black is the Color of My True Love’s Hair is a traditional ballad associated with the Appalachians but thought to have originated from Scotland. Recordings started popping up in the 1940s as interest in traditional music grew; Nina Simone recorded her first version on her 1959 live album Nina Simone at Town Hall, and with that, it was officially cemented in the repertoire of every folk singer. Thankfully, it was also cemented in Simone’s own repertoire. I could launch into a biography of Simone or expound on just how big of a fan I am (very; she’s been my top artist for years, now) or detail every version of Black is the Color she did, but we don’t have time for that. What you need to know is that Simone is, at her core, an innovator. It’s not about genre. You can break her work down into tiny little pieces, what’s jazz and what’s classical and what’s blues, but frankly that’s bordering on reductive. She used what she had at her disposal to express what she felt needed expressing, and she had an unimaginable amount of both things at her disposal and things to express. With that in mind, you can imagine how a simple, often four-chord folk song could turn into the kind of song you think of when you feel the veil get thin on a summer night.
Whatever happened onstage in October of 1969 might be the definitive version of Simone’s Black is the Color. This is partly due to Emile Latimer. Usually performing as one of Simone’s backing musicians, he independently wrote his own, more bluesy version of Black is the Color, and Simone loved it so much that she had him perform it as a second part to her rendition. In the first half, Simone’s usage of space centers her voice and adds flourishes around the edges, piano hardly touched when she’s singing and suddenly blooming in the empty spots. She bides her time. Again, it’s more about expression than technical expertise, and what she’s expressing is the heart and soul of E minor— introspection, longing, tension, sorrow, a certain haunting. Black is the Color is a love song, and the way Simone sings it makes it sound like she’s alone in the room with no lover in sight. Latimer moves up to the microphone halfway through and only keeps the feeling going. His guitar is halfway muted; the lover has gone to a place he can’t follow. His lyrics are equally as adoring and forlorn. Simone follows him, improvising on the piano to add melody to his rhythm, but his voice and his funerary love is the focus.
To phrase it bluntly: if I was going to have a traditional funeral, I would make the pallbearers walk out to this song just to make everyone feel worse. For funsies.
Because the veil is thin and I am awake and another train could pass the town at any moment, I break out this version of Black is the Color and I drink it like cough syrup. Probably not the best idea if I want to move past the feeling, but it’s fine. I’ve never been inclined to play music that’s the opposite of my mood. I sit in the little salon in my head and listen to the piano and guitar play ghost songs and eat my strawberry ice cream. In the past 24 hours, four different people have told me that they don’t know what to do with me; I think they might be switching my medication tomorrow, maybe putting me on stimulants. Frankly, it’s not my problem. I know exactly what my deal is. Besides, I’m currently more concerned with dancing like a Twin Peaks girl— hips, arms, neck, hair, spine like a cat and palms facing the floor. I can hear Latimer’s voice in my head going bla-a-ack. I’ve got a ribbon around my wrist for luck and one of my angel-dolls in my hand for protection and vision. I feel very hidden and very free. I love the ground on where I stand.
Here comes another train. It’s moving by so solemnly for a machine so big. In the morning, after I’ve slept— if I’ve slept— I’ll go down to the tracks and listen for a little while, feel the rattle in my bones. More time will pass. Crone’s Day will come and go. The weather will shift. Life will turn its somersaults. The most childish part of my heart believes the trains are forever, in spite of all this change. And you know what? We’re going to let her have it. It’s her reward for decorating the salon so nicely.
Sand’s exact gender presentation is unknown, especially if you’re trying to interpret a Romantic-era person through a modern lens— although often referred to as a woman, she was just as frequently referred to as male. Victor Hugo famously said that Sand “cannot determine whether she is male or female… I entertain a high regard for all my colleagues, but it is not my place to decide whether she is my sister or my brother.”
Ella Fitzgerald did one of the greatest live renditions of Summertime (and maybe just one of the greatest performances of all time) at the Deutschlandalle in Berlin on February 11th, 1968— watch it here!
“Steven Paul “Elliott” Smith (1969–2003) was an influential, Oscar-nominated American songwriter. His intricate music left a lasting impact on many musicians. Asteroid 861969 honors his birth date, August 6, 1969. Smith often used celestial motifs in his work, notably in the song “Shooting Star”, which, in hindsight, symbolizes his brief but brilliant light.”
i always enjoy reading ur thoughts, and i always have some new stuff to listen to with these music boxes so thank u for that! what you said about not putting people on a pedestal really spoke to me. i see in my life how ive raised people higher than i should have, because they were strange and alluring, when i should have understood they were human beings too, with a childhood and internal fears. you are such a talented writer! please keep it up as always
gorgeous. so happy to read another of your music boxes. you have such excellent taste in music.