View From Out Here
Status update I meant for January but then I forgot. So pretend you're reading this at the beginning of the year
This was the year I quit smoking, for good this time. Sorry to my mom who is certainly reading this and finding out that I ever smoked. I know she knows I’ve had a cigarette before because I think I drunkenly confessed this to her while visiting my parents but yeah, I got addicted, obviously, and yeah, I’m really quitting. I’ve been quitting since before I ever had my first cigarette. I’ve been quitting since the day I was born. I’m a natural quitter; I do it all the time.
This was the year I learned to love being alone. I went to the movies alone, I hiked alone, I logged hours in a corner booth at the diner on the corner with a late night cup of decaf with cream and sugar. This was the year I tried to sidestep the Faustian bargain of such little indulgences as cream and sugar in your coffee. This was the year I realized it’s futile to steer people away from damaging habits like smoking or anorexia by saying those things “actually aren’t that glamorous,” because sometimes they are. Sometimes it is glamorous to destroy your life piece by piece from the inside out, and if you lie and say it isn’t, you surrender all credibility. More to the point, glamor is a hollow pursuit. Pick a different one.
This was the year I let myself get really angry, and I started looking for a home for my anger. I moved into a studio apartment in January 2025, which is really helpful on the “talking to myself” front. I have circled this apartment over and over, perfecting my rants for people miles away. Yesterday I told someone that “the sycophantic cult of personality [they] cultivate has some really ugly cracks” and that’s why they’re inclined to call women crazy. I remarked to myself that that was a good one and had to forcibly remind myself I was alone folding my laundry. This was the year I found buried in the off-site storage of my psyche a scythe with which to cut through some serious emotional undergrowth. I have a long fuse when it counts. This was the year I stopped pulling my punches.
This was the year I somehow became an even more militant feminist than I was before. It has always been a Faustian bargain to be an angry woman but this was the year I (bravely!) re-upped my lease on the Planet of Angry Women, in a charming apartment in a shitty neighborhood. This was the year I almost got in a fistfight with a guy outside Abby’s show at Permanent Records. He overheard me say that I love Bruce Springsteen and interrupted my conversation with my friends to quiz me on my favorite songs. I rolled my eyes and gave him my top three of the moment (Racing in the Street, Devil’s Arcade, and Youngstown), at which he scoffed, calling it “such an obvious answer.” Not sure in what universe a 2010s non-single Springsteen deep cut is “an obvious answer” but it’s pretty easy to spot a guy from Planet Misogyny. Then I put my beer down directly to my side and he walked past it and his hands and my beer both disappeared for a second from my line of sight. I was tipsy and seeing red so maybe speculating beyond reasonable doubt but I didn’t pick that drink back up again. I didn’t actually almost get into a fistfight but I was pretty mad for a while.
I grew up in a house where we argued for sport a lot (hello lawyer parents), which resulted in my growing up to be a Contrarian Motherfucker. I still love to spar; in fact one of the hallmarks that I might really get along with someone is their willingness to lob my serves back to me. A lot of people find that really annoying and I’ve made my peace with that. I am far from everyone’s cup of tea. I’m always trying to find pockets where sparring doesn’t feel like foreplay. I’m always trying to listen more than I talk. I’m always trying to find things about myself that feel mutable. I stand in front of the mirror and try to pretend that I am someone else. It is not hard. I watch my own mouth move in the mirror like it is someone else’s mouth, someone else’s crooked teeth. I try to ask her what it is she wants from me. I’m not a diplomat but I am a politician. I want to give her what she wants.
Jake said once he notices that when I talk about myself, I do it with a finality. He worries that it might be antithetical to curiosity, and I think he’s probably right. In an interview with Lorde on a stupid fucking podcast, she said something insightful which I found really annoying because I had resigned to the notion that nothing said on this Stupid Fucking Podcast would be. She warned the listener against allowing your identity as your armor to rust onto yourself, because then it becomes harder to take off. It’s so hard to let the world wash over you. It’s so hard not to find yourself with your heels suddenly dug in. This year I began to wonder if there’s a secret third way to be acquainted with the Planet of Angry Women besides being a resident or a defector. I haven’t decided yet. This wasn’t the year for conclusions.
This was the year I realized looking “nice” does not necessitate looking feminine. I came to a well-intentioned friend’s house before a show dressed in a large Blood Orange t-shirt and a plaid skirt, knee-length. It felt masculine to me, obscuring the outline of my decidedly female anatomy. “Is that what you’re wearing on stage?” I blinked and an hour had passed and I had been dressed in a full-length red skirt and frilly cropped blouse. I looked nice, but I didn’t look like me, which I didn’t see a problem with. I’m a young woman, a singer-songwriter whose music often touches on the plights of femininity under patriarchy; the world doesn’t want to see masculinity from me. That would be the wrong kind of subversion.
I used to feel empowered by the angelic and high-femme silhouettes I wore on stage, sometimes if only out of muscle memory. I imagined my audience as full of straight men: how can I subvert your expectations when my words are full of venom? How beautiful can I look when telling you something ugly? But straight men don’t really come to my shows, and I’m grateful to the people who do. You’re teenage goth girls, liberal arts college bisexuals, weird little freaks. I’m one of you, I love you, I don’t want to antagonize you by assuming I need to look fuckable for you to care what I have to say. When I put this to words, it feels so obvious as to border on trite. But in practice, this transgression from traditional femininity can feel like flushing good money down the drain. Adherence to patriarchy is currency. I don’t like it, but I wanted to be flush, maybe even more than I wanted to be myself. On tour, I packed baseball caps and jeans and sweater vests, a structured houndstooth blazer, and finally I got comfortable up there.
I didn’t write as much this year as I wanted to, probably because I was spending a lot of time buried in the Self. Most of the summer was traveling and touring and running around and when I came back to Los Angeles I dove headlong into a very intensive course of EMDR therapy. This is a specific kind of trauma therapy that seeks to map the brain and create new neural pathways, to allow the patient to remember trauma without reliving it. During sessions you hold a pair of small plastic buzzers that go back and forth, back and forth. It’s the bilateral stimulation of the brain and body, mimicking REM sleep, that is said to unlock some drawer in the mind so you can root through memories some part of you would rather leave undisturbed. After sessions it was all I could do to drink whiskey and sleep all day. The Self is such a warm cradle. This was the year I failed to get out of my own way but I’m going to try again tomorrow.
Credit where credit is due! This year I wrote a play and a half, an album (and recorded it, too), twelve love letters, three hate letters, approximately fifteen thousand emails, too many texts, a handful of Substack entries. Next year I hope to do more. See you sooner than later. Journey’s end in lovers meeting.
yes
Amazing amazing amazing!!!!!