new album/ new substack/ same brain bucket

or, Creating New Usernames After Age Thirty

here it is! my substack! i just learned what one was and i’m already using it like an old familiar noun. let’s learn together.

while i’m reticent to fall back into some ghost of tumblers past, i do think this will be a nice place to put my latest obsessions, maybe organize my brain a bit between my thousand occupations, maybe make a pretty post about my infatuation with mark knopfler instead of sending my friends a barrage of lewd texts about some video from ‘79 where his shirt is slightly open and…

but hey! for now! here we are and i’m 31 and single and i’ve made my fourth record and it’s time to do that song and dance (in the literal sense) of sharing it with you.

watch the video here, learn more about the song here, and wait patiently for my writing to get better.

LYRICS / + what the hell was i thinking

This chain reaction is driving me up the wall

I’d be better off talking backwards or not at all

Do you ever feel like the way you’ve been communicating with people has tangled you into a web of misunderstanding? So profoundly unheard that you may as well be talking backwards? How did we learn to talk past each other that way? Sometimes I will remain silent for hours until I’ve perfectly formed the right verbiage for exactly what I want to say… which is its own kind of trap.

Who are you asking?

Why not give up the ghost,

And superficial conversations, like everybody else?

Then, you start to realize that perhaps everyone communicates this way - disjointed, not hearing one another, not even attempting to be real and honest. Masking behind desired perception. I have also been struggling with my own honesty — how do I communicate my own needs without guilt or shame? Does wanting something make me a trope or a person? (I’ve been listening to a lot of Brene Brown…)

That way of living, I’m over it

I did not have determination - I was just a kid

I think I reached a point where I realized my old ways of pleasing people and communicating via fear was really hurting my soul at a deep level. I truly feel over it — but at the same time I know I have been growing, and hopefully will continue to.

Some stupid answer, like I’ve spit out my tongue

In every single conversation, just playing dumb

I can look back on the soft-edged memories of myself, telling people what they want to hear, hoping desperately it will make me more loved. If I just make myself small… I’ll be small enough to hold.

That way of living, I’m over it

I do not need to be reminded of what I did

That way of living, I’m over it

I do not need your supervision anymore.

And so… goodbye to all that! I’m convinced it “does not do to dwell” on these past ways of being or the ways in which I may have, in earnestness, set myself up for hurt (played the ‘Sucker’? If you will? And I, as we all know, certainly will.)

My friend Emily Parkinson adjusting the gorgeous costume she sewed for me. Photo by James Boudreau

Thanks for reading! I’ll have more to say soon. For now you can pre-order my record if you’re feeling saucy. <3 thank you so much.

It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. - Joan Didion, Goodbye to All That