isolation
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if this year were a book, it would be the kind without periods—just commas—where life kept running, often out of my hands. it’s been a tricky year, one that reminds you the worst might not be behind you, only to surprise you again. and yet, here I am, a year older since I started posting…
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besides performing for the support group or at the memory center, there are just a few other locations where it makes sense for me to play my music in person. the vinyl shop a couple of streets over from the apartment is one. I get to play full sets there. the owner is nice. whenever…
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I don’t know why other people make songs. I just want to show you how my life feels. here are my first 11. I recorded all of them in my room at home last year. this is the order in which I imagined the songs would be heard. I hope you will click through some…
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popular vs. invisibleinsiders vs. outsiderswinners vs. losersnormal vs. freak I always felt the kids on the left hated me. they sure acted like they did. a few years later things hit different. I now see that if anything they were afraid. not of me. of themselves. and being like everyone else. this is a new…
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stand on any sweltering street corner of Brooklyn in July and something becomes really clear: people are edgy. maybe it’s the steam that rises from subway grates. or maybe the smell of black trash bags baking in the summer sun. if you study their faces, no one appears to be in a good mood. sometimes…
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one of the new people in group is Angelique, who went to a music and performing arts high school on the upper west side where a lot of the kids are on drugs I’ve heard. she used to drink but then she began using opioids because she says it’s not as easy to track missing…
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yesterday I swapped the everyday for staying at home, to hum and strum, and make music without being noticed. a day by myself, to do only what I love to do the most. I didn’t feel lonely, or miss anyone, or wish I was somewhere I was not. some might find that sad. but why is allowing myself,…
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today it’s a girl on the train in a red KITH oversized hoodie and black old school Vans tapping her foot to whatever beat, looking like she’s worked all day, dreams of pressure-flips and stair jams, and the snow’s about to fall. Brooklyn Banks is a dark, secret place under the Manhattan end of the…
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leave a bike outside long enough in New York City, and it will probably be stripped of its parts, left for dead. was the bicycle’s actual cause of death heartbreak from not being ridden around? because only moving does it have a soul. most of the songs I write tell and retell a story of…
cookie nieves 