songwriting
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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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in the hood of being beautiful/the N holds its breath like snow/soundless as disco/I search out the window for you/while we’re still close enough to Surf Avenue/I know I’m failing/running out of time/it’s me on the inside/and you on the out/I open Notes to write you a letter/the train seems to sigh/please let’s never die…
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when I was a little kid, I wrote a letter to my favorite TV show, Scooby Doo. I told them they should do an episode where the monster turns out to be real. I’m grown up now (pretty much), and I still know that monsters are real. and that when you’re fighting one, it’s really…
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as a songwriter and performer, the work of opening the heart can be a lot.it can seem like you’re going around feeling everything — and that can be overwhelming. the audiences I seem to connect with the most are the ones that are feeling some of the same things I am. sometimes I play for…
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you can take a walk through East New York, or Navy Hill, or Greenwood Heights, and one person will think these are really frightening, dangerous places and rush right out of there. and someone else will take their time and explore the history of those neighborhoods, sample the unusual foods and sounds on the streets,…
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I never know what to say after someone says, ‘your music is beautiful,’ except to agree with them. for me, beauty is an end of conversation. the beginning is different: this is when you have to be suspicious of your best lines, your best melodies, tell the unusual from the boring. beginning kills. but beginning also produces all the discoveries. that’s when you start…
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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 