Hi Loners,
Days Ago, 3AM:
Listening to the only Against Me song I love because it reminds of a girl who’d whisper she loved me 3,000 miles away. We used to play the same video game and eventually would call each other. She’d call me from house shows and tell me about her broken guitar strings or what it felt like to be on MDMA. I wasn’t really allowed to go to rock shows but at that point I’d snuck out to a few shows. A few local things in drained swimming pool centers and a closet sized spot in Takoma Park. I watch videos of my favorite bands and long to shout the songs in unison. I ask her what it’s like to crowd surf and she says “you just feel really free— unless you fall and then you eat shit.” She sang “I Still Love You, Julie” over a broken connection in some show space in Portland. She said she’d just finished a gig and was a day’s drive from home. I could hear the sound of the rain, the party as she crept outside to talk to me. She told me she loved Against Me. It’s 2009. I have a septum ring and gauged ears. She says to me that I’m the only she’s asked— to say her real name and to call her who she really is. I remember her voice and the static and the rasp as she got louder and louder. This scam will save us all. Save us all. For one night only— she sang to me and only me.Last Saturday:
Make scallion oil rice cakes. I pour boiling oil over scallion, ginger, garlic and chili and let it sizzle before rolling the rice cakes in. Rice cakes are cooked but frozen. I soak them in cold water before adding them to boiling water before they resume their glutinous and chewy state. I roll each cake into the oil and season with a little soy sauce, sugar, white pepper. It takes about twenty minutes.
Woke up tired but from what? I ask myself. I am weary from an unending depression that I fatigue trying to out run and it’s like I need to stop kidding myself: I’ll never outrun it but tonight I’ll try. I sort through jeans searching for a pair that still fit. Ayaka sent me a Sci-Fi Fantasy cap for my birthday and so I pop it on my big head. My barber has covid and so I put on a wig; I zip up my jacket and head out to the festival. I encounter a teen with a split lip and she’s holding a compress to her mouth outside. I flinch and make eye contact and mouth “you ok?” and she gives a weak thumbs up. I recall not too long ago taking a foot or a fist to my face and feeling the bone of my orbital socket press in close and flex.
From the first I encountered a mosh pit— like a 7.75 popsicle skateboard and my too wide hips— I wanted to ride it and I struggled on and off with the carnage, the damage that it did to my body but for a short moment I get to scream loudly. I’d encounter other people who felt the same as me but we’d never even say hello until the music started. I’ve stood in crowds where I’ve heard someone crying, brokenheartedly calling out— “you saved my life, you saved me, thank you.” Are we simply replicating a system of faith that we feel abandoned by? Pits aren’t just the stifling cacophony of suburbia come to flesh—as the movement rooted in cities, the problems became more urbane and kids pledge a vigilance against the sleepy doped death that robbed them of friends one by one. I recall reading about straight edge not too long after I visit my mouth in her halfway home and she swears she’s getting better. I recall being too weak to punch a wall but I tried after I learned my mom relapsed again.
There’s a place I can go where my all my anger and hurt got to harmonize with a choir. We return again to a moment of believing. I believe that lyrics transform into an Eagles nest where I find solace until I’m reborn. A windmill of limbs and I’m throwing all my secrets and I got no grace but I continue on. A man that appeared mountain to me but instead of snow caps, he had this gingery beard and he said flatly— kid these dudes suck, throw them elbows. I’m in a pit with a girl at a Turnstile show and she and her boyfriend tell me they’ve driven up from Roanoke, VA. They ain’t never been to a show. I just recall looking at them and saying “what those elbows do?” I tell them if they see me just holler. I see the girlfriend going down and I take her by the hand.Perhaps we need these battle re-enactments? Perhaps people will always find ways to re-enact death, human sacrifice no matter what? Perhaps mosh pits are just the fields of the Gettysburg where thousands of men flock to recreate historical overtures long past but not forgotten? What is the momentary glory and thrill of a valiant life lived than the one spit sitting coding the void for hours? It was so long ago. There’s a moment when I’m in yoga that I realize that each pose of warrior 1, 2, 3 tell the story of a man arriving to a party with two swords in his hand. He is battle strong and ready. As you move into warrior 2 you’re setting your focus on your enemy and by warrior 3 you’ve beheaded your opponent. Hm.
Don’t want to say it’s fight club and yet I recall awaking in the back of a car in Queens. I’m 18 and no one knows I’m in New York City and that a steel toe boot rattled my skull like a bell. Crushed against the barricade and I felt so triumphant despite knowing that steel threatened to collapse a lung. I recall that I somehow made it home and that I returned home on the Chinatown bus with a split lip. The next day I had a headache but a renewed focus and a secret back in my normie suit— back in my life where nothing really mattered. I would stand next to other women and they’d be screaming and pushing back where they got pushed. I think of the footage of Kathleen Hanna summoning women to the front.Recall a security guard who grabbed me by the scruff of my neck like a puppy and he’d lifted my failing body out of a pit—I plopped in his arms and he gave me water. It was the feeling of being lifted easily and that I felt separated from the overall heaviness of my body. In therapy I once remark after crowd surfing that it reminded me of being carried as a child but I couldn’t remember it well anymore but I longed for the security. I longed for the lightness of being a child. I can’t recall when my mother stopped carrying me. There’s something interesting about the whirlpool of bodies and the expression of devotion of a mosh pit. I go there to bury secrets and to give voice to what haunts me. That’s dumb ass hell and yet I need it sometimes. There’s all kinds of valid ways to pursue violence now but I’m sure why this one is still my favorite. It’s all dumb ass hell.
Attend a hardcore festival for the first time in ages and all these thoughts I’ve had seem to be paused as I regress to a teen taking pictures in the bathroom with all my friends. I know we’re supposed to age and complain about the next generation but this isn’t one of those moments. I continue to meet twenty somethings that are killing and breaking barriers that I needed permission to— I need institutional validation. Millennials will burn something down if it means they can go to Grad school for free but these new kids are built different.The night before I’m on the phone with Awad and we are recalling our youth spent at bars and the time we went on stage with Beth Ditto. Awad says there’s so much opportunity to connect and that the only person holding us back, the only person holding me back is me. We were standing in the way of control that seems insidious and asphyxiating. Spend half the show running in and outside— smoke tent to 7/11 to back bar to side bar searching for familiar faces.
Skye is rolling a cigarette against her acrylics as her eyes light up in front of Shannon. Each time I go in and out of the bar I’m holding someone’s hand so we don’t get lost. My fingers interlock with Abbey’s and then Angie and then Emily’s and Ness. Like Orpheus on the threshold of life and death I fear looking behind me or else it’ll all slip away. I’m watching green hair whip across the stage as her legs take the stride of a litany of guitar riffs and her white boots almost iridescent marking the stagelike lightening. The guitars blare and I see a wide smile and “We’re Scowl” and I declare they’re my new favorite band. The best show of the night goes to Zulu. Paris somersaults into the audience his afro buoys, bobbing up and down the sea of people revealing his location in the pit. I shout “take it off” as the men of End It rip off their shirts and Akil makes a joke.
Take a photo with a group of black femmes at the hardcore show and we all have the same reaction. “I can’t believe we’re here together.” Someone remarks with an eyes full of tears that she’s almost forty years old and to see so much access and opportunity and representation in punk. So many beautiful black and brown faces taking up space.
Trapped Under Ice takes the stage and I don’t think I know the songs anymore and then the floppy disc goes to cd-rom to mp4 and it’s back in my brain. For a moment I try to pretend I don’t need to be anywhere near the pit but then Justice yells out “DO IT” and suddenly I’m pushing closer to Nick, Gavin and Colin. Just for a little taste and then I ease out and back into the night. Everyone is familiar and unfamiliar — we grew up and we’re all still here. My heart hurts a bit as I approach Farrah and Emily. Lately between every transition I get close to tears but tonight I’m a thug, baby, I’m not gonna cry. I ride with Nick and we talk about the world for twenty minutes.
The anxiety that I leave home with is still there but it stays coiled around bone. Never breaks skin. I go home alone. I fall asleep and feel full.
Weeks ago, Los Angeles:
Sun picks me up at the airport again and we catch up on a ride to Koreatown. We talk about inertia, about the startling reckoning of aging irrelevant (something I think about a lot) and just being this big in age and still not sure what’s the purpose of our time on Earth. Instead of a stranger asking me when I’m settling down— I am asking myself. Kelly— a book, a baby, a record? Which one? It’d be nice to write a record and to hold ridges of vinyl and know that I’m trapped in there. We drink coffee before parting. I got to T’s house after and I tell myself I’m going to do so much but instead I lay down and watch The Invitation. I start my first night in Los Angeles with Thai food and watching movies.It’s grey and rainy in Los Angeles. It’s a strange thing. The cold isn’t cold but it does hurt. I adapt. I’m wearing parka, no bra and shorts and thick wool socks I bought from the Men’s section of Daiso and shuffling to the laundry that’s in a shed behind the apartment. It doesn’t take long before I begin to build habits and talk to the same people and yeah, suddenly I live in LA. I take the 14 to the grocery store but then I also take it to go downtown. Ride the 210 up to Thai Town to see Katie at work. Katie tricks me into listening to Elvis and then watching the Elvis movie. “Suspicious Minds” slaps. I adjust to the cold. I run after Ness to a place called Zebulon and meet all her best friends. Don loves Nelli and Braxton is larger than life. The boys of Wise join us and Nick gives me a ride back to K-town on his way home. It’s cold at night. Celebrate New Years dropping Rene off for a midnight kiss while Katie and I run to meet Lisa.
Walk from Echo Park to West Hollywood. I get lost winding between the roads and looking at houses. Soon enough I’ve been wandering around for two hours. I host a poetry night with a lot of beautiful and accomplished poets. I’m wearing sambas because it’s all I packed and everyone else is wearing the most beautiful boots. I can’t say I did anything significant but I felt lighter. I felt strangely at ease. I smiled a lot. There’s small smiles. Big smiles. They’re real smiles. I’m not grimacing. My face feels as if it will split. I never want it to end. Rozie flies down from Portland to see the poetry show. Everything seems easy. We go from spot to spot and hold hands. There’s this feeling in LA that the night feels forever and at night I come alive. I feel often as if I’ve woken up for the first time.
Cry in the car in front of Jane as she picks me up and we go to dinner one more time. I cry the entire drive to BCD Tofuhouse. She says, thank you for being real with me. I just keep saying “I’m just so happy, is this what this feels like? It hurts so much. I don’t want to go back to whatever was before.”In general:
What is a community? We say this word a lot. I don’t know if I’m apart of a community anymore but I’m trying. Yes, I know your name and I see you as friend but am I enriching you? Do you feel apart of a community? Take a moment. Are you apart of a community? Do you feel real, authentic? Do you have a charitable contribution that doesn’t get documented online? Are you jaded? Are you easily pleased? Are you optimistic?
I am easily disillusioned by things. My mother told me I was going to be baptized and I imagined a big beautiful ceremony but instead it was a cracked plastic pink pool on the corner of Good Hope Rd. I could see the ants crawling over the pool and she tried to convince me that the water would save me. I ran from faith that day but I’ve had this ache hoping that I’ll find faith again. I love churches. I nearly fainted from overwhelm looking out of a window at La Sagrada Familia and felt dizzy imagining my heart swelling with the same fervor for God as Gaudi. I’m watching S.’s stories in Spain and it makes me remember breaking down in this little nook.
I’m told crying at art is a natural response but I was listening to the part of the tour where it said that Gaudi died and was put namelessly in a morgue. His brain was seized by a fervor for his art and God that he created new calculations to define the peaks and arches of a beautiful cathedral but he would die in a hit and run, left in a pile on the side of the road.Do you believe? Are you a believer? What do you believe? I was an atheist for much of my twenties and then something happened. I want to tell you that I almost died and that made me believe but no it was something much more mundane. Maybe it was a perfect cup of coffee or someone giving me head. I think it was a concert - maybe my face smashed into someone face and I saw the guitar riffs in stars against my eyelids and tasted the sweat of a stranger on my lips. Maybe it’s the feeling of when you’re in a room with hundreds of people singing the same song and you realize it’s so much like singing in the church choir. I remember the way my Mom would do my hair on those few days that I’d be in the youth choir. I like the feeling of being that came with being in a group of belonging.
Whatever the event— I woke up and I felt so urgently that there’s somewhere I’ll go to see everyone again. There had to be somewhere else. I can’t believe that I can call you in Australia and ask you what you’re having for lunch but tomorrow you’ll die and I’ll never see you again. Maybe it was grief that broke me. Perhaps I’m in the great denial of having to show up in high school to two assemblies announcing that K and then E’s bodies had been found.
What could it mean to feel secure in your purpose on Earth? If you saw me on the side of the road with a flat tire and a deeply and confused look as pathetically touch the tire willing it fill while sipping an emotional support iced americano— would you stop for me? Me, a terrifically stupid person trying to stroke a deflated tire to stiffness? Can you stop for me? Can you endure this terribly confused metaphor?
If my water broke and we were stuck in traffic— would you deliver my baby? Pregnant pause and I’m a virgin giving birth. Hold my hand. Who do you rely on? What’s the names of you emergency contacts? Is that what it means to be in a community? What does it take to create something sustains and nourishes? I know that w live in a society but what is community? Do you know who your people are? What if I give birth and I’m all alone? I thought it takes a village to raise a child but I’m hoping for something to take care the people. Does my life only have meaning when I’m a baby, when I’m essential, when I'm an election talking point?Tell me to breathe.
Are we in this together?
Godspeed Loners,
Kx
alone in my room is a sometimes newsletter written by a ficus that wishes it was an evergreen.