Every day I choose to not murder the vacuum
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On Tuesday, I put Lucy 🐕 in the car and drove into the park where you can watch the light change across fields of Joshua trees at sunset, where dusk makes the landscape look even more other-worldly. I tried not to stare directly as the sun as it so quickly dipped beneath the mountains. It was only that morning that I was awake early enough to watch the opposite happen from my yard for the first time. It's easy to feel teeny tiny out here.
I love the expansive feeling of the desert, but this week drove home the importance of interconnectedness.
On Monday the poet Andrea Gibson passed away. If you're unfamiliar, their work touched on subjects of gender and love and politics and mortality, as they publicly processed a cancer diagnosis through their writing. You've probably seen their spoken word videos on socials and they were recently the subject of the documentary Come See Me In The Good Light.
Their work always made me feel like they were someone who just loved their friends fiercely. Or at least made you think about why you were or were not behaving that way yourself. You could tell by the people supporting them, touring with them, caring for them at the end, that they were cultivating joy through what must just've been the absolute worst of times.
And they loved dogs like I love dogs.
Then, last night I went to see The Exploding Hearts, a band I never got a chance to see in the original form, and tried to get through it without my mind wandering too far into why. The accident that took the lives of three out of four of the band members in 2003. The fact that I've listened to their album Guitar Romantic an obscene number of times and even named my college radio show after their song Modern Kicks.
I had forgotten that I was an entirely different person in 2003, but the scene surrounding that band, or at least the people I knew who also loved those songs, felt like more of a community than some of what I've experienced in music in recent years. I didn't know anyone else at the show, but I missed that feeling deeply.
Both things shifted my attention towards being present with my friends, checking in on people, the portraits I'm trying to work on, bringing Lucy with me more often, and sending more texts just to tell someone to listen to a good song. It shifted my attention towards the bonds in my life that are unshakeable and kind, the people I see as kin. When I feel teeny tiny out here, how do I get back to them?
The Exploding Hearts were from Portland, Oregon, where I had once considered moving not long after their accident. I had started accumulating friends in bands from the Pacific Northwest, even back then, who were twisting my arm. It regrettably didn't work then, but I'll be spending a month there this summer to make up for some lost time. I'm bringing Lucy, getting more tattoos, drawing all the queers, and hugging all my friends.
Then, in October, Worriers are playing our final five shows. Tickets go on sale today (Friday) at 12pm PT. I hope to see you there.
October 11 - Los Angeles, CA @ Permanent Records Roadhouse *
October 13 - Sacramento, CA @ Cafe Colonial #
October 15 - Seattle, WA @ The Black Lodge #
October 16 - Portland, OR @ Twilight Cafe #
October 18 - San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill #
* with Broken Baby & Ricky
# with Tiny Stills and Ricky
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