Loose Singles
This one is about the joy of discovery.
It is strange sometimes how the radio has changed. There was a period of time I spent shifts working alone in a very large warehouse, just a radio for company. It was, proudly, a station that "played the most Led Zeppelin," and had a solid rock rotation.
Years later, I lived in the city and found the station again, wanting some DJ-selected classic rock. As I walked to work I realised the station had completely changed to semi-conservative talk radio. I thought briefly of the movie Airheads, mourned for a moment, and swapped over to my own music (cassette or mp3, I can't remember which was my go-to at the time).
The radio in the car has become the backup option for when it won't connect to my partner's phone. We've found a good go-to station but part of me always expects a similar betrayal. At least, there are some very neat new ways to discover music now. Algorithms, sure but also things like The Musical Time Machine, or Album of the Day.
After graduating high school I had surgery that laid me up for some time. Other than daytime children's cartoons a constant companion was the local classic rock radio station. They seemed to have a limited library, which didn't bother me much as I could, and can still, listen to 'Barracuda' quite a lot before it begins to pale.
It was the same station I'd first heard Pink Floyd on, though I didn't know who they were at the time. I had records and tapes but my knowledge was around The Well-Tempered Synthesizer or The Police, records with safe-looking covers and a lot of electronic sounds that were a logical progression from loving harpsichord. I have never been good at catching the who and what is playing off the radio.
So, I'd lie there healing, listening to guitars, and there was a song that would come on regularly I loved. But I never caught who it was, in my post-op fog. One day, several years later, I was playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, enjoying the stations and silly DJs of the game as I tooled around, ramping cars, and the song came on.
I couldn't believe it. This song! The game box came with a pamphlet that listed what each little pretend station played and I scoured it. It turns out the song was by 'Holy Diver' by Dio, who I'd never heard of before. He soon became my favourite band/musician. I learned about metal--especially power metal--and my brain chemistry was, as they say, altered forever. On my old dot-us portfolio site I ended up making a timeline of key music of my life and since it was back in the old-style website days I believe this image was sliced, with clickable, linked sections.
ID: A long, digitally coloured but hand-drawn timeline of music tastes from childhood to age 23. In horizontal tree-fashion, tastes are colour coded and marked with symbols indicating albums or songs; if the music was on tape, CD, record; if it was a mix, purchased, or listened to because someone was into it. Genres until age 16 are mid-century and classical, then fade into the soundtrack to Easy Rider and classic rock, Wendy Carlos, and 2000's electronic music. By age 20, bands from The Shins to Captain Beefheart appear, and at age 22, heavy metal as a genre holds the most space, with Cheap Trick, Dio, and Nazareth. The last albums on the timeline are the Marie Antoinette soundtrack and Demons and Wizards by Uriah Heep. End ID.
Around the same time, backstage in the theatre at the college as we would be costuming up, one of the guys would sarcastically sing a line or two from 'Waiting For A Girl Like You.' I'd not heard it before, but it became a meme in the green room. Not too long after, on an episode of a cartoon with weird sad talking food, a side character got a belt with the power of Foreigner. Curious, I listened to more of their songs, and added another band to my growing list of favourites.
Later I'd paint a storefront sign for the local music shop and in part of the trade I ended up with the owner's old copies of all his Foreigner records.
It's so wonderful how we can find things, accidentally, that change us forever. One can look up a reference in a book or movie, and one rabbit hole later you have learned about something that slots into you so perfectly it is like you've regained something you hadn't realised you needed to function. Trying a food or a drink that a favourite character eats, ironically or curiously, and discovering a new favourite that opens up a slew of future flavour doors you had no idea existed.The Halloween costume accessory that never gets put away.
Discovery is such a joy. Both in seeking and when something new collides with us in a meet-cute, the scriptwriter of the universe saying "this thing and you are my otp." And sometimes those incidents are embarrassing, like "my household saint was something I saw on TV and got curious about." What show? Never you mind!
Maybe it can be more difficult, over time, to find these new things. But it is worth being curious.
Sort of by accident, I realise all three of these reading recommendations work like woven things, with POVs that mesh together to create a cohesive whole even as we the reader are handed off between voices. And they're all about making choices and asking questions. You'd think I'd try to make a cohesive set of reading recommendations but I don't always. So: a delight.
- Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park has like, flavours of Phillip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut but also is very singularly a different thing. It offers a braid of a story, an alternate secret history of Korea, different narrators across different times. The weave of real and not-real makes for a tapestry.
- The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz is all about curiosity and community, and people being people no matter what their body or species. It's equality and hope and a lot of good heavy things and lovely light things. You don't have to read it to enjoy The Best-Ever Cosplay of Whistle and Midnight over at Uncanny - and if you want a taste of the book you should try the (free) short story.
- Speaking of environmentally aware books, Query by Zilla Novikov is a melting dream of a story, devolving delightfully from repetitive query letters to something else entirely. That's a link to the charming and wonderful micropress that published Query and I can vouch for the wonderful size (A6!) of this novella as a physical object.
ID: A photograph of a landscape that is almost monochrome steel greys, sepias, and deep blacks that gives the impression of printing on metal. A road curves off out of view, banked on the left by power lines. A mountain range gently undulates in the background, separated from the rest of the image by silhouettes of trees. The sky is dense with the faint outlines of clouds and the sun is a burning white spot in the upper right corner, faint traces of sunbeams cutting through the grey. End ID.
ID: A photograph of a slightly dirty and rather dinged up wooden tier painted white. Dingy white canvas behind and to the side of it implies this is in a tent. The only thing on the tier is a simple glass vase of tiny flowers in pinks and burgundy and decorative leaves. A wooden stand holds a hand-written sign in front of it, reading "Nosegay." A blue first-place ribbon drapes off the vase. End ID.
ID: A photograph of two miniature donkeys, with lush grey-brown coats, ducking under a string of barbed wire to tuck their noses through space in a fence to eat from the two held-out hands of a person mostly cut out of the frame. Both they and the person seem to be very gentle with each other. End ID.
- This Tumblr post has a handful of links for music discovery, such as playlists built off a song or artist and "Boil The Frog" which creates a playlist between any two artists.
- If you like newsletters, Annalee Newitz's The Hypothesis is a nice one to add to your inbox. It's science and wonder and always links to more interesting things.
- I have not had a chance to dive into this repository yet but The Westminster Detective Library is a big archive of the earliest detective fiction. I found this place via a Tumblr post I can't find again about how it's a shame that shitty fiction doesn't get archived because it is nice to see that not everything of the past was Good(TM), and that this site came around due to questioning if Poe's 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' really was the "first modern detective" story, as it's voice seemed to already be referring to well-trod tropes.
- Eternal Home Floristy by Deconstructeam is "a narrative experience about a hitman working at a flower shop while his injuries heal." You make bouquets that tell stories and maybe make connections and maybe heal. It's lovely and a bit dark, but has hope. The game is free, also available in Japanese, and there are content warnings for homophobia, ableist language, and mentions of violence and suicide.
I'm still donating eSims when I can, this guide was very helpful, and Crips for eSims for Gaza is a good option if you can't easily manage topping them up. There are also more traditional donation targets like the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, UNRWA, and Doctors Without Borders.