pack up my summer in a ziplock bag
Hi dear reader,
These two weeks have flown by! And so has the month and so has summer altogether, birds flying high out of reach, away away out of our control.
Rockwood was dreamy as always!! Thank you to those of you who came. I feel like I finally now feel confident in my between-song-banter (I like making people laugh). Next thing to conquer is where the heck to look while I'm on stage. One thing at a time.
Autumn Ahead
I have a few shows already booked for the fall! I will be announcing them with more details soon, but for now you can mark your calendars!
OCTOBER 7th (Time TBA, NYC Venue TBA)- Beatles Celebration Night (I'll be playing 1-2 songs!)
OCTOBER 12th (8pm, The Local NY, Queens)- solo set!
NOVEMBER 18th (6pm, New York Public Library- Stavros Niarchos Foundation building) - solo set!
teenage dream // back of a car is also coming out in the fall, and you my lucky readers will always be the first to hear the news/get sneak previews/behind the scenes of release things!! woohooooo
I Was Here
Not to be self-indulgent, but the end of August always makes me think of my own song, I Was Here. I wrote it on the floor of my first sublet after college in August of 2018 in the midst of literally packing up my summer to move after signing my first lease. It recently passed 30k streams, and it's so meaningful to know that a song that means so much to me has spread to so many people who can relate.
Here are some of my favorite playlist titles that it's been added to:
Wanderer of the Evergreens
It's ok not to be ok
healing
I think these would sound neat on a record player but I just have my speaker
good evening motherfolkers
songs for remembering I'm a legal adult
dark academia art student with the soul of a sprite
f*ck off, vecna
music i fall asleep to
growing pains
songs that make me feel AAAAAAAAA
a collection of rocks and shiny objects i present to you like a crow
(Please imagine me as the epitome of the pleading eyes emoji throughout this whole list)
I'd love it if you considered adding the song to a playlist of your own! Or, if you are on Instagram or Tiktok, making a reel or video with I Was Here as the audio!! Or sending it to a friend with a note phrased like a handwritten letter. Or actually writing a handwritten letter with the name of the song and tossing it to the breeze or bottling it at the beach for someone to stumble across*. All of those are good options that help my audience grow :)
*ps don't actually litter in my name please
** pps if you like I Was Here, you might like my newest lil snippet of a tune I've posted here
Restart
Wanted to share a lil story here in case anybody else needs this reminder, as I often do. I took the day off on Friday with high hopes to get personal projects done and rest, but the first thing I saw in the morning was a rude and rambling message from a client that took me by surprise. After stressing over resolving the issue and then spending way too long doomscrolling in bed, I lamented to myself internally about how my day off was ruined.
But it was only 3pm. There was plenty of day left.
I was already planning on meeting a friend at the Whitney at 6, so I got dressed and packed my things and headed out to the High Line to spend time there before the museum. I bought myself a brown sugar bubble tea and sat under the greenery and felt the sun on my shoulders and listened to Harry's House and read my library book. And the day was better and better and better. After an hour I met up with my friend, we saw the biennial, did a photobooth, ate pierogies. By the end of it it was maybe one of my favorite days of the summer
What the majority of my high stress times involve is a hyperfocused lens. I am often forgetting that the world is big and beautiful and that I'm just a itty bitty tiny lil guy on a big rock and my problems aren't the whole universe, actually. It's helpful to remind myself to zoom out, to remind myself it's all temporary.
Hope you're having a good day, and that if it hasn't been good so far, that you can still do something good for yourself anyway.
Picture from said day
Art I've Been Enjoying Lately:
Saw the one and only Harry Styles in concert at Madison Square Garden on the 21st and my mind can think of little to nothing else. No thoughts head empty just Harry Styles playing Medicine live out of absolutely nowhere.
Last weekend Elliot and I went to see Matt Rogers' comedy show at Joe's Pub, and it was taped (for a streaming service tba). Am very excited to see if any of the reaction shots from the camera in front of us or the sound of my big ol laugh make it into the final cut hehe.
I went back into a movie theater for the first time since February 2020 to see some of the movies from Ghiblifest! Saw Kiki's Delivery Service at the beginning of the month, which is one of my favorite movies of all time, and this week I saw Only Yesterday for the first time! Miyazaki is unparalleled at capturing the little idyllic things- nature, food, the wonder of a child, quiet moments together- and presenting them as the most important things (he's right, I think).
Another feeling I am constantly chasing is the one scene from Ratatouille with the strawberry and the cheese, where the flavors make colors and shapes explode in their minds. My friend Anais and I went to Veselka's this past week and had a moment like that. Good food is one of the best parts of being here.
By the time we talk next, I will be 26!!??!! How strange. Time surely does keep chugging along. Though there's still ups and downs, in my mid-20s I feel more settled and at peace than I ever have before, which is all I can ask for. I'll probably write a longer reflection on my past year and upcoming goals next time we speak, but for now, as always-
I'm glad you're here.
Em