O, OBLITERATOR
For this week, here’s an excerpt from a poem. After James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, the myth of Cronus, and years of disasters enabled by the ruling class.
o, obliterator:
yea, you wriggle
onto wet asphalt
drown or dry out
illusion of choice
indifferent sun
is heralding your end
You can read the rest here. Thank you to my friend and faithful editor Colton for helping me out with this one!
Believe it or not, the first straight down the middle Ghost Down show in over two years is happening on Sunday, May 18th at Cobra Club. I’ll be opening for TV Sleep, Post No Bills, and Cometa Negra (I have been admiring the latter band from afar for several months now. Scary!!) I may even have…new songs by then? I’ll keep you posted.
Misc. stuff I’m into:
Movies:
Sinners [2025, dir. Ryan Coogler]. Gonna be watching this one again on Thursday because there was quite a bit to chew on, but I had an awesome time, there are some scenes in this one that will stick with me for a while. Go in knowing nothing if possible.
Donnie Darko [2001, dir. Richard Kelly]. Really glad I didn’t watch this one as a teenager.
I am probably still gonna be posting the movies I watch here, but I do have a letterboxd if you were curious :)
Music:
I have fallen off the new music game lately, but here’s a recent physical media haul!
Paramore - This Is Why (CD)
Gorillaz - Plastic Beach (CD)
Beach House - 7 (tape)
Unwound - the future of what (tape)
Gardener - I Am Here For a Moment (tape)
My Chemical Romance - Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge (CD)
not physical media, but would like to shoutout the fantastic Nicer Birthdays 3 DJ Mix.
I really tried it this year. Once again, I tried to make myself enjoy the cold, the overcast, the bitter winds and the ‘layering up’. I am simply not built that way, that is not how my Caribbean blood flows. It’s for that reason that this past weekend in Philadelphia, I felt the true, fashionably late entrance of Spring in my bones.
My partner and I took the Amtrak down to Philly for a jam-packed weekend of a three-day wedding, our friend Dan’s birthday, and general city-on-a-warm-day debauchery. I met up with friends new and old, people I’d only known on the internet and people I’ve shared my musical life with, all intermingling, dancing or getting bullied by the bride’s mother for not dancing, sitting on a balcony overlooking the party and providing commentary like Statler and Waldorf. I had a panic attack while eating a delicious po boy with Pablo in Reading Terminal. I revisited old wounds and locations from ‘voltgate’ with Dan and Em. I entertained Callie’s incorrigibly loving dog Squee, I crate-dug at record stores with Erin. I got to have deep talks about love and relationships with AJ, Tara and Em. I got to introduce Kim as ‘the host of Frog of the Week’ to an awestruck crowd.
The entire weekend centered on a massive dance party at FringeArts, where Brendon and Percia came alive on the dance floor to celebrate their love, Percia making stank faces while dancing that I’d never seen her make before. Brendon would sprint across the dance floor with a big grin to tell me every time a song came on that he picked for me. I screamed along to Dancing On My Own with Brendan and Alanna. My prima Andi helped me properly order a caipirinha at the bar. Finally, Em pestered Brendon to show her his wedding vows, since the actual ceremony was private, and I got this ‘renaissance painting’ photo of Em & co. fucking around and finding out.
A weekend celebrating love and joy and my friends and my own beloved in the warmth of the spring sun is something I didn’t realize I needed until it was happening, and I was reminded why we do this at all. Congrats to Brendon and Percia, and congrats to everyone for making it to the end of this email.
We’re gonna be okay and this is why!
- Will