It’s been a long time since I wrote anything for this newsletter. Sometimes I’m so ambivalent about music and that usually coincides with other sources of negativity in my life: health issues; workplace fatigue; just life…stuff.

There’s also the variable of audience, and if I’m earnestly working on these different music projects for myself, or I’m doing something a little less sincere and trying to accumulate enough content to get access to something else like people thinking I’m doing a cool thing. Because hopefully I think I’m doing a cool thing.

Ambivalence about a thing you love is a weird feeling. I love pizza, although I probably shouldn’t eat it these days (and vegan cheese patently sucks). And my memory of the first piece of mushroom and onion I had at Little City Pizza (at the original Simsbury location) is always euphoric in comparison to the second and third and fourth and fifth. They’re good, but didn’t I remember it as something better?

I’ve listened to the Dag Nasty song “Circles” probably 550 times over the past few weeks.

“Circles” is a crock pot meal with very specific ingredients: earnest lyricism bordering on corny; vocal harmonies; skankable beat; clean vocals compressing to shouted as the lyrics become more sincere; distorted guitars with the best kind of Rush-esque modulation. It’s the kind of song that communicates a specific “Fuck you, I feel things, and I don’t feel bad about it.” And there’s something first-slice-of-mushroom-and-onion about the song. And grape soda. Brother, I forgot about the grape soda.

But like the second piece of pizza with a second grape soda, “Circles” on the 551^st listen never sounds like the first slice tasted.

It’s a real effort sometimes to not chase that sensation and respect that the first listen conjured such an overwhelming flood of serotonin that I would probably die if it had that effect every subsequent listen. Especially if you have the predisposition for not a lot of serotonin knocking around in your system to begin with.

It's hard to take it to heart

And it hurts to be apart

But I can't

Watch

And not be heard