Thanks to a glitch on my part, this newsletter was “published” on October 3, 2025, instead of October 3, 2024, which is when it originally went out. Buttondown doesn’t let me amend the pub date. If you’re looking for the latest RADIOLIO missive, click here, then scroll down. (Or if you’re already on the archive page, keep it moving.)
⋆｡°✩ 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟 ⋆｡°✩
Before I knew it, the future had arrived. All those long-ago entries in my digital planner, and some spontaneous ones too. Hit after hit after hit. A funeral and a wedding. A (band) breakup and a backstage jaunt and a book announcement. Recovery comes slowly. I say I wait for ordinary life to tuck me back under its tidy cloche, but I also do my best to escape routine. I ache to be in the world, of the world, for the world. To catch autumn’s eye, savor summer’s parting kiss, before riding the slow turn into the Bay’s brittle wet winter.
Anyway, music. Quick recap, in September, I went to four shows:
Most writers are aware of the various clichés, failures, and rolled-eyed responses that come with transcribing and/or translating dreams in/to one’s work. But still: For the past few years, I’ve diligently recorded my dreams, first on my phone’s notes app and then (aided by the big brained-addition of a light-up pen) a notepad in my nightstand drawer.
Most of the time, I keep my dreams to myself.*
This past Saturday-into-Sunday, I dreamed about my dog. And in an effort to preserve the amber glow of this particular artifact, I’m writing about it here.
Lately, my brain feels like a wall of hot static and my body feels like an aching husk. I started typing out an honest intro but it quickly got way too dark, and maybe that’s the side effect of naming something CRUEL INTENTION but more accurately, I’m just mirroring the world in its moment. What can I say? No, seriously—I’m asking.
So here’s CRUEL INTENTION. A bargain, a plea, a promise, a lie. I don’t remember when I started building it out but it’s been done for a while, and I need to release it before it rots.
Revisited the BHB playlists for the first time in maybe a year… Here’s the end of Suwa’s POV. Wow I really should heart “Francis Forever” because it probably is one of my favorite songs, and when I heard it for, again, the first time in maybe a year, I instantly wanted to hit the floor and keep going through.I don’t know if I’ve ever cried in a museum before seeing the Ruth Asawa retrospective at SFMOMA. Among other things, her botanical obsessions / studies make me feel better about my own. Nasturtium (almost) stealing the show from the blooms at the Morcom Rose Garden.
Happy Valentine’s Day to the lovers and the haters alike. How can it be that the last RADIOLIO Megamix dropped late last summer… A five and a half month hiatus… I would apologize but there’s been plenty going on in the world that’s demanded my attention, and yours, too.
I started working on this mix as I was wrapping up RACK FOCUS. Because of that one’s narrow scope, I had a lot of loosies rattling around and began gathering them. The title for this mix comes from the chorus of Caroline Polachek’s “Starburned and Unkissed,” which was released as part of the I Saw the TV Glow soundtrack. (I was going to start writing about my thoughts on the film and then remembered I’d already done that.)
Sometimes I feel like she thinks her lyrics are more poetic than they actually come off but she hit the bullseye with these.
The state of the union is bad. I know it, you know it; we hear the fear of/for our years ahead as, well, a kettle’s shrill whistle in the background of our days. Each person’s proximity is different but the high whine can and does collapse space and time.
homemade clothes and accessories (ex: this incredible tote by Diane); I’ve been wearing a scarf I knit (rather badly) some years ago and I think I could do a lot better now so wish me luck :^)
playing the silly public game
“Leorna Mer.”
engaging with creative work that you don’t like, but that you find ways to learn from
not overthinking syntax unless you’re being paid
finding your place on the Pineapple King genealogy
I’m Aunt or Uncle…go figure.
opera karaoke
public displays of attention
telling someone who’s funny that they’re funny (even if they know it)
pulling a card even if you’re scared of what you might draw
Amar: “What negative self talk or limiting beliefs are holding ya back”
这些蛇年菜 (LNY party theme was “tubes”)
Modified from the recipe in A-Gong’s Table by George Lee; definitely needed to get whole seaweed sheets instead of the snack/onigiri slices.These are bánh cuốn but I didn’t have the time/foresight to prep fillings so I just steamed them and cut them up. There’s definitely a Chinese dish that takes this concept all the way but I don’t know the name.
“mutual aid los angeles (MALA) has put together a spreadsheet with valuable resources for people affected by the ongoing los angeles wildfires and wind storm. the sheet is constantly being updated with resources such as shelter info, animal boarding info, addresses for distribution centers, volunteer opportunities and so much more.” (source)
RE: current affairs, I don't have anything to add to the noise. Reach out to your friends and strangers alike.
Sometimes, it helps to have a project. After both of us randomly started listening to Tori Amos recently, my friend Jasmine asked me if I might put together an intro playlist for Kate Bush and Björk. Because they're two of my big three, I figured, fuck it, I'll throw the other—Enya—into the mix with them.
who up picking their scabs letting the nail dig in like a shovel turned slyly just under the skin of the earth the soil as body as code word condition constructing decomposing demanding updating
i think i would like it even if i weren’t chasing another, dearer sound the lilted voice and lifted pout all angels emerge from bubble and trouble whipped froth and dark-eyed wonder they know the power, they twirl it like a coy strand a slipped ribbon a bony baton wrapped up in high res rainbows new model new aspect new network condition unrendered unrended surrender i do, he ido unceded in memory read only by the voice in your head
In high school, I sucked up to my AP econ teacher by name-dropping Sasha & Digweed and their Northern Exposure mixes. In college, I was typecast as an ecstasy dealer at Beyond in San Bernardino, and, long before the org was as much of an institution as Insomniac, once attended a mini-HARD fest at Club Nokia, now the Novo, where (separately) I also saw Miike Snow (had to leave the show early because I was nauseated by the combo of fake smoke & maybe undercooked Kraft microwavable mac ‘n cheese), Robyn (<3), and Mark Ronson in his Business Intl. era (one of those songs is still a custom ringtone on my phone, set for my high school friend Alex).
Basically, I happened to be in the right place (southern California) at the right time (early 2010’s) to witness electronic dance music’s* dizzying ascent to Big Pop Supremacy, but my interest in that kind of high BPM offering began many years ago. As a kid, I played a lot of Dance Dance Revolution, specifically Extreme 2, and hang on, I did a cursory search about the game to look up the soundtrack and a forum (!) walkthrough came up, with this opening salvo:
Keep on marchin’!!!
Damn. Um, anyway, I loved the songs I heard/played through DDRX2, those propulsive and primitively (effective) emo-otional odysseys that also reminded me of a lot of the ecstatic techno used in Gundam openings and AMVs (that’s “anime music videos”) at the time. In fact, my all-time favorite AMV creator** exclusively used trance tracks for their BGM. Which is to say, I’m overdue for a dance/trance-forward playlist***, and I finally got my shit together to make one happen, just in time for summer’s last gasp.
isn’t this just what it is? a decade between lives we see each other like shadows high fiving on parallel hallways except under hot lights, over cold vents, new history fights fungal creep enough to remember the freeway exit that straight hot slingshot i like it i like it i left it behind with the dry wind and the dry heat with the dry cough and wet throb of mourning forests, of plundered citrus, of love interrupted— i stood with you, i stand with you, original +1, shy elegant sister, nursing the scar left by absence’s blister
#9ccb3f, Arial Narrow, 1px Gaussian blur, syntax borrowed from Park Chan-Wook’s 2005 film “Sympathy for Lady Vengeance”
Every time I visit Los Angeles, I remember what it’s like to be a girl. Shaved shins teetering on 4” heels with narrow toe boxes, hands tugging at the hem of a skirt that’s just long enough to count as a garment and short enough to turn every encountered smile into a leer or a frown. Sweat on the backs of my thighs, around the neck of my shirt, under my armpits, collecting in nooks and crannies of flesh that I would pinch or pick at in anxiety that there was too much, that it sat on my body in ways I tried to love but more often tried to disguise.
Most of my best friends in college were, and are, a gorgeous group of girls. In the decade since our graduation, my feelings about them haven’t changed at the core: I gaze upon them with a combination of adoration and pride, sometimes a worry that I’ll be the first to admit can be patronizing, and always a piercing longing for the world to be kinder to them, these fearless but often shy women, who speak a silly and sly secret language that’s only legible to me because I was one of its architects, once upon a time. A slow wink paired with a scheming grin; a disruptively cackling chorus of screaming; elbows linked with elbows, swaying caryatids drunk with confidence and a cobra’s coiled capacity for confrontation.
The one thing I don’t feel anymore, at least not the way I used to, is jealousy.
i wore the parappa hat because it was neon orange like the hoodie i’d bought as XXL and cut to crop and, the stripe on the side of my leggings, that fluoro orange, coloring fear, un/natural warning you will lose it — something true — don’t approach and don’t pretend you didn’t see it coming
i keep flipping back the calendar of my life how could i have prepared myself for the paper cut (i didn’t see it coming) though i’d been running the knife along my thumb for days, even weeks, even months, begging the air for a little more oxygen a bit more burn in the lungs like a flame hanging on by a ghost of breath ah! ah a
i listen to “soul-net” while walking to the bus stop while on the bus while walking from the bus stop to wherever it is i’m supposed to go calendar event set days, even weeks, even months ago regular appointments like my cats throwing trash around in the morning and my dog’s soft howl force me out of bed the blankets laid out neatly as though nothing had slept in them over the night i gaze in the mirror red crescents under my eyes red crescents being bombed red moon rising no, the phrase is “red sun,” to herald blood in the night blood, in the night, and rust, in the morning
aquarium music filters through murmuring as star-crossed fingers pluck the minuet her voice runs a sieve above the melody capturing fuzz like a static cling
ethereal not weak, green velvet gossamer ravenette mantle worn with a crooked grin she’s seen things, she’s lived through nostalgia & come out the other side as acid in vapor the crimson days are over, the carmine remain heady, pulling the blood back from gold gauzy years how lucky they are, new light on old wounds splits open, fresh dawn and fresh flowers
except: it’s not quite the same the thrill takes a step back a glance to the heavens, the inner ear whispering, asking the monitor can you still hear me can you still hear me can you still
✦
I can’t believe I got to hear “Love at First Sight” live. Miki forever.
a complicated love among ordinary people makes fools out of saints & savants from country singers
‘cause there’s something about what happens when we talk no idle hours, only “with” and “without you” stripped of the treacle and left with the stain a love like a splinter wet blood on the grain that barbed wire pucker you grin through the pain ‘til glittery lip gloss is all that remains of your strawberry watermelon coconut complaint just a low-eyed glower that won’t meet your feint a ghost of a person, a heartworm, a bane & you’d come running, running, if they called your name
my body’s also responding to the frequency of the syncopation machine its ecstatic chorale its sincere “Yay!” like bumping hands with a stranger and as if by instinct or lost desire curling the fingertips just to remember that you can you shouldn’t you can step into snow and leave the first print and throw the soft pebble just to make rippling—
intermission, lecture, came back from walking the dog (not a metaphor) only to watch a tree tumble down two doors down rustling down saw biting down its motor kept rumbling so i have to assume the fallen tree’s twin will also come down as all things do every arc bends toward justice, if lucky, isolation, if not—
epiphany in a chime of blood like bamboo sliced lengthwise its splintering quiver & the lid of a pot left long on the burner she puts her headphones on as though they're seashells & she's listening for fire dull throb body beats skittering, whittling, caustic mass of cavern creeps that cup the club within tilting monoliths
coal & collide literal gong strike & trembling zither strange inhabitants of stranger yet summoning
Happy vernal equinox to all :^) Like many of the bulbs and seeds that have been quietly awaiting warming soil temperatures, I too have been laying down the roots for (hopefully!) future germination, soon. I certainly hope to be more attentive to (about?) this newsletter. But in the meantime, here's another 123-song megamix for your perusal.
I started building this out last fall, off the bones of a previous playlist I'd made called "The Last Snow of Winter," which I'd assembled while I was at MacDowell almost exactly a year ago. If my most recent RADIOLIO playlist was themed around "emotional annihilation," this one's themed around, hmm, let's call it "emotional snowmelt / haunted room tone."
Some particularly delicious moments:
Radiohead, "Daydreaming" -> Kelela, "Sorbet"
Chelsea Wolfe & Emma Ruth Rundle, "Anhedonia" -> Mitski, "The Deal" -> Slowdive, "Chained to a Cloud"
Everyone who publishes year-end lists makes a big deal about how much work / thought / agony goes into compiling them. As someone who used to make those lists all the time, I can confirm that people will like, lose their minds working on this shit but that the payoff for all that hand-wringing is essentially nothing.
Unless you're with various Times or a leading trade pub, the rest of us are shouting into the void with our delicately balanced curations, those considerations between commercial juggernauts and overlooked treasures.
Has anyone else been looking up chainmail on eBay? Every now and then I'll feel these tendrils of "something" pushing up through the zeitgeist and right now, it's armorcore (not to be confused with Armored Core), or maybe broadly medievalcore. Weavings worn through by time, beams of slanting light coming through decayed arrow slits in crumbling towers, hammered metal glinting with the deep, uneven burnish of age... That vaguely autumnal scene shift, pampas grass soaring into the shortening day, swaying shafts alighted with sweeping brushes of pale gold, gleaming bristles...ah!
Possible headshot, by Menat el Attma. I was leaning toward another photo from the set, but I don't know... I kind of like this one more ~_~
A little life update, I'm in the middle of writing Book 2 right now. I've been describing my process as "seeing and transcribing visions." I learned this from writing Book 1: I write toward specific moments—highly stylized sequences that underpin the emotional stakes I've been laying down the entire time, driven home with a meticulously honed single spike, a vampire stake prepared for, uh, the phantom of the story...I don't know if I can complete the circle of this metaphor but "you get what I'm saying"? Even when I'm writing "contemporary realism," I'm completely uninterested in being realistic; I want to show you the impossible world.
Undercover Spring RTW 2024, Daniele Oberrauch of Gorunway.com via Vogue.com
