Back in October, I participated in two events co-presented by the San Francisco literary festival Litquake. Both events’ other co-presenter was Books Not Bans, one of many organizations created in response to the past decade’s escalating right-wing campaign against public and particularly, children’s access to books that address such controversial and inappropriate topics as puberty, abuse, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and sexuality not in the service of heterosexual procreation.
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.)
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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.
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.
#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.
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"
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
Yesterday, early evening, the sun low but brilliant in the sky, I picked up Banana Yoshimoto's novella Kitchen and began to read it on the westbound, city-bound train, snaking below and then above the Town while taking in language that I'd last encountered over a decade ago. I think, though I might be wrong (my memory is...let's say "tricky"), that I first encountered Kitchen in a friend's book stack. Either Lisa or Diane, leaning Lisa, which means it was probably Diane but my heart (not my memory) says Lisa.
All I recall about that initial reading was that I liked the design of the standard English translation cover, and was struck by the name Banana. I still like the cover and am struck by her name—but now that I'm reading as a Real Adult, someone who (unlike the me from a decade ago) seriously works with language, it hits different. I didn't remember anything about the plot, which is tenderly compassionate about something that a lot of modern, more "progressive" writers still can't pull off, and on a sentence level, the English translation by Megan Backus makes me feel like a star-shaped leaf (perhaps even the tree star from The Land Before Time) swaying with a sighing motion as gravity rocks it, gently all the way, to a ground collaged with its fallen, decaying compatriots.
The most surprising thing about FWB Fest was that it felt like the kind of music festival that justifies the continued existence of music festivals. Thrown by the "DAO" ("decentralized autonomous organization") known as "FWB" ("Friends With Benefits," unaffiliated with either the movie(s) or the TV show(s) [???]) in the Southern California enclave of Idyllwild Arts Academy, FWB Fest superficially avoided all the things that make the modern festival-going experience a nightmare. The grounds were secluded but not remote; the canopy coverage of Idyllwild's thick groves shielded the crowds from the 90-100F day temps; aesthetic touches presumably provided by FORM, the production team that used to run the experimental art-music festival Arcosanti (on hold since 2020), transformed the forest into—
Let me be blunt: I spent the past weekend at "crypto's Woodstock," where a smattering of modern music’s avant-garde performed under the gently fluttering mushroom gill coverings in the sage-burned forests of inland southern California.
Hi! Over the past decade I've "had" a lot of "jobs" — mailroom clerk, boba barista, call center operator, the night editor of Cosmopolitan dot com (dark lol!), summer camp teacher, young adult fiction author (this is the part where I very politely ask you to buy my book BEATING HEART BABY from a local bookseller or to borrow it from your local library), flower hauler, and "more." But all of those jobs are/were second or third jobs on top of thee thing that got me into writing: music! journalism!
Many of you have bore witness to my downward spirals about particular songs, albums, and artists (don't talk to me about Utada Hikaru unless you've got Time), in feverish IRL rants or equally feverish URL missives. Like many of you, I use music as currency, as love letter, as mantra. I've devoted my life to enriching its altar, or something like that. Because my artistic practice in total, which has become the mutant backbone-foundation of my life, grew from the seed of music.
