#3: Ribbon Fair
Hey good morning.
Thanks for coming back. A few different things for ya today. Let’s jump in.
Okay so I know I promised I’d start editing my book in the first edition of the newsletter, but I haven’t quite gotten there yet. I hoped that saying that in a public space, where people might read it, would help me hold myself accountable, but I haven’t gotten into it yet for whatever reason. I’d say that I’ve just been too busy or something, but that’s definitely a lie that’s kind of difficult to escape at this point in the isolation/distancing/whatever game. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been pretty good about filling the space, the empty space, with a certain kind of routine over the last however long it’s been (I’d rather not count the months right now), and I’m honestly kind of averse to breaking from that little routine for reasons that feel deeply rooted somehow and difficult to fully grasp. Maybe that’s another reason that I’ve been having trouble getting to work, but it’s not the one I’m really thinking of here.
I’m a horrible procrastinator. To be clear, I’m very good at meeting a deadline, if I have one. But I really do tend to whittle down the hours until I’m left with just enough time to make something work. To say that I work well under self-imposed pressure feels wrong, though, mostly because I fill all of those wasted hours with a kind of toxicity that I think a lot of people will know very well. All the guilt over not doing the thing you’re supposed to be doing, all the self-loathing for failing to get yourself moving, all the anxious hand-wringing over how poorly the thing is going to turn out because of all this waiting, and all of the terrible things people will say and think about you because of it.
When I was a kid, my family went every year to this drug-free youth mini-fair thing. It was held in a small banquet hall that had just enough room for a few PA speakers and a bunch of booths for community businesses to give away free stuff, all of it branded in an excess of red ribbon to suit the occasion. I remember walking through the maze of tables covered in plastic Dollar General tablecloths, through dense clouds of children with painted Spider-Man faces. In my memory, the place is incredibly cluttered, stuffed well beyond the constraints of a fire code, the floor littered with freshly sticky candy wrappers and twisty-bottomed pens emblazoned with law firm names. Murphy and Murphy. Farkle and Brown. I don’t remember what they were called. Sometimes there were clowns too.
I have way overblown this place into a nightmare hellscape that I’ve visited a lot of times in my most procedural stress dreams. A lot of times, in these dreams, I desperately need to be somewhere else, specifics unclear, but I can’t find the exit. I can’t seem to see five feet in front of my face. I can’t break through the crowd. Oh yeah, and sometimes I’m trying to jump rope and I just. can’t. do. it. That part isn’t relevant really but it’s a vivid one that I think about a lot. Jump rope? Anyway.
The drug-free youth fair was a real place, and we did go there every year on a Sunday, on a date that I swear always fell just before elementary and middle school science projects were due. Every year, these things were a whole fucking deal—your parents had to pick up the supplies in advance and you had to carry out an experiment over several days or weeks and you’d have to turn it into a whole big presentation with a decked-out tri-fold posterboard at the center of it all. I was a good student as a kid, but I was notoriously bad at science projects, mostly because my tendency to procrastinate runs pretty deep and I’d never get started in time to make them good enough for a grading rubric that I swear was old as time, photocopied to oblivion, the original print completely withered and lost like a decayed 1920s film strip. The rubric was probably old enough for me to have gotten a clue and done a decent job. Too bad.
Anyway, every year I’d be too afraid to tell my parents that I wanted to stay home from the drug-free youth fair—forsaking all of those cheap toys and all of that C-grade free candy—to start and finish my science fair project. So I’d be there, snaking my way through all the community booths, past a tiny dance floor occupied by just a few little kids following over-loud “Cha Cha Slide” directions, my tiny little head popping and cracking with little fireworks of anxiety over my neglected homework.
I tend to go back to this place, the impossibly cluttered purgatory of the banquet hall, when I put something off for too long. I am stuck in a crowd of people I don’t know and everything is red.
Sorry, I just put on Alligator and “Secret Meeting” started and I realized that line fits in pretty well—”didn’t anybody/ didn’t anybody tell you/ didn’t anybody tell you how to gracefully disappear in a room?” I just love the way those words spill out of him, one part at a time until you have a whole complete thought. That’s a song that’s full of a kind of paranoia that feels familiar here—“I think this place is full of spies/ I think they’re on to me.”
I haven’t figured out a graceful way to get out of the banquet hall when I get myself stuck there. I think the solution is more along the lines of not falling into the trap in the first place, maybe (metaphorically) asking my parents to let me stay home and miss out on the fair with all the ribbons all over the place. But sometimes that’s just not realistic. Like all stress dreams, eventually I find that the door is suddenly right where it should have been all along. Either that, or I just wake up.
This newsletter was going to be about High Maintenance, but that essay hasn’t quite come together yet. They announced that the show isn’t coming back for a new season this week, which kind of threw me off my rhythm, but I think I just need more time with the idea to get it where I want it to be. Anyway, it was a great show and here’s one of my favorite stills that wasn’t really going to fit into that essay anyway:
I think this is how I’m trying to be. More on High Maintenance soon.
Here are five songs:
Here are some quick thoughts on each song:
Camp Trash — “Bobby”
I wanted to put “Weird Carolina” on last week’s playlist but it wasn’t on streaming yet. Against the odds, Camp Trash turned out to be a real band and their new EP, Downtiming, has basically been constant listening for me over the last couple weeks. The melody on this one reminds me a lot of “My Apology” by The Get Up Kids. In my head, I’ve slipped right from the chorus of “Bobby” into that Get Up Kids line “My once photographic memory/ For recollections' sake is failing me” a bunch of times. This is a compliment.
Hurry — “Frustrate You”
Hurry is just good. They’re just a good band, reliable. This is a slower, fuzzier song that they put out a couple years ago. It opens up with a little bit of a post-rock vibe, which is a nice addition to their breezy indie/dream-pop base. This song has me yearning for spring.
The Antlers — “Solstice”
The Antlers are building toward a kind of easy listening Sunday morning album and I’m totally here for it. I am excited to have something from this band that won’t feel devastating—it reminds me of when Pianos Become the Teeth released Wait for Love after Keep You. Same band, same things to love, but not so heavy to listen to.
Really From — “The Baker”
There’s so much going on with this Really From track, it’s basically four songs jammed into four minutes. Apparently this band has blown up in the past month because of TikTok. I don’t understand how that happened really but good for them!
Jay Som — “Anak Ko”
I’ve listened to Jay Som’s Anak Ko like once a month consistently since it came out, and every time I freshly remember how astoundingly good it is—I think this might be one of the best records of the past five years. The title track has always made me think a little bit of “Kid A” in the way some of the vocals sound a little garbled, sunk below the groove of the song.
Bonus track: here’s an incredible version of “Kid A” where the lyrics are (strikingly) clear that I’ve been listening to all weekend. Steven Hyden’s Kid A book tipped me off on this, skip to 49:06 for it (the whole bootleg is great though):
Thanks for reading. I’ll see ya soon.
My name is Jordy Walsh, and I’m a writer based in Philadelphia. I write about music for The Alternative and Slant Magazine. I Keep a Diary is a newsletter about music, books, writing, and probably a lot of vague emotions. You can follow me on Twitter for more thoughts on all that stuff and also a lot of pictures of my dog. Thanks for joining me.