Hello Friends,

Here’s a new song!

This is one of the first songs I wrote last year in quarantine. I think the lyrics/subject matter is pretty self-explanatory, actually.

Music-wise, I had originally intended to make it much bouncier and faster. Something like the song Gonna Get Over You, which is from an album that is indelibly imprinted into my hind brain, but it just wasn’t working. And, as Anne Lamott once said, “Listen to your broccoli, and your broccoli will tell you how to eat it.” In this instance, my broccoli told me to slow down, start from scratch, and head in a mellow, dreamy, layered soundscape direction. I like where I got, I hope you do too ;)

Housekeeping: Due to some unwelcome terf shit at substack, I will be switching platforms. I have a small audience, no intention of monetizing, and thus, no leverage, but y’all. Fuck that shit. Trans lives matter!!!!! Nothing should change on your end, and I would have done it already, except for some (unrelated) shit at my day job in the past few weeks. Shit’s fucked all around, what can I say?

As ever, I am grateful for everyone reading and listening, and I’ll see you in two weeks. Song lyrics below <3

xoxoxo lauren

—

The past is a city
Leveled by fire
Subterranean streets
Build over the older
The present is bolder
Memorial spires,
made of glass, made of steel

No one’s born out of nowhere
You were baptized by fire
found charred, with a halo of ash
Found by hard-hatted strangers
who want to build over
(your) foundations in their images

Somewhere children are running
down streets made of suffering
Children are swimming in lakes
Children get older, get slower, get over it,
Growing’s the only escape

There’s a girl running nowhere
her hair swings behind her
Her shoes double-knotted, but not staying tied
The past is a city
and I am a stranger
The future ascends into smoke-hazy skies

And the girl who is running in parallel to me,
her hair is in knots, her face is upturned.
I am still her.