as we watch it melt
This sounds like something I would write in a book, but it happens to be true that I remember very precisely the first night I ever felt like a teenager. It was the winter of my junior year of high school; C, who I'd only just started hanging out with, picked me up and took me to a Rilo Kiley concert at The Troubadour. Her car was a brand-new Prius-- I mean, it had to be brand-new, because that was the year that Priuses were launched in the US, so there was no other kind of Prius to have. We called that car The Spaceship or else The Toy, because it didn't feel anything like a car: it was smooth and round and strange, with a push-button start and a keyless fob, both otherwise basically unheard of in 2004. That's another detail that would be too on-the-nose in fiction: the fact that when she came to get me and whisk me into the future, she was driving a vehicle that was like nothing I'd ever seen before.
Nothing particularly dramatic happened, though, not really: we listened to The Shins' song Caring is Creepy on repeat (this was a couple of years before Garden State, so we weren't yet aware of what kind of cliches we were) and got Starbucks and talked about whether our outfits were "indie" enough (RIP, the version of myself that did not yet know the word hipster; thank you to my high school Livejournal for preserving her slang in perpetuity).
I remember liking the set, which was all acoustic, a lot. I remember Jenny Lewis walking down into the crowd while she sang With Arms Outstretched. The Troubadour is a small venue, and it was a home show; a lot of her friends were there. C and I were in the balcony, and I looked down to see Jenny standing flat on the floor, haloed in light, her red hair lit and glowing. She was surrounded by people but no one touched her. It was different than watching all of those male musicians demand things from crowds. It was better. She took up space more quietly, but more fully, too. She sang: Some days / they last longer than others / but this day by the lake went too fast / and if you want me / you'd better speak up / I / won't / wait.
Eleven years later I went to the desert with C and our other close friend, M, and watched Jenny play a solo show at Pappy and Harriet's. I wrote about it at the time: what it felt like to stand under the enormous black California sky and hear her sing another A Better/Son Daughter live, a song I'd always written off as a liiiiiittle too obvious, and feel it undo me in one swift, certain pull.
On Saturday I got to see Jenny Lewis again at The Palladium. I cried a couple of times; it felt good though, like having someone touch a tender spot but carefully, with reverence. Kneading a scar into suppleness, or pressing the last bite of poison from a wound.
I don't know that I have more of a point than that. I said a lot of things about music last week; I wanted to say all of this, too.
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I also wanted to say that I wrote a profile of Caitlin Hata, who serves as the fermentation chef at The Manufactory, which recently opened up in downtown LA. Hata is just amazing-- she's this teeny, young female chef whose work not only touches everything the Manufactory does, but also helps every element of their kitchen waste less food. She's super low-key about it, but I was goggling at her in awe and disbelief basically the whole time we were talking.
Thinking about the distance between my last Jenny Lewis show and this one was, inevitably, another occasion to reflect on how grateful I am that, between here and there, I started taking something to treat my anxiety and depression. I wrote a lot about that process at the very beginning of this Tinyletter, so a lot of you probably missed it; in case you or someone you know is interested, here are a few things I wrote about what it felt like to make that decision.
And finally, I would be remiss if I didn't encourage you to donate any spare cash to funds for women who need abortions, very especially if you are a cis man who has sex with cis women. Think about all of the birth control you've never paid for, and the gynecologist visits, and also the pregnancy tests and the fear, and pony the fuck up. The Cut has an excellent list of places where your money can go here.