time: 8:41pm
mood: sad!!!!!!!!!
currently listening to: through the dark - one direction
me currently
within an hour of hearing about his tragic death, my twitter and tiktok feeds went from mourning to discourse to jokes and back to discourse again. i just logged on to connect with the friends i'd made in the 1d fandom to be with them and process it together. but as with all social media now, you're part of the virtual town square whether or not you want to be, which means you read and see things that are shocking, cruel and downright idiotic with unfortunate regularity. i wished so badly i could just log onto my 1d tumblr and hide from the world again like i did in my early 20s.
if you've never loved a boy band, you'll never truly get it. there's something really magical about it. primal. the love comes from somewhere deep in the soul and at the same time beyond the body. it's big, all-encompassing, stupid and amazing. it was something i desperately needed to feel and be distracted by when i was 19-22 years old and in the throes of the worst bout of depression i'd ever experienced in my life. through the 1d fandom, i met some of the smartest, funniest, most creatively gifted people i've ever met, and they welcomed me into the community and they thought i was smart, funny and creative. this was completely invaluable to me, especially at a time when my self-esteem was at the lowest of the low. 1d literally gave me something to live for and i am forever grateful.
it's not my first rodeo mourning a complicated person. liam payne apparently did some horrible things that were just coming to light, and even if i wanted that to be reason enough not to mourn him, it wouldn't matter. learning about his death hit me like a ton of bricks. i felt physically sick. and i couldn't control it! it's just how i felt!
knowing liam hurt people doesn't mean i can't or shouldn't feel sad about his tragic death. it also doesn't mean i need to validate my feelings with qualifiers. i've seen the phrase 'two things can be true at once' more times than i ever have in my life in the past week. it's accurate, but shouldn't it go without saying?
i can just say i'm sad and it doesn't have to say anything more about me as a person that i'm not also including a list of behaviors i don't condone to show i'm a good person, too. i don't understand the constant linking of parasocial relationships and interests to people's personal morals. this is my main frustration with modern fandom. everything is black and white and everything is taken in bad faith until you explain yourself ad nauseum (just look at chappell roan). i am mourning liam payne DOES NOT EQUAL i don't care that liam payne hurt people.
grief is not rational. i've been in a weird gray haze the last week trying to put the shitstorm in my head into words. i'm sad for selfish reasons. now everytime i listen to 1d there'll be this grief attached instead of run of the mill nostalgia and longing hopefulness for the future. there will never be a ot5 reunion. i can never go back to liveblogging about 1d on tumblr at 2 in the morning writing au fanfiction in the tags. i can't re-enter that fandom community in a real way because i left it 10 years ago. i'm sad for who i was then and what 1d meant to that version of me and i'm sad for me now, trying to navigate this confusing and shocking loss in some meaningful way.
i'm also sad for liam's family and friends and the rest of the boys and the people liam hurt who might never have closure. i'm sad that liam didn't get to live a full life and turn it all around. i'm just sad!! it's fucking tragic!!
my babies
i couldn't listen to 1d for a few days after the news, but this past sunday, i finally put on one direction and cried listening to through the dark. i think i will have a lot more experiences like that, and that's just how it will be for a while.
i don't know if i'll ever love anything as much as i loved one direction from 2011-2014. it was... spiritual. somewhere in all of this, i'm grieving the loss of the capacity to love something in such a big way, too.
alex
date: 10/13/24
time: 5:58pm
mood: wistful
currently listening to: a teenager in love - pains of being pure at heart
on the internet, girlhood and having an audience
currently i'm on day two of my period. i have a massive bug bite on my ankle. my right eye has been twitching on and off for weeks. i'm stuck on level 5456 of candy crush. my sleep schedule has been bonkers and i'm currently pulling an all-day-er after an accidental all-nighter to get back on track (which is NOT helping the eye twitch, if you were wondering).
i've been getting way too in my head about this blog.
i've made countless profiles and blogs in my day. blogspots, dreamwidths, livejournals, deviantarts, diarylands (anyone??), tumblrs... i'm sure there's more i'm forgetting. i've never really stuck with any of them for more than a few years. sometimes i get bored, sometimes imposter syndrome sets in. a few times i stopped because i gained a large-ish audience (humble brag) and it freaked me out. the fear of being known? a horrifying tale as old as time.
my 1d blog circa 2013. she's loud, honey.
when i get to this point in the cycle, blogging starts to feel like an obligation rather than something i do because i want to. and lately i have wanted to but i haven't had the energy to write them out in a way that addresses every possible angle because it feels like that's what you're supposed to do when you publish anything on the internet now, for fear of being misrepresented.
so the blog goes without posts. clearly this is not the way forward. so at the end of the day, who cares? it's just a blog and it's just the internet (lol). so let's just do it.
rookie mag yearbooks 1-4
in the last week i've been reading the rookie mag yearbooks (i purchased all 4 for under $35 on eBay). i've been listening to the polyester zine podcast and reading molly soda's substack. what these things have in common is that they dissect experiences of girlhood that i resonate with and am nostalgic for, often through the lens of the internet.
it's interesting that the concept of girlhood and the timeframe in which girlhood exists (which the cultural zeitgeist seems to be constantly manipulating to be a longer and longer period of time) and the internet itself are both totally fleeting. a lot of the internet i've known and loved is gone, only partially kept alive via the internet archive (which was recently hit by a cyberattack and nearly wiped out!!!). and the girlhood world that i immerse myself in in these pieces of media feels close but far away. i'm 31; am i too old for this? or is it like, once you've been a girl, you're an honorary girl forever?
(this reminds me of a TikTok i saw once that featured a woman in her 70s putting on makeup and her granddaughter captioned it saying 'my grandma's just a girl, too.' in this scenario i'm the grandma and i'm also the reassuring/possibly patronizing granddaughter.)
my recent eBay watchlist
i long for the stuff of my own girlhood. i scour secondhand sites for 90s-00s objects and ephemera, some i had and some i wish i'd had. my eBay and Gem searches consist of working iBooks, early Macs, Super Nintendos, small kitchen TVs and AM/FM radios, plastic cell phone cases, refurbished iPods, boom boxes and walkmen. i search for jewelry i had when i was 12: knock off Tiffany necklaces, kitschy rings from Claire's, snap bracelets. i browse 90s holographic sticker lots. i try to find items from Monica Gellar's kitchen and Phoebe Buffay's coat closet. i took pictures of Rachel Green's hair in season 6 to bring to the salon (i just rewatched Friends, okay). i regularly search for brands i loved but couldn't afford: Rave Girl, d*ELiA's, Lisa Frank, Betsey Johnson. i collect Russ Troll Dolls. i still have my mom's Caboodle from the early 90s. do not even get me started on Josie and the Pussycats.
taking photos of rachel's hair on my tv like it's a concert
am i trying to relive something? is this the last gasp of my saturn return? i know some of these searches are fueled by the fact that everything made today is made worse on purpose, and i covet items of quality, so i buy old shit, and the old shit i buy might as well be the shit i've wanted for 15-20 years, right? maybe some part of it is about trying to fulfill the mental projection i had of my future self when i was a tween, hence Rachel Green's hair and Phoebe Buffay's coats and Monica Gellar's kitchenware. it was a simpler time when it came to creating an identity; it wasn't like today where you have constant access to all the versions of yourself you could ever possibly be violently thrust upon you all at the same time by algorithms and advertising specifically catered to alter your psyche (clean/that girl, tomato girl, soft girl, e-girl). there was just the small world you experienced: what your cool older cousins were wearing, what new music videos were premiering on TRL, what Rachel Green's haircut was that season.
i know that really simplifies the girlhood experience, and this is not a think-piece. i'm just saying it used to be easier to be a person!! you weren't constantly monitored by algorithms and overbearing authority figures and the threat of an audience!! there was way more room for experimentation and mistakes and just PLAYING. maybe that's what's at the core of all of this: craving a time where it was okay and even encouraged to play. now that i'm an adult and have (a little) adult money, i can indulge this.
Lisa Frank and smiley stickers, one of my prized Russ Trolls
i've been slowly going through the rookie yearbooks and uploading all the playlists in them to Spotify. there are a few on there already, but they're not thorough. i guess this is sort of an archival project, because the rookie website won't be around forever (especially if the internet archive's fragility is anything to go off of). and obviously Spotify won't be around forever either, duh. but it's somewhere to put the playlists so we can listen when we go for our hot girl walks. and when everything on the internet eventually gets wiped for good, i'll have the physical yearbooks to look through and i'll resort to making zines because the experience of girlhood and the desire to capture a piece of your life stops for no one, even when there's no audience there to witness it.
date: 8/27/24
time: 8:37pm
mood: bored
currently listening to: california - beabadoobee
i've written more since i started my creative practice in april than i've written since i got out of college in 2017. there were extenuating circumstances: burn out, going right into a full-time job, dad died (rip miss u xoxo). the day i graduated i literally said i don't want to read or write a goddamn thing for five years and i mostly stuck to that. i half let myself off the hook, half felt guilty for not keeping up with it. now it's 2024 and i'm writing again and it's actually fun and challenging and making me feel more like the version of myself i've always wanted to be.i've also been reading a lot, mostly poetry and essays (about poetry). but i just read Chelsea Girls by Eileen Myles (which is neither and also both in a roundabout way) and i can't recommend it enough. I LOVE EILEEN MYLES. there's something about their writing that lingers. it's conversational, introspective to the extreme, sometimes horrifying, always absorbing, like you're really really in it. i also love how their sentences are formatted (example below).
their writing makes me feel like i can write, too, and maybe i can dig deep into my memories and pull something worthwhile out of it. i can find a way to tell my stories and it doesn't have to look like anything else. i think Eileen wrote their first book when they were only a little younger than i am now and i feel a lot of camaraderie in that. i don't think that i'm old but it feels weird to not have done anything yet. you're never too old, it's never too late, etc. but sometimes that doesn't feel true. it's hard to walk that tightrope of feeling like you're dragging your feet but also needing more experiences to pull from because you haven't had enough yet, or you haven't had the experiences that are going to pull the rest of your experiences together to create something you can give back to the world in a nice little bow. it doesn't help that i work from home and have been reading and writing a lot at home so i feel a little immobilized by my life's circumstances and don't feel like enough is happening to me (hence there not being a lot of entries in this blog!).anyway. i'm working on some new pages for the site: a links page, a slideshow page of my landing collages... i think i might re-do my about page, too.
talk soon!
date: 7/14/24
time: 4:40 PM
mood: heebie jeebies
currently listening to: remi wolf's new album BIG IDEAS!!!!! (go listen!!!)
i went to see longlegs on friday night and i can't get it out of my mind!! it was excellent. it made me think a lot about what i love about horror. idk who, but someone who knew what they were talking about said, "horror is the only genre named after an emotion." it's also the genre that allows for the most artistry to emerge out of the material, be it practical effects, sound design, even how it's marketed. i think that lends itself for deeper things to be at play than just being something that's 'scary.'
the marketing is i think something that threw a lot of people off and set up some super high expectations. to me, those expectations were met. but i keep seeing the opposite opinion and honestly it's pissing me off :)
maybe it isn't the greatest idea to market your movie as 'the scariest movie of all time' because of course people will be like... BET and then shit all over it. but they're wrong in a way. do i think longlegs is the scariest movie of all time? i don't know. i've only seen it once and it was only 2 days ago. my opinion is not fully formed. BUT. is it scary? YES. and what does it even mean to be the scariest movie of all time? that descriptor is obviously so subjective that it's impossible to apply.
people who are saying it wasn't scary AT ALL... they worry me. ok- maybe the satanism/possession subgenre isn't their thing, and that's fine. that specific subgenre happens to share the shit out of me and i love it!! i saw someone say that zombie movies are what really scare them, and i don't relate to that even a little, although i do still love them (train to busan!!). so clearly everyone has their thing. but i have to ask, to the people who are saying "longlegs was creepy and filled me with a heavy sense of dread and made me feel like i was being watched and i couldn't sleep after i watched it but i don't think it's scary"... WHAT DO YOU WANT?? and what does 'scary' even mean to you?
to me, it means all of those things. leaving the theater and feeling like you're being followed. sounds that were once mundane are now proof that someone's in your house. seeing faces in the dark. not being able to sleep because you can't get an image out of your mind. that's scary. that means it worked, the movie scared you.
all of these horror snobs who laud horror movies but don't think any of them are 'scary' are so boring. what's supposed to do it for you, then? snuff films? browsing the dark web? get a grip!!
anyway. loved longlegs. can't wait to watch it 200 times.
date: 7/10/24
time: 10:06 PM
mood: nostalgic
currently listening to: dogmas - kississippi
if my poems were a room in a house, what room would they be? my first thought is the kitchen, because it feels right. it's homey. it's warm. appetite takes us there. i want my poems to make people feel fed, feel full after reading them. i want to make a meal out of language and feeling and moments. i want to get real greedy with it. indulge in smells, sounds, dance to music, clean as i go. the sun is shining just right and then setting, orange light hitting above the stove then disappearing until tomorrow. i'm taking note of this. i'm sauteing garlic and onions in oil and it's simmering and the smell fills up the house. the neighbors will smell it in the stairwell. how nice it would be to enter a poem in this way, following its delicious scent to the source. finding the heart, being unable to resist a taste. then, of course, eating it all until i'm licking the bowl clean. i want to both devour and be devoured and i would like my poems to also do this.
date: 7/7/24
time: 11:03 PM
mood: bored
currently listening to: the jump off - lil' kim
watched two horror movies today, one i'd never seen and one i saw years ago that i remember being good. one was censor (2021) and one was kristy (2014).
censor was just okay. i kept seeing it recommended on reddit for good meta horror movies. it was meta but it wasn't that good. i go to reddit for a lot of things but i gotta be more discerning when it comes to movie recs. although i did watch ready or not (2019) recently because of reddit and that one was alright, so. sidenote: how is it that reddit is singlehandedly holding the searchability of the internet together? seems... not great!
kristy was not as good as i remembered it being, but it's a solid final girl movie with some *chef's kiss* kills and you really root for the main character, and that's all a final girl movie really needs to be in the end.
i took a nap and had the most visceral dream of my teeth falling out. three teeth! i took myself to the dentist holding back tears. the dentist had a live studio audience, but they were watching something else. the dentist was set up like an airport and i had to show the teeth in my hand to a flight attendant. she did not seem to feel bad for me.
random thoughts/moments of the day:
i'm worried i give my cat too much catnip.
today i ate pizza.
i bought tickets to see long legs on friday.
date: 7/6/24
time: 4:17 PM
mood: confused!
currently listening to: break it off – pinkpantheress
overwhelmed with how to begin this thing. i'll just keep it simple.
alex's mom's cucumber salad recipe (which was actually her mom's):
- 4 cucumbers
- 1/2 red onion
- dill
- cilantro
- mayo
- sugar
- milk
peel four cucumbers and chop them up. slice half a red onion (or use more if you're an onionhead like me). throw it all in a mixing bowl. in a separate bowl, combine chopped dill and cilantro, mayo, sugar and milk. maybe a cup of mayo. maybe 1/3 cup of sugar. a little milk just to thin it all out. doesn't look like enough or taste good? add more of whatever seems to be the issue.
this recipe is meant to be measured with your eyeballs and your heart. also maybe four cucumbers is too much. but i promise it's goooooood!