Always Be Writing
Most writing does not begin with revelation. It begins with a sentence you are not sure about.
// COLLECTION
Scribbles
Short margin notes on lyrics, lines, and the feelings they unlock.
ESSAYS
17
TOPICS
0
Filter:
Closer to Fine - Indigo Girls
The brutal thing about fear is that it can feel protective while it is quietly shrinking the room.
Lane Boy - Twenty One Pilots
The song is not arguing for sloppiness. It is arguing for evidence of life.
Push - Matchbox Twenty
It does not present insecurity as delicate or poetic. It presents it as mechanical failure.
White Stripes - 7 Nation Army
Writing can interrupt that. Not solve it, because that would be too neat and clean. Just interrupt it.
Careless Whisper - George Michael
Pain is not proof that truth was the wrong choice. It is often proof that the truth finally reached the part of you that had been protected from it.
Coming in Hot - Andy Mineo
Good writing should not feel like someone assembled it from spare parts in a clean office. It should have some heat on it.
Can't Stop - Red Hot Chili Peppers
That is the ballpark experience in one diagnosis.
Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na) - My Chemical Romance
Somewhere in that beautiful collision, My Chemical Romance puts jazz hands and Batman in the same breath.
Welcome to the Black Parade - My Chemical Romance
The Black Parade, and the refusal to sand ourselves down into something easier to explain.
Flagpole Sitta - Harvey Danger
On Harvey Danger's overlit opening rush, the boredom line as parenting philosophy, and the day a family phrase came back from the next generation.
Creep - Radiohead
On the strange mercy of a song that names the feeling of being fully present and still feeling like an accidental guest in your own life.
My Way - Frank Sinatra
On a song that looks backward instead of forward, and the quieter kind of hype that comes from recognizing the person who took the road.
Paperback Writer - The Beatles
On hearing momentum in Paperback Writer, swapping genres into the title, and becoming a writer by saying the word before the evidence arrived.
Killing in the Name Of - Rage Against the Machine
On hearing refusal stripped to its load-bearing words, and recognizing the ProbleMattic presence that asks who built the rule before mistaking it for gravity.
Titanium - Sia
On the songs that lend us stronger material for three minutes at a time.
Look What You Made Me Do - Taylor Swift
On Taylor Swift, literary resurrection, and the craft of becoming harder to erase.