One way to know what you like, what you actually give a shit about, is to go back to what you liked when you weren’t paid to write about it. Better yet, when you were lowkey kind of bullied for liking it. Like when I loved The Strokes in my tiny Beaufort, South Carolina high school when everyone else liked country and rap, and I thought this one kid was hot cause he had that whole devil-may-care greasy vintage look that to me was giving “Last Nite” music video, but turns out his family could only afford to shop at Goodwill.
Anyway, the point is that back then, I loved a letterman jacket, a bowling jacket, unkempt hair, The OC, The Killers, The Strokes, and typing stream-of-consciousness posts (like this one) on my Xanga blog. Sometimes, like right now, when I’m writing for the internet, about my taste that hasn’t wandered much, I remember just how cool she must think it is, how sick 16-year-old me must be to hear that we saw The Strokes this weekend as part of her job. Hell, how even 2018 me, the one that got hooked on the oral history book Meet Me In The Bathroom and decided to blow her life up and move to NYC to be a music journalist and nobody else in my life at the time thought that was a great idea, but I did, and on my best days I think I was right; I bet she’d think this is cool too. I bet she wouldn’t complain about the freak rainstorm that happened after TV on the Radio and before Beach House. I bet she’d be happy to text people about access and tickets and lists.
So yes, we lost the film camera for this story during the great exodus from Flushing Meadows. And also yes, thanks to the steamy heat, then rain, then waiting for an Uber for two hours, my hair is like five textures now, but none of that matters.
