another world

to be sublime.

lemonade

i don’t know what this is but i like it.

so lonely trying

 

oh you handsome devil

 

DEBASER (de-ba-ser)

the bassline (de-ba-ser) the melody (DEBASER) girl you so groovy (de-ba-ser) the drums (DEBASER) the scream-singing (de-ba-ser) i am un chien andalusia (DEBASER) the back-ups (de-ba-ser)

it’s beautiful inside

do you know
the way i feel tonight?
don’t let go…
it’s beautiful tonight
it makes me feel alive
it’s beautiful inside

i’m safe here in a pale blue sky
it’s beautiful inside

brighter than the stars
when i catch your eye,
when i catch your eye
when i catch your eye
it’s beautiful inside
when our tears subside
it’s beautiful inside

would you be an outlaw for my love

 

love is a mixtape

   At midnight, I gave her the poems.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Well, the last word in the first line is a trochee, and it rhymes with the end of the next line. So ‘catachresis’ rhymes with ‘fleece’.”
“No, what’s going on?”
“In a catachresis?”
“No. What are you talking about?”
“Uh… I have a big crush on you.”
“Oooooh,” she said. She smiled and let the pages fall on the table. She relaxed in front of my eyes. “So how did it start?”
“Well, I think you’re really beautiful.”
She relaxed a lot more – in fact, her face changed shape a little, got a little more round as if her jaw had unclenched. I didn’t know whether that was a good sign or not, but I couldn’t shut up yet.
“I always thought so. Right away, when I saw you.”
“The amazing black dress,” she nodded. “I was wearing that when I met you. There’s, uh, a lot of me in that dress. My Fuck the Hostess dress. It’s a real ‘drop to your knees and say amen’ dress.”
“I noticed. It’s gotten a lot worse since then.”
“I know.” She lit one of my Dunhills. I had never seen her so comfortable. “I was on the phone with my friend Merit tonight, and she was like, Does Rob like you? And I said, I don’t know, he made me a tape and he didn’t call and then we danced together and then he left and called and left a message but didn’t call after that. And Merit was like, So, do you like Rob?”
I couldn’t believe she was making me do this. “So, do you?”
She smiled. “I don’t know. He’s not my type, but I really like him.”

love is a mixtape, by rob sheffield

i found this book about five years ago, just wandering around in the library. this was back when the library next door was still a place of wonder and mystery, and not, well, work. so there i was, scanning the shelves, looking for something new to read when – hm. it’s weird to think that i would have never known it existed, had my eyes just skipped this one spine. this actual, real life, life story that’s so sad and wonderful at the same time. it’s weird, having never heard of it outside of myself. all of this music, that i wouldn’t have heard in this beautiful way. my eyes always linger an extra second or two when i pass it by; stacking books, lost in work. i look at the title and the corners of my mouth turn up, just a little. life and loss, one song at a time. 

idioteque

 

so alone now

there’ll be no rest for the wicked
there’s no song for the choir
there’s no hope for the weary
if you let them win without a fight
i let my good one down
i let my true love die
i had his heart but i broke it every time

i, i heard you say

 

see the road, long and lonesome road
dozens come from many miles away
see the lights, they go long for miles
but you will never see the light again in his smile
now you are gone, are they moving on?
don’t listen girl, listen what they say
got no soul, got no rock and roll
and you will never hold me in his arms again, i am so cold 

and i, i heard you say, i, i heard you say
almost took my breath away
no, he will never hold me in his arms again 
you will never hold me in his arms again
no, he will never hold me in his arms again, i’m so cold

 

to the sea, of love

 

they all say “oh cariño”

pt 2

him, pushing it hard. her, pulling way, hot and on fire. him, parliaments, crazy y cubano. her, como él. him, missing her the most. her, alive and a-lush. a love. a desire.

 

in the pale moonlight

her, hips swiveling back and forth without a thought. him, three fingers on a straw swirling the ice around and around. her, red lips, hair thrown over bare shoulders. him, polished boots, bangs pushed back. her, lips quirked into a small smile and nose crinkled. him, slow blinks and eyes widened. a twinkle. a spark.

 

shameless

(play and then read, yeah?)

i want to be as unapologetically me as possible. i want to be the me that i am in my head. i just want to say what i think without that tremble in my voice, without that flicker. i want to wear a leather jacket and have dyed hair and not say sorry a single time in the whole goddamned day. i want to look at a guy without thinking that he’d never be interested in me anyways. i want to wear clothes that cling without worrying about which rolls are showing where. i want to make that one mistake that’d be awful but such a good story in the end. i want to ask what the fuck are you looking at and have the evening end with me having punched someone in the throat. i want to make out with strangers and get tattoos just because i feel like it in that particular moment. i want to flirt in languages i don’t speak. i want to walk in that certain way without thinking about it, saunter. i want to do things that make me question who i am, shake my foundation. i want to scream, and laugh into the dead of night. i want people to hate me, and i want people to love me. i want to knock them down.  i want to blow them away. i have a cyclone within me, but i want to be in the eye.

watch me unravel

life is a little bit harder, but so are you. you walk with your arms stretched out, and your eyes are boiled sweets, crystalline and dense. the word “can” repeats again and again, wrapping around your brain. nothing makes sense except for you, so you make sure to touch as many things as possible. disturb. unpick. and with the threads in your hand, you walk away.

… i’ve come undone

tin horn

psyche, psyche, psyche…

something sinister to it, pendulum swinging slow. a degenerate moving through the city with criminal stealth, welcome to enemy turf. harder than immigrants work, golf is stitched into my shirt. get up off the pavement, brush the dirt up off my psyche, psyche, psyche.

it’s probably been twelve years since my father left, left me fatherless. and i just used to say i hate him in dishonest jest, when honestly i miss this, like when i was six. and every time i got the chance to say it, i would swallow it. sixteen, i’m hollow, intolerant, skipped shots. i storm that whole bottle, i’ll show you a role model. i’m drunk, pissy, pissing on somebody front lawn, trying to figure out how and when the fuck i missed moderate. momma often was offering peace offerings. think, wheeze cough, scoffing and he’s off again. searching for a big brother, tyler was that. plus he liked how i rap, the blunted mice in the trap. too black for the white kids and too white for the blacks. from honor roll to to cracking locks up off them bicycle racks. i’m indecisive, i’m scatterbrained and i’m frightened, it’s evident. and them eyes where he hiding all them icicles at.

something sinister to it, pendulum swinging slow. a degenerate moving through the city with criminal stealth, welcome to enemy turf. harder than immigrants work, golf is stitched into my shirt. get up off the pavement, brush the dirt up off my psyche, psyche, psyche.

time lapse, bars rhymin’, heart’s bottomless pit. was mobbin’ deep as 96 havoc and prodigy did. we were the potty-mouth posse, crash the party and dip. with all belongings, then toss em out to the audience. nothing was fucking awesome, trying to make it from the bottom. this is feeling as hard as vince carter’s knee cartilage is. supreme garment and weed gardeners, garnishing spliffs with keef particles and entering apartments with ‘zine article. tolerance through boundaries, i know you happy now. craven and these complex, fuck done track me down just to be the guys that did it, like i like attention. not the type where trying to get a raise at my expense. supposed to be grateful, right, like thanks so much, you made my life harder. and the ties between my mom and i are strained and tightened, even more than they were before all of this shit. been back a week and i already feel like calling it quits.

something sinister to it, pendulum swinging slow. a degenerate moving through the city with criminal stealth, welcome to enemy turf. harder than immigrants work, golf is stitched into my shirt. get up off the pavement, brush the dirt up off my psyche, psyche, psyche…

march 9

sunday

☢

sunday was earl sweatshirt and i was worn as fuck when i woke up. i quickly shook that off, thanking the stars that i hadn’t drunk much the night before. hangovers are not as easy to shake. so the day really began come evening, when kiki came over. that’s when i broke out the beer, and she broke out the tequila. i soon followed her lead, and she followed mine a little bit at the end. tequila is shady as fuck, okay. it doesn’t sit bad in the stomach, but it definitely doesn’t sit good. it’s just weird. i think i called it devil’s sweat at some point, and i stand by that statement. almost-two beers and apparently one shot for me, the rest of that second beer and apparently one shot for kiki, and we were both beginning to feel that familiar warm fuzziness. buzzed. and to the subway we went.

one train ride later, we began to walk towards our destination. i am (probably too) proud to say that i managed to remember the way to the club, despite 1. having been there only once. 2. having the worst sense of direction in the history of anything ever. so we reached our destination and got in line. when scoping the scene, we realized that nope there are no hot males and jesus why is everyone so white? fucking hipsters. on a positive note, we only saw about a handful of “swag” people. now that i think of it, there were a lot of skater dudes (white tee, long hair, chucks) there too, which is fine i guess. so we hung out and i think that this is where i started getting pumped. before, i’d been like, oh whatever it’ll be cool we’ll listen to some good music and just chill…

but then we got in, and checked in our jackets and joined the crowd… and there were a fuckton of people in front of us, and they were pretty much all dudes. there was some really good music playing, and kiki and i were dancing, getting hyped, and people were just like bobbing their heads and feeling cool… and i just felt a little aggro. not angry, not at all, but like hah fuck you i’m going to stand in front of all of you, no way in hell am i going to stand behind you. so when taco came out, and then earl himself, shit got real. we just pushed, and jumped, and pushed some more. and slowly but surely, we managed to get up to the front, to the point where we had circa three people in front of us. and we were just thrashing around with the dudes, giving as much bruises as we got. it was sweaty and gross and pretty great.

bottles were being smashed and everything was sticky. one dude said to another that the shards of glass was making it hard to mosh, “everyone’s wearing chucks heh.” yeah okay. a+ moment was when earl said this is for the girls, or ladies, or whatever, and he sounded a little sarcastic, but then sunday came on and that’s my favorite song and i was just like yesssss this songggg. a+ moment was when earl and taco fucked with each other because aw they seem like such bros. a+ moment was that i managed to get up to the very front when they were doing the “let’s touch hands with the crowd” thing and have both of them take mine. it was like solid proof that yep, we’re at the front. mission accomplished.

after the concert, kiki and i went to a 7-eleven and bought some water and a cold hot chocolate that’s called basically idiot in swedish. i hadn’t had that shit in years, but it’s just delicious as i remember. kiki got a hot dog and then we went back downtown, home to the ghetto. i was pretty spent, and by this point, my soaked hair had turned into a sweat-crusted half-fro. so one shower later, i was ready to turn myself in (after skyping with kiki for about two hours). all in all, a great time. these days, going out means taking over the night, and i’m so ready to do it again and again and again and again. i want to conquer everything.

lägg dig bara ner/just lay down

 

du gör allt det där du gör, för bra för att bli nekad i dörren när du stör. 
jag är körd när vi nuddas, det brister för mig. gränser som suddas, jag är klistrad vid dig. 
för jag kan inte sluta vilja ha det där du sa vi skulle va, som aldrig blev av. 
okej att planen övergavs – men varför ringer du mig?

julia spada