Luca Guadagnino's Old Apartment In Northern Italy

Annie: There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true, it can pierce the veil between life and death; conjuring spirits from the past...and the future. In ancient Ireland, they were called Filí. In Choctaw land, they called them Fire Keepers. And in West Africa, they were called Griots. This gift can bring healing to their communities. But it also...attracts evil....

Sinners (2025)

Batak architecture of Samosir Island, Indonesia.

Jing Huang by Somon Lipman for L'officiel Singapore Magazine May 2024

blackwork print, c. 1620.

art will save you, being unreasonably passionate about something niche will save you, letting past sources of joy show you the way back to yourself will save you, earnestness over composure will save you, the natural world will save you, caring for something bigger than yourself will save you, daring to be seen will save you, kindness not as a whim but a principle will save you, appreciation as a practice will save you, daring to try something new will save you, grounding will save you, love will save you, one good nights sleep will save you

my homegirl wrote a really salient essay on substack about how reliance on algorithms ultimately stifles modern day listener’s curiosity and the livelihood of music artists themselves.

open.substack.com

Your Algorithm Hates the B-Sides

Notes About Streaming from a Music Listener

i def recommend giving it a read and reflecting on your own music listening practices and habits. a favorite paragraph of mine that speaks further to the evidence that we living in a dystopia today:

“Algorithmic curation has consumed every facet of people’s lives —they search for information on AI run search engines, they exclusively buy products on social media platforms that push hundreds of ads based on the posts they engage with, they build virtual communities amongst like-minded, aesthetically aligned and desirable online users. A revival of pre-streaming label street teams and independent CD pushers would fail for many reasons, one being that they’d find the streets desolate and empty.”

John Brosio - Dinosaurs Eating a CEO (2013)

If you think having uncomfortable conversations is hard - wait until you see the result of not having them.

i think a big part of the current wave of antifeminist rhetoric among women is that people just cannot accept the idea that liberating yourself is uncomfortable. like of course it feels Wrong to see something you've internalised as normal/necessary (like wearing makeup 24/7) be challenged, that's because you've internalised it. and it will feel ostracising to go against the status quo once you question the things you've internalised. but the discomfort is part of it. you have to move past the fear response and look at the bigger picture.