How do you manage stress? People often ask about stress management, as though there’s some magical technique that will make the demands of life evaporate. Meditate for ten minutes! Take a deep breath! Buy a scented candle! Sure. But when people’s livelihoods depend on you, and people’s care […]
There is a Talking Heads song that has been living rent-free in my head lately. Once in a Lifetime. You know the one. You may not know the lyrics, but you know the feeling. You wake up one day and look around at your life and think: How […]
A recent study suggests that musicians experience discomfort differently, both in their bodies and their brains. Apparently, learning an instrument doesn’t just make you interesting at dinner parties; it may actually rewire your relationship to pain. Which is fascinating. And also mildly offensive. Because now I’m sitting here […]
I am wildly late to the Apple TV documentary Beastie Boys Story. Like, five-years-late late. But in my defense, I am currently living out my Word of the Year, that of Reclaim, which apparently includes reclaiming the things I loved before adulthood, responsibility, and calendars with too many […]
Every year around this time, there’s a musical inevitability. Like gravity. Like glitter in your coat pockets until March. Mariah Carey arrives. “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is basically the holiday’s emotional North Star. Thirty years old, somehow ageless, both nostalgic and aggressively modern. The moment […]
I woke up this morning with not one, but two musical squatters in my head. Neither of them pays rent, neither was invited, and neither appears anywhere on my Spotify playlist. Yet here they are, living their best lives on repeat: “Safe and Sound” and Whitney Houston’s “I […]
For reasons that defy logic, caffeine, or the laws of neural firing, R.E.M.’s “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” has set up camp in my brain. Rent-free. No deposit, no lease, just living there playing at 3 a.m., during Zoom meetings, and while I’m feeding the dogs. Now, I haven’t […]
It’s the start of my long weekend, and instead of doing something wholesome like hiking or reorganizing my sock drawer (which has seen better days), I decided to do what any self-respecting overworked human does. I binge-watched my way to enlightenment. I started off with a documentary on […]
How do you relax? So there I was, late Saturday night, staring at the streaming void trying to figure out what to watch. I landed on a documentary about the history of reggaetón on Peacock. Why not? It sounded like the perfect background noise for folding laundry. Except […]
This morning, somewhere between the grogginess of waking up and the steam of the shower, I found myself mid-verse in an Alanis Morissette song.Not a playlist in sight. No radio playing. Just me belting out:“I got one hand in my pocket, and the other one is hailin’ a […]
