Things Mo Likes #4: Silversun Pickups

The first time I ever listened to this band had been in a basement, my ex's. It was Summer 2007, the day was very sunny and the room was nice and cool. He was fiddling with his computer and he had the internet radio on. Whenever I was at his house and he was in his computer mode, I found ways of occupying myself and/or annoying him.

The opening bars of "Lazy Eye" were like a finger beckoning to us. They said: Listen to me...and bask in my indie rock awesome-ness.

I've been waiting, for this moment all my life, but it's not quite right...

The guitar riffs were just as hazy and warm as the sunlight streaming in through the small window, and there was just something about this fucking song that made us stop. He stopped his computer-ing, and I stopped my annoying, and we just listened. We looked at each other and just nodded, like we just figured out some great equation: our synapses were connecting over a song. I think "Lazy Eye" must have played at least 3 more times that day. Each time was better than the first, and each time it played, we would stop mid-sentence/action and just listen. We knew we were getting that good shit. It didn't take him long to download their first album, Carnavas, and we just marinated in it.

Later during that summer, I had spent a crappy day in the city on two miserable interviews. The sun was shining everywhere, just not on me and my foul mood. As we walked to get food, he put one of his earbuds from his phone/mp3 player in my ear, and he slipped his arm around me. The song "Melatonin" was next on shuffle, and as soon as we embarked on that first music assisted-step, the scenery glazed over and changed.

My brain doesn't produce any, I'm soaring without anything...

My feelings and senses were being magnified tenfold. I felt the navy green in the softness of his dress shirt, and I heard the swish of my dress pans, and the slap of my flip flops against the pavement. I felt the warmth of his right hand radiating on my waist, and the syncopated rhythm that our hips made as we walked in unison. It’s strange sometimes, the way music makes you move in slow motion, even stranger is how the rest of the world follows.

Earlier this year, Silversun Pickups had released Swoon, their second full length album, and by this time I was very much single; so many things had changed and were still in flux. I had given it a couple of good spins, but I don't think I recognized the most important track on this album until I saw them live at the All Points West festival in August. They played the last day, a Sunday, and the weather was complete shit. The sky, the color of an sweaty gym sock; the air was just as stale. My feet hurt from my cheap-ass plastic rain boots and the humidity was killing me By the time the gates had finally opened, many of the bands were cut. As I walked in with two friends I could hear the strains of "Growing Old Is Getting Old" tinkling from the main stage, all the way across Liberty State Park. I ran, sprinted to the main stage, squelching along in my rain boots.

So we all are growing old and it's getting old, pressure on our hollow bones and the varicose...

It stank of mud and shit and damp. Yet my hands were in the air, and I had found my voice...and I was singing.

Suddenly we decompose but we're not alone
So we all are getting old...
Maybe we're sealed in silence
Maybe we feel a guidance
Maybe your own devices
Will keep you afraid and cold, but I...
Memorized your smile lines when lips divide
Kept alive your childlike reaction time
We're allowed to expire with ourselves in mind
So we all are getting old...
Put out the fear of silence
Put out the need for guidance
Put out your own devices
Don't be afraid of the cold, because we...

When Brian Aubert screams out, We sing, we fight, we cry…we slide, slide, slide into delight, it’s so fucking strong. I had put up my hands in the air because it felt like I was fighting too, trying so hard to slide into that delight. There’s such ferocity in that song, this fevered urgency that I felt creeping inside me, a tendril of life that had awoken. Now, I feel like it's about not being afraid of the future, not holding back, and rushing head first into aging and moving on. I must have looked insane, but that’s how you feel when a song is calling your name.


Don't be afraid of the cold
Afraid of the cold
Afraid over time we've got nowhere to go but here...

Things Mo Likes #3: Ranting About Books.

There’s bodily form in books. They have faces, sometimes featureless and matte, other times shiny and textured. They have spines that crinkle and crack from overuse. When you open their pages, their guts spill out in the form of typeface.

Books are the true loneliness chasers. Their pages are soft and welcoming, the black print reassuring. When you place an open book page down against your chest, it almost feels like it’s holding you. There is a symbiotic relationship happening between the reader and the book. The reader, wanting the knowledge and the book needing a home for the knowledge it longs to give.

Or, the book could just be giving you a squeeze, a miniature embrace. Favorite books seem to do that very well. Like people, they get under your skin, breaking down every defense. They find a way to dwell inside you, and make a home for themselves. But instead of taking things away from you, like a parasite, it adds to you, warming you, making you feel more whole.

Every time I re-read To Kill a Mockingbird, it’s like romping with a lost love. I’m up all night with it, supporting it over my face, or bracing it on its back. I know exactly how far to bend the spine before it gives. And when I run my fingertips over the cover, and I close my eyes for a minute, it almost feels like skin.

Originally posted on Facebook, August 19th, 2009

Things Mo Likes #2: Thunderstorms

During our massive thunder and lightning storm yesterday, my mom and I marveled at the fact that we haven't experienced a storm like this in quite a while. It was a sight to see, the sky looking like week-old curdled milk, and the sun on the fringes of the clouds casting an eerie glow.

My mom is a reasonable (ish?) person, but she can be very superstitious. To her, the storm was a reflection of the tumult and aggression that was going on in the world. Nature was sucking up all of our negativity with a straw and was spiting it back at us because we gave her indigestion. "It's truly a sign of the times", she said.

Personally, I think it probably had more to do with global warning, but I wasn't going to let all of this get in the way of a truly kick-ass thunderstorm. I decided to hole up in my room and watch it as it raged.

I turned out all of my lights and opened the windows just a crack to let the cool, charged air in. It made my skin tingle, and I could almost smell the electrons. The rain came down in confused, halting spurts: fat drops one minute, needle-like spears the next.

Then the lightning came, renting the sky with ragged beams of light, followed by the thunder, bringing up the rear with sonic booms that rattled the walls. I could hear my nieces frightened squeals downstairs every time a thunderclap hit. The sounds swirled themselves into a bizarre symphony of terrified yelps, pounding rain, and rumblings from every corner of the sky.

At around 11, it began to lose momentum, the lightning fading away under an ashen, overcast sky. And at midnight, the thunder and rain sputtered and died. It had been a sonic mess, a cacophonous disaster, and the most beautiful firefight ever.

My skin is still tingling.



Originally posted on Facebook, July 27, 2009

Things Mo Likes #1: Fans

Now I'm speaking for most brown people in general (esp brown people of Caribbean descent) when I say brown people enjoy dry heat. This summer in particular has been nothing but humid and wet, which I greatly dislike. The humidity has been truly unbearable, rendering my multiple showers useless. My weekends (when I haven't been spending outside with friends) have been spent with me sprawled out on my bed downing glasses of ice water and cursing my very existence. I never had central air, nor any other sort of air conditioning in my room, so all I can do is open a window, try to will a breeze to make an appearance, and become a primo mosquito treat or melt to death.

I have at last count 4 mosquito bites on my right leg, and 3 on my left.

Last summer, I bought a great fan at Bed, Bath, and Beyond and had a pretty much itch-free existence. I used it well, then put it in the hall closet so it could hibernate. Fast forward to this summer...and the fan was not anywhere to be found. Why didn't I buy another fan? Why the hell am I gonna do that when I bought a PERFECTLY FUNCTIONAL fan last year?! WE ARE IN A RECESSION. And throughout the beginning of this year's rainforest-y summer in NYC, I've been suffering.

UNTIL TODAY.

I gave up searching on my own, and asked my mom, "For the love of Pete, WHERE IS MY FAN!?!" She asked me who the hell Pete was, then pointed me in the direction of the basement....where the fan has been relaxing in the box it came in next to the laundry room. Do you know how many freaking times I've passed that room, and the fan was there all along? Tricky motherfucker.

I fell up the stairs several times in the haste to get to my room to plug it in. I let my hair out of its ponytail, stood in front of that stream of cool, dust-tinged air, and shook it out like like I was in a Pantene Pro V commercial. You don't realize what happiness really is until you have a fan blasting at your face.

I wasted no time in shutting my window, shucking off all of my clothes, and spinning in front of my fan. I watched as the patina of sweat swaddling my midsection vanished, much like my heat-induced delirium, and sighed with contentment.



Originally Posted on Facebook, July 26th, 2009