#16 Shimmy, Pop, Sob, Repeat
dancing barefoot and crying to The Paper Kites
Happy Wednesday (It’s Thursday),
As my box macaroni and cheese comes to a riotous boil on the stove, I am sat at my desk watching the afternoon light filter through my kitchen window, counting down the minutes until Pareesa picks me up to go see Bottoms at the Grand Lake Theater. Normally, the light would cast a shameful shadow on my pile of rotting dishes, but today reader, my counters are clean. I have labored since Friday cleaning out closets, reorganizing shelves, and deep cleaning surfaces as a farewell to the Dog Days of Summer. (Yes, the Dog Days of Summer are related to the ancient Greek’s tracking of Sirius, the dog star and no, I am not crying).
I know, I know, we’re not ready for change. However, regardless of my distaste for Starbucks coffee, I must begrudgingly admit that my seasons are more demarcated by the availability of Pumpkin Spice Lattes (fall) and Peppermint Mochas (winter) than by any Gregorian calendar or astronomical definitions of solstices and equinoxes. With adherence to the Seattle mega-chain’s menu schedule that has us all under lock and key, it seems fall started the moment the first Pumpkin Spice Latte was poured on August 24th, and I am behaving as such. (Alexa…I see you traipsing around London with your Golden Retrievers, Skin Care Routine, and PSLs… you go girl).
One way I’m carrying the heat of summer into the briskness of autumn, however, is by shimmying vigorously. Reader, if you’re new here you may be wondering what this means. Let me educate you on the world of femme-empowerment via high intensity cardio dance classes.
The year was 2021. The world was bleak. I received a text message from a friend and fellow educator, Bri (who welcomed a beautiful baby this year — congrats to you!) who asked if I wanted to take a dance class called Shimmy Pop! in the Trader Joe’s parking lot behind the dumpsters. And because it was 2021, and the world was bleak, this sounded like being invited to the Netherfield Ball.
In an oversized tee and spandex, I danced for 60 straight minutes to a combination of reggaetón, r&b, hip hop, and pop bops of the 90’s. I sweated more than I had in years, and without any mirrors to remind me of how long it had been since I’d last danced, I felt strangely comfortable in my skin.
What I’ve come to realize over the past two years is that my experience of feeling uninhibited, unjudged, and unafraid when I danced with those women had less to do with apocalyptic trauma bonding and more to do with the ethos and community of the studio, Hipline.
We are a community of women and marginalized genders, backgrounds, races, and abilities —our classes and programs center on non-judgment, empathy, and joy.
If you live in the Town you may know of Hipline (now back doing in-person + livestream classes in their gorgeous studio on Lake Shore), but as someone who grew up dancing, I’ve never been to a studio quite like it.
Though I’ve been dancing since before I could walk, I’ve stayed away from dance classes ever since I quit my college team. As I grew older, dance had become less about a healthy relationship to music and self-expression and more about an unhealthy relationship with my reflection. Anyone who grows up in this world knows that mirrors, media, and matronly instructors can do a number on a girl’s perception of her own body. Before long, going to dance class became less of a source of community and more of a reminder that I would never be as ______________ as the other girls. I would never be ____________ enough for the teacher or the audience, so why even try? To grow up dancing is to be routinely picked apart, to be expected to stand out for all the right reasons, but to conform in all the right ways, and I’m not sure anyone gets through it unscathed.
What Hipline offers, more than anything, is a space to heal what it did not break. As I dance alongside people of all ages and backgrounds (some with infants strapped to their chests as they shimmy, some with knee braces from their second replacement), I look around to see that all of us are smiling. Not in a culty way, but in an almost sneaky, private way. As involuntary as breath. These are the kind of smiles you can’t hide because the music and the movement make your face split. The kind of smiles you don’t notice yourself making until you look at a photograph of the moment later. There is no performance here for anyone else but myself, and as a woman who’s been told to smile my entire life, there is something liberating about doing it when no one is asking.
Dance was something I loved as a child, but the conditions of competition and pressure made me resent it. At twenty-nine, I was thrilled to discover that door was still open just enough for me to take one more peek inside. It didn’t lead back to those days of performance pressure and body image battles; it’s led me somewhere completely new. So go collect your stamps, your rocks, and your bugs. Play D&D and tennis or dabble in community theater with the other nerds around you. It’s never too late to feed that inner child.
XO,
M
🎵 At The Roadhouse by The Paper Kites (folk/rock) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
This double-album has a running time of 1h19, so I am welcoming September with a dimly lit apartment, some plum crisp in the oven, and a warm ember of yearning in my soul.
My favorites on the album are:
Marietta
Till the Flame Turns Blue
Hurts so Good
I Don’t Want to Go That Way
I’ve heard mothers sometimes talk about the love they have for their children, that it is so overwhelming sometimes that they feel they might explode. I don’t know what it feels like to have a child, but I do know what it feels like to listen to The Paper Kites does, and sometimes it’s like wearing my heart outside of my body. My love for The Paper Kites cannot be overstated and sometimes, when I let myself think for too long about what their music means to me, I feel like throwing up. But in a good way.
I don’t know the word for this or really how to explain it very well, but The Paper Kites sound different and also exactly the same on every album. The only thing I can compare it to is watching someone you love grow up. At first, you believe you know everything about their personality: you define them by the things they gravitate to, their humor and their attitudes. But as they develop and experience the world, they start to reprioritize: they go through phases of heartbreak and moments of joy and periods where they aren’t quite sure about the things that used to bring such certainty. They dress different, sound different maybe. I have such respect for writers that don’t let the boundaries of genre prevent them writing what they need to say, and The Paper Kites’ Sam Bentley is no different.
Listen, I love “Bloom” (their first released single from Woodland in 2010) just as much as the next person (probably more, I’ll fight you), but thirteen years later, At The Roadhouse sounds different because it is supposed to?
TLDR; It’s Always The Paper Kites
On our most recent episode of “I Have No Milk,” (new episode out tomorrow!) I spoke to Lana about how every time I hear a song, I go to Shazam it, and without fail it’s always The Paper Kites. And thus, the title of this section. I’m not going to keep this brief because if there was ever a time or a platform to drone on about the entire discography of this Australian band I’m completely obsessed with, it is now and this one.
Bands get a lot of flak for changing their sound as the years march on, and even I’m guilty of groaning at certain albums released by some of my favorite artists. I’d become grumpy with records that I felt had abandoned whatever sound or feeling I’d always associated the artist with. But I think this does the musicians, and ultimately the fan, such a disservice. It takes courage to develop your art, and staying stagnant in an expression that no longer feels authentic to who you are or what message you feel compelled to communicate can bleed an artist dry quicker than people realize. Before long, the soul will be impossible to find in the songs. The band will stop playing. We will stop listening.
The evolution of style is evident in the albums’ titles, their cover art, and ultimately their sound which feels much darker and swampier on the newest album than even on Roses (2021) though it still retains their familiar, nostalgic lyricism steeped in a melancholy place-memory.
Whereas Woodland is fresh, crisp, outside and dewy with tracks like “Woodland” “Featherstone” and “Bloom,” At The Road House is necessarily darker, thrum-ier, and dimly lit, like sitting on a studded leather barstool getting warm from the cold. All the albums between these two, have of course led them here: States (2013), twelvefour (2015), On the Train Ride Home (2018), On the Corner Where You Live (2018), Roses (2021).
My favorite album of theirs will probably always be On The Train Ride Home (2018). With tracks like “Nothing More Than That,” “On the Train Ride Home,” “Arms,” “Standing in the Rain,” and “How Long,” I am transported back to dark, drizzly Boston nights lit only by the pollution of the city — headlights, bar signs, and cigarettes— where I am observing everyone else’s life through paned glass.
Sweet December's coming 'round
The city's big but all I've found
You're the truest thing in this town
And I want you nowShadows from the streetlight shades
Watching every word you say
Never seen you look that way
And I want you nowMmm, nothing more than that
- Nothing More Than That (2018)
To be in the middle of a city playing your own life like a montage as you watch lovers stumble out of bars and keep each other warm, to know so specifically what it is that you want and yet feel so far from it. Chasing raindrops on the window that separates you from it all. OUCH amirite?
But, like one of my best friends reminds me, we were meant to feel it all. The grief and the glory.
Hiding ‘til you’re numb and you’re grey
That’s no way to try to win the day
Life wants you to feel it is here
It’s meant to feel that way- Standing In The Rain (2018)
Life wants you to feel it is here. It’s meant to feel that way…
A Conversation Across 55 Years: Same Question, Same Answer I Reckon
The more music I listen to, the more I hear other artists between the lines of my favorite songs. (Like last week with Mt. Joy X The Grateful Dead). Here I’ve put a Paper Kites song next to a Dylan song, and I don’t know whether to smile or cry. All art stands on the shoulders of that before it. Open your ears, lean your head back, and hear it all.
🎬 Bottoms directed by Emma Seligman (film, theaters) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I think it did Barbie better than Barbie did. Superbad but make it lesbians. With a running time of 92 minutes, Bottoms harks back to that early-mid 2000’s high school experience — Motorola Razrs and Jansports. Enough said? It’s so good. 10/10 recommend going with ur queer bffs. <3
🎧📚 The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley (thriller, mystery, 2019) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Plot: A bunch of old friends from an elite private school gather years later at a remote Scottish inn to celebrate New Years Eve together. Dark secrets they’ve all kept hidden since their prep school days threaten to surface. Oh, also, someone dies. (Not a spoiler. Happens quick!)
No, you didn’t read that wrong. It is exactly the same plot as The Guest List, just swap Scottish for Irish, New Years Eve for wedding, and inn for island. Same hat.
Spoiler Alert: I actually don’t think this spoils anything, but I just wasn’t a fan of having the murderer be someone suffering from a personality disorder. Oftentimes, folks with mental illnesses (as personality disorders are considered, to my knowledge, according to the DSM-V) tend to be the recipients of violence, not the perpetrators of it. I just felt like 2019 was a bit late in the game to be playing into this worn-out stereotype.
🧁 Copycat Shroomami Bowl ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sweetgreen has had its way with my bank account ever since my pantsuit-wearing days as a Manhattan paralegal. I would order via the app (which has improved massively since) and walk those blustery eleven blocks to eat a $20 salad that tasted like home. If there is anything that can put a Band-Aid on a California girl’s homesickness during a New York February, it’s Sweetgreen.
However, I am twenty-nine now and begrudgingly reconcile my accounts these days and let me tell you…I have been humbled by how much I spend on take-out. So, in an effort to still eat healthily, but also be able to retire when I’m 70, I am making it at home with Lahbco’s miso ginger dressing recipe. I like a cross between a shroomami and a harvest bowl dupe so mix and match at your leisure!
Ingredients:
kale
wild rice
sweet potatoes / roasted fall vegetables
sauteed mushrooms
apples
avocado
sometimes I add blue cheese crumbles?
📱kqed instagram (local news / events)
I follow kqed’s Instagram page, and whatever gen-zer is behind it is doing a great job. This morning I saw this video about “The Amah Mutsun Tribal Band’s fight to save Ancestral Land in the South Bay.” If you live in the Bay or care about the protection and stewardship of indigenous land, watch this and do what you can to support.
Announcements:
Sometimes it’s hard even for me to keep up with all of my creative endeavors, but if you are keen to follow along…
🔌 We have a podcast …
where I and Lana (one name like Cher) talk about fandom, books, music, relationships, etc. It’s not supposed to be funny, but we’ve heard feedback that it’s gotten a few laughs. Our first episode, which debuted on June 6, 2023, discusses all things international friendship, fanfiction, and Sally Rooney. Check it out below if you haven’t!
🔌 We have a Substack…
you can follow here while waiting for episode #2 — out Friday! Lana has a section of this Substack called Milkshake, while my section is called Skim Milk, but we still plan on co-writing loads together. Take a gander. (Why are male geese actually so aggressive?)
“Skim Milk” is more than just recommendations. I hope to be doing longer-form essays and interviews over there. Is the first edition just recommendations though? Yes. Yes it is.
“Milkshake” hopes to be doing longer-form essays on music and fanfiction over there as part of I Have No Milk.
Ending Note & Acknowledgements:
As always, I love hearing what you’ve enjoyed about this newsletter and if anything resonated with you.
PS: The infamous Pumpkin Spice Latte turns 20 years old this year. Read about it here.
PPS: If you live in the area and enjoy dance / weight lifting, check out Talia Litle!
She’s my favorite instructor and does classes all around the bay. The way she mitigates shame and empowers the people in her classes is actually wild. And it’s so authentic. Like she’s having such a good time, but she’s not there to perform for you. Her classes aren’t about her, they are about everyone! She also has a youtube channel full of awesome hour-long work outs and amazing spotify playlists. Check her out!
Shout outs to:
Devon is back from New York City, thank god. She embraced the end of rat girl summer by taking herself to the US Open like the queenrat she is.
Lana has been going hard at applications for the last few months and had a final round interview yesterday. Out of over 400 applicants, she made it to the last round so that in and of itself is a huge accomplishment. Let’s send good vibes for a fat paycheck to go with it.
Alexa packed up all her stuff, her 2 dogs, and her husband and moved to London. Follow her yoga instructor account here (@alexakendallflow). She’s doin’ it all! We love an international dream-chaser!
Meg is settling into her groove in NYC, reading voraciously per usual. Follow her #booktok account (@dropeverythingandread) she has with her friend Princess (based in Seattle)! She does an adorable series of “what people are reading on the train in NYC,” “what people are reading by the pool” etc. I love it. Also, her book recs don’t miss.
Yuli, like Lana, is on the job hunt! She’s got another interview this week. Good luck, Yuli!
Jennie for sending me her “Top 10 Songs of All Time” list. I almost cried. Exchange hand-written playlists with your friends! You won’t regret it!
My sister has a fancy work event this week in LA. Work hard, play hard sissy!
Leo started at the Rennaissance Faire and is working Faire and doing their fulltime responsibiliberries at work. A monarch. A legend.
Cecelia, book and beer influencer and bff extraordinarie, sent me the CUTEST hard kombuchas in the muhfkin post last week. I cracked open the Elderwand flavor whilst editing the pod. T’was the perfect self-celebration. Thank you, Cecelia (@lostinthehopss)!
My September birthdays! Savannah, Hilary, Liz, Serena, Lana, Hannah, AND MORE. I hope y’all know how special you are.
Peace and love, babies! Peace and Love!
XO,
M