vol. 1 disco delulu
When life feels hollow, hit the town and let the beat lead you somewhere new. This is the soundtrack to one woman’s evening of lost and found.
Dear reader,
In middle school, I had a binder of meticulously curated burner CDs. I call it a labor of love because back then, my friends and I would spend hours illegally downloading music on dial-up Internet (s/o to LimeWire and Napster). Then, we traded these CDs like the most valuable pogs. It was our favorite after-school activity (a close second was putting up cryptic lyrics on our AIM away messages).
Now, it’s Spotify that makes the playlists for me. It was novel for a while, but then it became more of the same algorithm-selected songs. The beauty of handpicked tracks is that it’s from someone with a different perspective, sometimes wildly different taste (related: news, politics). Now we have ChatGPT, bots and AI — oh my. We only hang out in our corners of the Internet. This is my inconsequential rage against the machine: Fuck algorithmic music recommendations and AI-generated writing.
The bots are coming. But will you hang out here with me a bit longer in my corner? Let’s arm ourselves with the mighty pen and human ingenuity. In the past year, I’ve written loads, observed all the feels, lost and found my creativity — and I’m momentarily brave enough to share that with you. It’s my modern labor of love: short stories and poems — each to be consumed to music that has been handpicked by yours truly. Some people make mood boards for their designs, I make playlists for my writing.
Anyways, I made you this. I hope you like it.
Imperfectly yours,
It’s Friday night. A sea of commuters criss-cross each other in their rush to get home. Friends are gathering to begin what would be the first of many drinks that evening. She is in her pajamas, microwaving yesterday’s leftovers. Work, cook, clean, sleep, repeat. It hasn’t always been this way. A group of party-goers pass by outside her kitchen window; their drunken clamor interrupting her zombie-like dishwashing. She sets her bowl back in the sink, letting the running water overflow. The silence of her apartment consumes her. It doesn’t have to be this way. A wistful look on her face, a twinge of sorrow in her chest, followed by a momentary resolve. There’s a dress in the far corner of her closet, and she knows just the right shade of burgundy lipstick to go with it. One last pep talk in the mirror, and she shuts the door behind her, letting out a deep exhale. It’s a brisk journey from her apartment to the club — just enough time for the nervousness to subside and the self-assuredness to kick in. She marches to the beat of the flickering yellow street lights, murmurs from people sitting on terraces and the clinking of raised glasses. Tonight feels different. She feels different. Never one to dive head-first, she cautiously steps onto the dance floor, second-guessing why she was there in the first place. But with every beat, she slowly gives into the music. It’s there that she abandons the rigidity of life and embraces the chaotic freedom that can only come from dancing in the dark. She gets her groove on, catching the eye of a few, dancing with another and, finally, goes home with one. It’s Saturday morning, and she is in bed with nothing but a Mona Lisa smile. The sunlight dances against the kitchen window. The sky is a new blue.
