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A music video for a song I adore was released a few weeks ago. In the video for “Someone Else,” The 1975 frontman Matty Healy tries to connect with a motionless human sitting in his apartment, fails, then packs up and stumbles around a city drunk and heartbroken. Among other things: he gets cornered and beaten up while riding hia skateboard, has sex in a car, and gets strange stares from a couple in a diner. During the last minute or so of the video, the perpetrators of his beating, his sexual partner, and his voyeurs all turn out to be…him. 

Even though one song was playing another started in my head, an older song my family loved to play on our Wii Rock Band (back in the day when that was a thing): Lit, “My Own Worst Enemy.” I still remember my dad laughing at the lyrics, “It's no surprise to me/I am my own worst enemy/'Cause every now and then I kick the living shit out of me.”

The “Somebody Else” video got me thinking how, after weeks of feeling racked by severe anxiety, that perhaps I was acting as the barrier to my own healing. 

This is not to say that my or anyone else’s mental illness is all up to them to “overcome.” Anxiety is a serious mental illness that cannot be cured by simply “not worrying” anymore, or putting in a good hour of mediation everyday. Anxiety is a mental rut. An obsessive, automatic way of thinking that has a way of making itself appear larger than yourself. I felt, and still feel on many days, overshadowed by this version of myself that is a failure at everything she tries, that will end up in any trouble and despair and trauma that wants to find her. It’s strange to feel at the mercy of…yourself. Especially when you don’t want to live how your mind seems to be forcing you to live. 

And that’s where depression likes to meet up with anxiety, convincing you you’ll always be this exhausted by yourself, and it’s all your fault, so why bother doing anything. If you think this is dramatic, or can’t relate, I truly hope you are living your life without these mental barriers. 

Anxiety has a way of making people and places and familiar sounds and smells seem either terrifying or idealistic or maybe a little of both. It makes you feel as if the lives of other people are enormous and full compared to yours. You’re the person standing at the bus stop for a bus that will never come, and everyone else is in sunglasses, windows down whizzing past on the highway. Even when you tell yourself over and over it isn’t true, it can be hard to live out what you know. Even as I’m typing this, I wonder if it’ll feel good enough to me. If I should even put this out there. But it’s where I’m at. And like in Gary’s article, “Poetry and Depression,” he quotes Alli telling him “You can only write where you’re at.” That phrase has popped into my head countless times this summer, even though I haven’t been writing very much at all. 

While I have to be gentle with myself, (and I strongly encourage you to do the same if you’re struggling, let yourself have bad days) I’ve been feeling lately that part of me has to find the strength to fight back. Through all of my exhaustion, there must be some words to yell back. In the horror film The Bababdook, (which many believe to be an extended metaphor of the main character, single mother Amelia, struggling with mental illness) Amelia screams at the shadowy nothing (The Babadook doesn’t have any appearance in real life) “You are nothing. You're nothing! This is my house! You are trespassing in my house!” 

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While I’m not a particular fan of horror films, a classmate showed this clip for a presentation and I remember trying to hide a few tears as the lights flicked back on. Like the sweaty, tired, and frightened Amelia, I felt, when I had the strength, I was screaming this at this something intangible but tortuous.  

Anxiety is part of who I am and will always be. But it is not the sole defining word encapsulating my personhood. I’ve chosen to let it be this summer. Lately, I think some part of me has been listening too closely to the trespassers in my house, my ear pressed against the door, the rest of me frozen. Those breaking-and-entering take the form of people and places in which trauma occurred. But I bet if I opened the door, felt myself breathing in my own body, I would find I truly do have my own space. My own house. 

While you might think I’m emo trash with including this song in this post (understandable) “My House” by Pvris has been one of my many poetic influences during my healing process. 

It’s taking time to gather the courage to open the door and scream back. I appreciate all the people who have been encouraging me, and moreover, being patient with me along the way.  

I guess this was just a really longwinded reminder to all other writers and suffers of anxiety out there: if you feel stifled, if you feel not like yourself, like you’re not being creative enough, like you’re not creating enough, it’s okay to sit back for a second. It’s okay to give yourself a break and enjoy other people’s art and allow it help you. And by art I don’t just mean paintings or songs, I also mean the comfort of someone squeezing your hand, or the exchange of an understanding glance, the art of empathy. 

It won’t always be this way. For you or for me. I wish you the best. 

Read more of Alyssa's work on Floodmark.

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Ninety percent of writing is rewriting, or so I’ve heard. Sometimes, though, it’s actually 100%. For those of you who get stuck in the arduous and perhaps tedious world of revising, consider this: what if you only revised? What if you took something that somebody else wrote and revised it? Could you revise it in such a way as to express your own creativity while keeping the original recognizable?

These are the questions musicians have to ask when they record and record cover songs. Consider, for your enjoyment and edification, the following ten songs, each of which has two versions, representing five different approaches (but by no means the only approaches) to covering a song. *

Approach No. 1: Rough it Up

"Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus, covered by Le Butcherettes

"Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift, covered by the Screaming Females

This first approach takes a song, rubs off the polish, pushes it into the dirt, rolls it around, stands it back up and says, “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Miley and Taylor crafted a pair of superb pop anthems, but Le Butcherettes and The Screaming Females came in and said, “Sure, but what if you added distortion, removed the production quality, sang off key, or maybe not sing at all but just scream?”

If you like approach No.1 and want to try it in writing, take one of those perfectly polished New Yorker fiction pieces and see if you can rub some grit in it.

Approach No. 2: Tone it Down

"Mother" by Danzig, covered by Wye Oak

“No One Knows” by Queens of the Stone Age, covered by Inara George

Boy, Glenn Danzig and Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) both know how to belt it like a great rock vocalist. “But”, Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak) and Inara George ask, “What if you crooned?” In both these cases, toning down the energy actually helps the covers highlight the angst buried in the original. Where the originals are expressions of raw emotion, the covers feel like thoughtful meditations of repressed feelings.

Try approach No.2 with the sort of writing people tend to have knee-jerk reactions to – a passage from Chuck Palahniuk or Bret Easton Ellis, for example. Try reigning in the intensity by moving it from the heart to the head. Easier said than done, right?

Approach No. 3: Funk it Up

"No Diggity" by Blackstreet, covered by Chet Faker

“No One’s Gonna Love You” by Band of Horses, covered by Cee Lo

Also known as the “Proud Mary” approach after Tina Turner’s cover of the Creedence Clearwater revival song, this approach gives a little more emotional oomph to the original. Chet Faker’s grooviness really sells us on how sexy “shorty” must be. Cee Lo Green’s croon communicates just how lovesick he really is. When you funk it up, you wear your soul on your sleeve.

Take a piece with a cold or matter-of fact writing style and use approach No.3 to inject a little life in it. Give it some soul! Make it groovy! Shout your feelings from the bandstand!

Approach No. 4: Strip It Down

"Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson, covered by Caetano Veloso

"Arrhythmic Palpitations" by Dead to Me, covered by Chris Cresswell

Why use 7 words when 4 would suffice? Why put a full band together when a voice and a guitar? Caetano Veloso and Chris Cresswell had the same idea when they looked at “Billie Jean” and “Arrhythmic Palpitations”, respectively. “You’re working too hard!” they said to the originals, “Here, let me show you how it’s done.” And they played the same songs with half the work. 

If you want to use this approach in writing, it may function as an inverse of approach No.3. Find a piece with a flowery or over-the-top style and get rid of everything superfluous. If you’re brave, you could use this method to turn the works of Marcel Proust or Karl Ove Knausgard into short stories

Approach No. 5: Flip the Emotional Resonance on its Head

"Bitches ain't Shit" by Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg, covered by Ben Folds

"Hand on Your Heart" by Kylie Minogue, covered by José Gonzalez

Here’s the real hard approch, but man when you pull it off its like a damn magic trick. “Bitches ain’t Shit” is a swaggering, misogynistic, gangster anthem, but Ben Folds turns it into a satire of soft-rock love ballads. “Hand On Your Heart” is a bubblegum ditty with a dance-floor beat, but in the hands of José Gonzalez it’s an elegy to love and loss. 

You could totally pull off approach No.5, so give it a try? Do you think you could find a way to make a Raymond Carver story feel like it was written by P.G. Wodehouse? Or maybe inject a Nicholas Sparks romance with a hint of Lovecraftian horror? Who knows? The only limit is your creativity.

* If you don’t feel like wading through this whole article but still want the full covers experience, here’s a playlist with all 20 songs versions in a row: click here to check it out.

Read more of Vernon's great work on Floodmark.

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I don’t really care for baseball, but I certainly love Modern Baseball. And I’m not all that interested in sports, but I sure carry around a lot of love for Modern Baseball’s first album, “Sports.”

“Holy Ghost” is the band’s third full-length album, proceeding “Sports” and their sophomore record, “You’re Gonna Miss It All.” The new album comes off the cuff of the EP, “MoBo Presents: The Perfect Cast,” as well as a short documentary called “Tripping in the Dark,” which reveals frontman Brendan Lukens recent struggles with substance abuse and lifetime struggles with depression and anxiety. In an interview with Vice, Lukens stated that Modern Baseball saved his life. 

Like The Front Bottoms, I am drawn to this band because they tell of struggle so candidly, so unassumingly. They are also made up of people close to me in the age, so I may be biased, but I think there is some sort of paradoxical talent that goes into the ability to tell the truth both modestly and with charm. 

Without any further ranting on my part about how much I love this band, I’ll let you decide for yourself whether you feel inspired and alive by Modern Baseball. Here’s a play by play of the record, where I’ll feature my favorite lyric in each song. Erm…play ball?

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1. Holy Ghost

Holy Ghost is the title track as well as the first track on the album. It serves as a short, introductory tune to the album, soft with a slow build, as other frontman Jake Ewald sings, “He's been haunting my dreams at night/I've been bleeding from tripping in the dark/Trying to turn on the light.” This track, in both sound and lyrics, reminds me of young but lingering fears or regrets. If they grow with you, if they grow bigger than you, they can become more than irrational. They can result in more serious states of being than just worry, like bleeding. 

2. Wedding Singer

Holy Ghost flows right into the second track, Wedding Singer, a more peppy track that still speaks in its speed to anxiety. My favorite lyrics from this track happen to be the chorus: “Midnight rolls around/I thought you heard me sing your spirit sound/But you turned in early/Left the TV flickering/It staged romance across your face.” The idea of shattered light in faded colors casting affection along someone’s skin is a breathtaking image to me. I wish I could say I liked the music video more; while it is somewhat symbolic in representing an anxiety disorder, to be honest it is a bit too manic pixie dream girl for my taste. 

3. Note to Self

The third track, Note to Self, has some cool imagery in the first verse, but despite the fact, my favorite lines are “But I want to make something good/I want to make something better/Something that cannot leave the ground/Unless we lift it up together.” This song speaks to the frustration of having some idea what you want, but not knowing how to get there or how to create it yourself. The speaker desires permanence and companionship and individuality, but everything is imbalanced or in disarray despite his efforts to get where he wants to go. 

4. Mass

Mass is a short and simple song, wrought with the defeat of missing someone and not being able to get to them. My favorite lyrics, though they aren’t particularly complex, are as follows: “Days like this I miss listening to records/Making coffee together/Snow globes and Jersey sheets.” I like the general statement of missing the mundane with a loved one, something everyone can relate to. I love that it’s followed by a few more specifics. I don’t know what snow globes or Jersey sheets necessarily mean to the speaker and his loved one, but that’s not for me to know. Though I might not get the reference, I understand why the speaker brings up details his loved one will find significant. Poems of address often do this.

5. Everyday 

Everyday is a cocktail of bad memories and religious imagery. My favorite lines occur all the way through the last half of the song, “You need to hide/Its in your framework/Look me in the eyes and act like I don't know how shame works/Your compass spins in reverse/The trees do timelapse speed growth/The sky is lost behind a sea of green.” These lyrics remind me that time can move me, move trees, quickly, too quickly, and details can be lost within time, but that doesn’t mean everything painful will fade. The song continues: “She's acting like she knows what's up/She's trip, tripping that devotion stuff/Breaking like her bread won't puff/She's sipping, sipping from that holy cup/Waking up everyday is all about/Doing things you don't want to do/But your rewarded/You get to wake up.” The speaker here talks flippantly about Holy Communion, but then flips a switch to comment on the sanctity of life. A strange combination to both question the meaning of living but also reinforce that even if the meaning is unknown, or racked with agonizing memories, it is not something to throw away. 

6. Hiding

My favorite song by far on this entire album is no. 6, Hiding. There is something that lures like forgiveness on the receiving end of this song, and something like an apology coming from the speaker. “The lever pulled and all at once/The floor was false/The center seam divided/Lace and well-pressed cotton/Found the flood we’d since forgotten/We still leave our shoes at the door/Before we wring out our wet clothes/Across your floor and future/Stitch the gaps that destiny assumed/With floral sutures/Are you hiding or have I abandoned you?/Let me learn here/I am in pursuit of all I can undo.”

7. Coding to These Lukens

Track number 7, Coding to These Lukens, is a call and response between Ewald and Lukens, presumably regarding the fact that Lukens was/is not okay, and his friends are trying to help him out. I enjoy the raw end of this song, the denial and defeat, as Lukens sings, “I know it can't be in my head/It must be one of you who keep pulling me aside/To chit chat about me, who I am, what the deal is with/Who I was once.”

8. Breathing in Stereo

Breathing in Stereo echoes Mass on its subject matter, but is more aggressive, seemingly written in desperation: “I can’t help thinking about you this whole ride home/From Alberta, Portland to wherever I’ll soon unfold/Into oblivion or somewhere between here and fact/Forever waiting for you/Ever-aching cause I’m/Longing for when I’ll be coming back to you.”

9. Apple Cider, I Don't Mind

For most of these songs, I’ve been picking longer stretches of lyrics, but Apple Cider, I Don’t Mind contains my favorite two liner on the album, and possibly in a song altogether: “Did you ever love me?/Biopsy from the origin of sound.” What starts as a cliché question is followed by an unexpected, odd sentence the runs through my head a lot nowadays. If I pick myself apart, where am I speaking from?

10. What If...

What If… is a rumination on what it truly means to be a “good person.” It questions the existence of altruism, whether personal reputation has more of a stake in kindness than anything else. I picked these lyrics as my favorite because I like the way the sentences sound one after another: “When I was younger I thought of deep space/Pick me up swiftly, carry me away/Drop me off willing, light years long gone.” Nonchalance meets nostalgia. Weird. 

11. Just Another Face 

The closing track on the album is titled in reference to the first song Lukens ever wrote, called “How Do I Tell A Girl I Want to Kiss Her?”. But this song is not the conventional love song its title nods toward. It’s a song of self hatred and self love, of wanting to give up but simultaneously recognizing your own worth. Lukens reminds his listeners he’s standing with them: “If it's all the same, it's time to confront this face to face/I'll be with you the whole way/It'll take time, that's fact/I'm not just another face, I'm not just another name/Even if you can't see it now, we're proud of what's to come, and you.” As listener in my early twenties, I find this song comforting. Constantly trying to “get your life together?” Guess what, it’ll never happen. But you’re not finding your way; you’re on your way. You’ve been there and here the whole time and never alone. 

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Read more of Alyssa's marvelous work on Floodmark. 

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This should be called “Three Ways of Looking at Santa Monica.” Never been there. One day though. 

So why am I writing about Santa Monica? Because of two songs (I found through some light research for this post, there are a TON of songs about Santa Monica, making me think I should be even more motivated to go there some day, love it or hate it) but I’ll get to that later.

Have you heard of Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"? That’s what we’re going to do, fellow poet. We’ve got a noun that happens to be a place instead of a thing. And we’re going to look at it from all of its angles, holding it up like a mineral with an odd crystal structure to the sun. 

The first song I want you to listen to is “Santa Monica” by The Front Bottoms:

“I wish we were forever lying on the Santa Monica beach/Drinking Tecate/ 24 ounces/underneath the stars.”

The second song is (arguably my favorite song of all time, which is a bold statement, I know) “Santa Monica Dream” by Angus and Julia Stone.

“Goodbye to my Santa Monica dream/Fifteen kids in the backyard drinking wine/You tell me stories of the sea/And the ones you left behind.” 

This post is titled thirteen ways of looking at Santa Monica. The other ways of looking at it will come from you, if you feel so inclined. 

Listen to the songs again, if need be. They are about the same place, but have two very different tones, sound, sentiment. A lot can happen in one place. One person’s hell is always another person’s heaven; I don’t think I’m too confident in assuming so. Which song are you more drawn to? Why? Which tone can you relate to more closely? Consider these questions and then write about how you see Santa Monica, whether you’ve physically seen it or not, it doesn’t matter. You’ve heard it two different ways. Now write about it in the way only you can. Cause you’re you. 

Pass by you on the Santa Monica pier one day, poet. 

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Read more of Alyssa's prompts & writing on Floodmark.

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Needing a little pick-me-up from the summertime sadness? Relaxation from the chaos? Check out this music video for “Meteorites” by Canadian singer-songwriter Lights. 

After you’re done watching, here are a few little quick prompts:

1. Write a poem including the word "perseids".

2. Write a poem based on the imagery in the video or in the lyrics. Foggy but bright color, “anime eyes and big limousines,” pink-tinged water, slipping upwards, singing out of time and out of sync, “breathing fire in your sleep.”

3. Write poem and then rewrite it in reverse. This could be literally, line by line, or by taking the subject or image you originally ended with and starting the poem with this train-of-thought instead, working backwards to discover what instigated your original poem. 

(GIF 1 source, GIF 2 source)

Read more of Alyssa's work on Floodmark.

I’m not a music critic. The closest I’ve come to making music was a music teacher telling me I had perfect hands for Cello. I told my parents and they were smart enough to sign me up for Spanish class instead. I hate criticizing. I find the more I criticize, the less I create. With that being said, I will throw my two cents of no sense into the musical wishing well. I want to give you a prompt to possibly find inspiration to write from. I want you to listen to an album all the way through, by yourself or with a friend. Dancing is optional but encouraged.

I read an anecdote about David Foster Wallace where he walked into a class and put on a record and told the students that he had just discovered something they all needed to listen to. That album was Nevermind by Nirvana and it had come out seven years prior to his statement. I will be completely honest, up until a few years ago I still bought CD’s. I empathize with people struggling to keep up with things. I still had a jewel case in my car and I looked forward to cross country road trips with the slough of albums I had. I had an assortment from Christina Aguilera to Black Flag.  I love the experience of going through an album from beginning to end. I find myself annoyed with people that skip through a song every 40 seconds. I tend to follow the unwritten law of seeing a song through.

I’m always looking for music people are listening to outside of what’s on the radio. I enjoy listening to music people really love. Something they are guilty about. I always thought it was odd to feel guilty about music, of all the things to feel shame about in the world. I find one of my favorite things about being alive is listening to a song someone else loves and feeling more connected to them. Even if I don’t particularly like the song. I found inspiration from my fellow Floodmarkers as Vernon wrote a post about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Alyssa wrote about Daughter, I will write about Say Anything. 

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I picked this album because I’ve found myself able to relate to the words of Max Bemis for years. I find this album to be a testament to who he is as a person and the making of it is actually something I think everyone should do their research on.

The prompt for this is to listen to an album and I chose one of my all-time favorites, Is A Real Boy from start to finish. Here are some things I found myself particularly drawn to.

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1. I listened to it from beginning to end and found myself comparing it to when I first listened to it and how I’ve listened to it now. Life experience tends to change how words are perceived. One of the songs on the record, “Alive with the Glory of Love” is about his grandparents making it through the holocaust and how their love was the strength they found. 
2. Every song has a bit of dark twisted wit to it.  One of my favorites is, “Every Man Has a Molly,” I could listen to this song over and over and still laugh my ass off. It’s very relatable for anyone who has gone through a break up or some form of rejection and took it too seriously (everyone).
3. I found it easier to think after turning myself into an audience member. Listening to what others have to say centers me. I can think myself into circles and never really get anywhere. Music bursts that bubble. 

Your prompt is to find an album and listen to it all the way through and find some introspection. I listened to this album all the way through. I’ve lost count of the amount of times I have done so and I find something every time. Sometimes it’s an old feeling, an old emotion, something that has been burning for a while that needed the heat turned up. Sometimes all we need is the words of others to accept who we are as individuals. 

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It is winter and I can move in every way winter can move, unyielding like the newfound crunch in the ground, malleable like the sheet metal skyline, undead like the half buried trees, swaying and skeletal and weightless. This is how I feel when I listen to Daughter, regardless of the season, regardless of the thickness of my socks (which tends to be directly proportional to how cold I am at any given time). 

“Wait for me to degrade before/You go/Killing prey for/Waste of/Daylight/Speaks when/Slumber's keeping/Under the bed/Out of revenge/I'm derailing/My youth has stained our sheets/With some piece of me”

Just the atmosphere of a song can be inspirational. Wordlessness can create gasping existence out of a barren internal silence. At other times, songs are so lyrically relatable that a voice can become a haunt without the help of any instrumental backbone. I’d argue Daughter is one of those bands that have both a resilient atmospheric and lyric presence, able to set a mood or conjure a memory without much effort on the part of the listener. 

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Characteristically melancholic, Daughter marries poetic devices with the orchestral. Strip the music of its lyrics? The emotion remains. Just reading the lyrics? It is the same as reading a poem on a page. While the subject matter of a Daughter song is often as simple as lost love, stale love, loneliness, or loss of innocence—the lyrics reframe these subjects into less formulaic, more euphonic terms, resisting melodrama among desolation. Daughter is inherently poetic and their albums are essential musical sidekicks to any writer (if nu-folk happens to be in the range of your music taste). Each track is like having a prompt at your fingertips. Just press play. 

“I'll wrap up my bones/And leave them/Out of this home/Out on the road,/Two feet standing on a principle/Two hands longing for each other's warmth/Cold smoke seeping out of colder throats/Darkness falling, leaves nowhere to go”

While you shouldn’t expect to become all bubbly or be inspired to write the cheeriest poem you’ve ever penned from listening to Daughter, you can expect to be moved down into levels you may have been reaching for but unable to touch. Not necessarily the depths of abject sorrow, but a place where introspection and pensiveness are more readily accessible. And this is arguably where a lot of good writing stems from. Try free writing anything from your consciousness to songs such as “Numbers.” You’ll notice Daughter’s lyricist Elena Tonra is not only conveying a sentiment, but also playing with language and the sound of words akin to poets:

“Can you clean lace faces?/Black out nights and tight spaces?/We'll feel distant embraces/Scratching hands 'round my waist, yeah/I wish my mouth would still taste you/I feel numb/I feel numb in this kingdom”

Feeling those internal and slant rhymes from any of these songs? Those metaphors giving you that writing itch yet?

“Oh, I won't be your doll/So please don't you ask me to/You see, I don't look so good in yellow/Like other dolls they do”

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Check out Daughter’s official website here. (Get excited, cause they have a new album coming out in January.) 

Click here for an interview with and a look at frontwoman Elena Tonra’s own inspiration for writing.

Digging Daughter? Check out Soley or Chelsea Wolfe.

I first started listening to The Front Bottoms (yeah, I know what that’s slang for, take a moment and then move on) during the winter of 2013—wait, no, I take that back—the summer of 2013, in which I stumbled upon one of their songs. It popped up as a suggested video on YouTube. I pressed play and instantly thought to myself…dear God, this guy can’t sing at all. Who in their right mind would enjoy listening to this? 

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Fast forward to the winter of 2013. I’m lonely, confused, and if I’m being honest, pretty sad most days. So, I’m pretty much the typical college freshman, albeit probably one a little less apt at hiding their emotions from the outside world. Enter folk-punk. 

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I’m sure all of you that listened to pop punk in junior high and high school can relate to this slightly upgraded, slightly less embarrassing revival The Front Bottoms gave me—they just got me. Yeah, yeah, I know. My parents just don’t understand, I got out of my hometown, I want to eat pizza with my friends—all of that. It’s cliché, but what can I say? I fit the emotional poet stereotype. I’m okay with it. I actually really like that about myself, now that I’m older and can appreciate it for what it is while keeping it in check.  

The Front Bottoms often say what maybe shouldn’t be said out loud—all of the impolite, the self-doubt, the fear of living. And sometimes they tell the truth seriously in their lyrics, but often in humor. See? I’m not stuck in junior high. I’m laughing at myself. No longer curled up in a ball listening to Mayday Parade’s “Miserable at Best” (okay, well, not usually).

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Once I got over lead singer Brian Sella’s unconventional singing voice and the occasional an-elephant-ate-some-bad-takeout explosion of trumpet failure in the background of some songs, I realized this band’s lyrics were genius. Frank O’Hara, write-what-you-see-and-think-in-obscure detail and don’t give a shit type of genius. While I realize not everyone would ascribe the word “genius” to lyrics like “This is for the lake that me and my friends swim in, naked and dumb on a drunken night/And it should've felt good but I can hear the Jaws theme song on repeat in the back of my mind/Make sure you kiss your knuckles before you punch me in the face/There are lessons to be learned, consequences for all the stupid things I say,” these lyrics spoke to the anxiety I felt, and still feel about my future, but with a conversational rhythm, and in self-deprecating, shouting-out-insecurities type of way. Somehow, this makes the future seem a little easier to face. Listening to it may help you get a little better idea of what I mean:

Pretty soon, I was listening to “Talon of the Hawk” and their self-titled album so religiously I found myself thinking my own swarming, ruminative thoughts to the awkward, rushed rhythm of Brian’s voice. Believe it or not, thinking this way helped me not only to get through my thoughts, but also to see them differently. If the lines, “You got a rash on your neck just below the line/where at your shirt stops covering and leaves your skin bare./It’s such an unimportant detail,/that has nothing to do with anything,/but it's the only thing I remember from when I cut your hair,” could be a verse in a song that I enjoyed, why couldn’t anything I notice have a place in a poem? 

Previously, I had all these ideas about what poetry should be, and an overarching fear that my day-to-day thoughts, whatever they be, hilarious, self-pitying, colorful, creepy—weren’t good enough for writing that was supposed to, well, express my thoughts. Something obvious clicked for me as an artist when I was listening to The Front Bottoms. Poetry that emulates your natural speech or thought patterns isn’t unimportant or lesser. And while every single poem written in conversational or stream-of-consciousness may not be the best poem ever, it certainly accomplishes one of the most important tasks poetry does—clears your head and gives external significance to the details that previously existed only internally. And while poetry can give an individual purpose, it gets even better. Those thoughts or images you deemed too vulnerable or too specific to hold any significance or bearing to someone else? They just might. The Front Bottoms are proof of this. They helped me out a lot as a person and as an artist, and still do. And as a writer, you hold the power to do this for someone else too. If you’re “uncomfortable” in your current situation, you should “probably” write it out…

P

I
 mean, you could probably vary your diction a bit more if you want. But it’s ultimately up to you. 

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Find out more about The Front Bottoms here (they have a new album out called Back on Top and it’s bomb): www.thefrontbottoms.com.

If you were creatively motivated by any of the music in this post, I’d strongly recommend checking out Frank O’Hara and Kate Monica as well for further poetry inspiration.