King Tuff has a new album coming out.
Is that a “Bad Thing?”
I swear, that video is so campy.
But “How I Love,” there’s the porch song for me.
I only found out about his new album last night, which feels exactly right, like hearing music through a wall and realizing it’s been playing for a while without you. I haven’t really kept up with him since I saw him live with Father John Misty in 2018.
I remember enjoying him then. Not politely. Actually enjoying him.
Apparently, this new album was written to be fun to perform live. That’s so cool. There’s something honest about writing toward the body and interaction instead of the chart. Toward movement, noise, presence, and connection.
I’ve been trying to rediscover him a little today. I made a playlist. I’m also listening to Smalltown Stardust, which I think I kinda love.
Meanwhile, yesterday, I started editing another chapbook. This time seriously.
Inconveniently Alive. It certainly is. Alive.
I wrote most of it back in the winter, during one morning/afternoon when Word Raccoon was shouting at me for trying to cork her, but now I’m looking at it with a different kind of attention. Less like “what is this?” and more like “what is this asking to be?”
It’s always strange, that shift. The work doesn’t change, exactly. The gaze does.
Word Raccoon, however, has other ideas.
She is currently demanding music to feast upon instead of food, which I am, for reasons unclear even to me, obliging. The problem is that she is not just listening to music. She is making it. Or she was yesterday.
Songs. Plural. Rapid-fire.
And while this is, objectively, delightful and slightly alarming, it is not my preference at the moment. I would like to stay with the poems. I would like to finish something instead of opening another door.
But she has opinions. Strong ones. And apparently a setlist. I swear if I end up onstage with a bass in a tutu and combat boots, we all know who to blame…the problem is, this round of “songs” aren’t good. Like, at all. I was able to distract her yesterday with Portlandia, a show I just couldn’t get into back in the day. But for submitting poetry? The perfect background companion.
So far today I’ve lured her away from the lyrics with avocado toast and a banana. I allowed her to put the “songs” into Google docs in the song lyrics folder, because she would pout otherwise, but honey child raccoon of mine, if those ever end up onstage, it will be because the world ran out of songs.
How likely does that seem?
Yesterday was a day of submissions. Both poetry and chapbooks. Real ones. Not the kind where you hover and think about it and close the tab and promise yourself you’ll come back later.
We even sent a packet to a Notable Place. The kind that makes you pause and think, maybe not yet, maybe not this time.
And then we thought: why not?
I remember a poet we knew who said that once, just like that. Why not? As if bravery could be that simple. As if the worst that could happen was already happening anyway, which is to say, nothing.
It stuck with me. I admired the hell out of that.
So yesterday, Word Raccoon and I gave it a try.
No fanfare. No declarations. Just the quiet click of sending a packet that felt like it could take its shoes off there.
Today feels a little different because of it. Not dramatically. Not in a way anyone else would notice.
But something has shifted.
Maybe it’s the music coming back around.
Maybe it’s the chapbook insisting on its turn.
Maybe it’s the memory of someone saying why not and meaning it.
Or maybe it’s just this: being, once again, inconveniently alive.
Not inconveniently for me.
But you knew that.
(Should really not have used a colon there today; upon reflection, I’m pretty sure I used up my month’s allotment on yesterday’s post. 😂)
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