emma_frank raze maybe some more of that ol' music_you_should_hear. heard her care of the simulcast of the french radio station we listen to most days now, ever since we_bought_a_sofa. her song "in separation" has to be one of the truest things anyone's set to music about why some stabs at love or friendship don't work out, and all the fumbling and stumbling around we go through. "family's a funny word to begin with," she sings, in a voice like a long hug. "we're all just learning what love is." 150812 ... raze i've been trying to get my hands on a physical copy of her album "the people we're becoming" for the past six years. there are mp3s available online, but i've always been a sucker for tangible things. i want to hold an album in my hands. i want to immerse myself in whatever art and lyrics the artist saw fit to include in the liner_notes. after three years of dead ends, i emailed emma, telling her how much i loved her music and asking if i could buy a cd from her directly. she wrote: "thank you for listening to what i do. i spend a lot of time waitressing and it's not every day that i am reminded that a song i wrote might have done something important for someone. so thank you." she said she had some cds. she said she'd send me one. i gave her my address and asked if she had paypal. she didn't write back. nothing happened. a month ago, i tried again. i sent another email and asked if i could buy some wav files from her. i figured i could just burn those on a cd and have the music in a lossless format like i wanted. she had two albums up for sale on her bandcamp page, but "the people we're becoming" wasn't there. i didn't want to rip free mp3s from a random website. i wanted to pay her for her art. she said she thought she still had some cds lying around, and if she didn't, she could send me the wavs. she asked me to send her a reminder email if i didn't hear from her in a few days. i waited a week before sending that reminder email. i told her it was dancing in her inbox, barefoot on a carpeted floor. its footwork was suspect, and it only danced to obscure doo-wop songs, but its heart was pure. no response. yesterday i tried one last time. i sent an email that was the reminder email's first cousin. his name was pedro. he was fascinated by microbiology. that got a response. "you've outdone yourself this time. and sorry: there are no more cds. and i don't have the wavs and i'm not sure who does. and so i thought maybe i'll send some emails? but it's a whole thing. so i maybe have to say that i don't have anything for you! and i'm sorry to say that." then she typed a sad face. but, see, i'm stubborn. i kept digging. i found some obscure website that was selling flac files for six bucks. flac is a lossless audio coding format. it's easy to convert flac files to wav files. it all sounds the same in the end. nothing gets degraded. so i bought those files. and i made them what i wanted them to be. and i sent them to her. i got to return her own album to her. she got to wake up to that after taking a nap. i thought that was a good way to say goodbye. now i can listen to the album the way i've been waiting to hear it for six years. her music has grown more layered over time, but there's something immediate and unpretentious here that gets to me on a chemical level, and that's before my brain even begins to absorb all the surprising and strange and beautiful harmonic things going on inside the songs. i think it's more than just "first album" magic. this music is honest in a way most music isn't brave enough to be. and this still kills me every time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fR9u0AnEQM 211018 what's it to you? who go blather from