slide_tackle raze micaela and melissa host a feminist radio show on cjam. i try to catch it every week. i consider it an essential part of my ongoing education as a human being. they always break up the talking with a few songs. one of the songs they played last week was "slide tackle" by japanese breakfast. michelle zauner is the sonic and emotional architect of the band. she's also the director of a handful of music videos and the author of a memoir i've been meaning to pick up. but this song. this song pries open my chest with a crowbar and forces everything out of it like a bunch of pink and red gunk pouring out of a play-doh kitchen tap. i can smell it. all that sweet wheat growing up around my ankles. michelle sings: "i want to be good i want to navigate this hate in my heart somewhere better i want to feel it but with the feel there is an ache i meet to desire living don't mind me while i'm tackling this void slide tackling my mind this weight feels like i'm wrestling with my head obsessing in the dark" i don't know how many times that's been me. but it's a lot. you could say her voice is kind of thin. it doesn't grab you by the shoulders and say, "listen to me. i'm big and brassy and bold, and i'm gonna cut you with your house keys if you don't sit your ass down and hear what i have to say." but there's something in it that digs into me and won't let go. something honest. something real. it's a different kind of voice. the kind of voice that says, "if you ever meet me, you'll feel like you already know me, because you've heard me sing." and then those horns come in at the end and say everything the words can't get across, and i want to dance and scream and cry with happiness. i wish that little instrumental break was ten times longer. but then maybe it wouldn't hit so hard. "long as we are here i'm wrestling with my head obsessing in the dark" yeah. and there's beauty in that. sometimes the darkness is as bright as anything you might be chasing, because you make your own light. 210917 ... tender square your endings are always so poignant, j. this is something i’d like to improve on; whenever i start something i don’t know how to write my way out of i say, “i guess this is a good a place as any to stop.” 210917 ... raze hey, i always feel like you end things in the right place! but i think of it in terms of music (because of course i do). sometimes you want to end the song in a way that mirrors the beginning or feels like the closing of a circle. and sometimes it feels right to end in a way that's more abrupt. i try not to think too much about how something is structured, and concentrate more on how it feels and how it sings to me. in a way, everything we say here is another piece of a long conversation we're having with ourselves and one another, and that conversation is never over. so you can always return to something you've written and give it the ending you think it needs, no matter how much time has passed. those are my two obsolete pennies, anyway. 210917 ... tender square well, thank you for that! i'm mostly going by feel but i like your take on singing too. the two techniques you described are helping me understand what i'm doing; i tend to go the circular route, though i have had an abrupt ending here and there. it's funny that you mention the ongoing conversation ability of blather, as i've just started to do that on a few of my previous threads that i thought were finished and it's a really cool effect; i like that it's become a living document. 210917 what's it to you? who go blather from