Hello!
I have a story about music and magic for you, but first I have four pieces of news:
Disco Diaries is moving from a ~weekly schedule to bi-weekly. Every other week you’ll receive an email from me with another original essay.
More space between pieces gives me more time for reflection and edits. Pieces may be a little longer because they’ll dive deeper into topics.
As an act of love towards myself, I’m changing the Friday-at-10 a.m. email schedule to a loose-Friday-or-Saturday-morning schedule.
And finally, I’ve decided to add a paid option for Disco Diaries. For $5 a month, paying subscribers will get juicy extras, including access to new discussion thread, and a monthly personality quiz (see here and here for examples). The two monthly essays will remain free to all.
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Thanks for sticking with me. <3
Saturday was my last show with Pop Empire. At the end of the set I squatted in my black dress and gathered my pedals, silent tears streaming down my face. Jarring contrasts were everywhere: my soft feelings engulfed by the rough rumble of bar-goers; stringy bits of floor debris and hairs clinging to the sleek guitar cables that have been so many places; the earnest performance wiped away by the loud house music.
This part of the night is always off-putting. There’s no easy transition from musical devotion to a performance’s oft uninvested context. I’ve had this experience in the audience, too. A show will be so special, like a dream you need to wake up from slowly. But the house lights come on in a hurry, illuminating the sticky floor and overflowing trash.
Like, once I saw Blonde Redhead in Cincinnati. Their set left me feeling like a little mountain cloud. I offered to bring the car around for my friends so I could float into the night and soak it all in a little longer. A suitor followed me and broke the magic, and on the way home one of my friends threw up outside the window. No judgement towards these unrelated details, just the notion that they created a contrast I’ve felt many times.
My filthy guitar cables were all in a tangle. I thought I was safe to let the tears flow while bent over the mess, but someone approached and complimented my feedback style. “THANKS,” I said, enthusiastically trying to cover up my small heartbreak with a forced smile, which probably flashed manically in the stage lights.
Not an hour earlier, I’d stood at the back of the bar watching my two bandmates start the set with creepy blues to a backing track. They were seamlessly transitioning into their next era. It’s a move Henry has perhaps perfected in his 13-ish years of leading this project. Adding and subtracting members is a part of the band leader equation.
I’ve always thought being in a band with someone feels on par with dating. You spend a lot of time together, you experience potentially high-stress situations, and might spend chunks of time away from home with nothing familiar but each other and the music. The highs bring you closer and the lows feel like things are falling apart.
But in a band, your main motivation is not to love and support one another (although it’s nice when that happens). It’s to reach some personal concept of success, fulfillment, or reciprocation. And in my experience, each individual’s concept rarely lines up with the others. At the end of a show, one person might be elated while another is disappointed and another is thinking of quitting. A tornado of moods.
Lately I’ve asked myself why any of us bother with this hustle. What are we doing, where are we going, and why. If you’re a hired gun, so to speak, your reciprocation is your payout. That’s what you’re there for, and as long as you get the money you’re owed, you’re satisfied.
But most people I know are being driven by something more complex and less defined. Like a need to create something, or a desire to feel a certain way about oneself, or a search for purpose, or just boredom. All are valid reasons, but all of them seem to dwell in an ambiguity that can leave things open-ended.
When Henry sent me a text asking if I could fill in on guitar for an upcoming tour, I was elated. I was sitting on an over-stuffed ottoman in a small-town coffee shop, feeling stale and restless. In his initial text, he asked whether I still liked to play music and whether I liked to travel. “Yes bitch,” I said, in short.
At the time, several things motivated me accept. I loved the excuse to reconnect with music after years of feeling divorced from it. I was flattered he thought of me, and fueled by the challenge of learning the songs in time. And yes, I did love to travel, and I needed a change of scenery. Plus, I respected and adored Henry and was a low-key Pop Empire fangirl.
Soon after that tour I became the official guitarist. Henry was always the leader, but the more shows we played the more personally invested I felt. All three of us seemed to feel a sense of self and purpose in the act of creating music together. That energy was present when we recorded together. Sometimes it was too much all at once and we’d have to figure out the balance.
We were three people so emotionally invested in a nine-track album that is really fucking good. We worked hard on that album, through salami breaks and back-yard arguments, and we were proud of it.
It’s very vulnerable to ask people to spend time with what you made. A kind person would never throw away a kid’s scribbly crayon drawing in front of them, but most people don’t have that kind of heart and patience for an unknown band, regardless of how good they might be. It’s sort of devastating to think about how many unheard good songs must exist in the infinite sea of BandCamp tracks.
After they finished four songs as a duo, I got on stage and we opened with the first song I learned five years ago. It had been my favorite. I would play it with the sanctity of a prayer, fulfilled just to express it in an ensemble with my friends. Knowing that Saturday was my last time playing it, I thought of these early renditions and of the potential spirituality in live music.
I played the rest of the short set with reverence, letting my attention skip over the crowd and fall onto my sweet bandmates, their devotion also spilling out into these songs.
Sometimes playing music really sucks. It feels like the accomplishments aren’t big enough, not enough people care, and no one is hearing you. I tell myself there’s no point in playing because nothing has changed. I forget to feel the holiness of each unique performance and feel unfulfilled.
But truthfully, I can’t overstate how much music has done for me. It hasn’t made me rich or famous. Collectively my bands have under 1,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. But there have been times when someone loves a set or a song, and that means something. I was inspired, and others have been inspired by me. We take turns prompting one another to try something new.
More importantly — and not to be dramatic, but — joining Pop Empire literally changed my life. Not only did it nudge me to reconnect with my creative self (which is, like, half of my being) but it acted as the catalyst I urgently needed to have a mini re-birth. After sleeping on my friend’s pillow-covered floor for a few weeks on and off, I moved to Cincinnati. In this dirty little midwest city, I found a community of people that have helped me heal and grow and feel freer and more confident than I ever expected to feel. And it’s thanks to Pop Empire that I met my life partner.
And it’s kinda all because Henry texted me.
The butterfly effect suggests that a small change now will have a huge impact later. It gives you a sense that everything ends up as it should be, somehow.
In 2008 I went to the University of Cincinnati. One day, I sat on campus wearing a yellow knitted skirt and reading “The Catcher in the Rye.” Some random dude approached me to tell me he liked me skirt, and we got to talking. His name was Jake W. We made plans to meet up again later.
A few weeks after, I introduced my new friend Jake W. to my new friend Henry. They ended up living together, and became regulars at a bar called Arlin’s.
They were there one night, about to leave, and Jake W. was dragging his feet. While waiting outside, Henry smoked a cigarette. A striking girl with long, dark hair asked if she could borrow a lighter. Her name was Ariana.
Later on, Henry and Ariana became very close. And when Henry was talking to Ariana about needing a new guitarist, she suggested he text me.
It’s time for Pop Empire to have a new chapter. But I still love that entity endlessly. It was, after all, a sort of guardian angel — or at least a little goblin leading me to a lost treasure, and for that I’m forever thankful.
Sure you don't want to stay?
This was a great read. I’m always fascinated by band dynamics from an outside perspective. I’ve always fantasized bands and assumed they’re made up exclusively of “best friends from childhood”. Never really viewed it as a business where members are subbed in/out and replaced, etc.