the neon lights @ 4am playlist*

01. cornelius - drop
02. misha - summersend
03. mum - we all have a map of a piano
04. regina spektor - hotel song
05. mint royale w/ jean wells - the effect on me
06. nouvelle vague - love will tear us apart
07. bjork - all is full of love (video version)
08. stars - sleep tonight
09. feist - the limit to your love
10. air - venus
11. esthero - superheroes
12. leyode w/ savath y savalas - hasami
13. télépopmusik - breathe
14. baxter dury - oscar brown
15. aqualung - strange and beautiful
16. death cab for cutie - transatlanticism
17. dido - white flag
18. tv on the radio - modern romance (yeah yeah yeahs cover)

download the whole thang

*warning: if you ever want to hear weird ass music, drive with me at 4am. this mix is far more sedated/trippy/emo-ish than the last one i posted. basically, what i'm trying to say is that if you're looking for a precursor to 50cent's new album, don't download any of these songs.



as schizophrenic as it sounds, you've been missing yourself lately. a lot. like, really reminiscing on times when it felt like your skin was fastened more tightly, when you were less shocked by your own words when they left your mouth, but more in awe. you bring it up in conversations, often. especially in person, when convening with old friends. "i used to feel more present," you say, and then you look at them as if you can find reason in their eyes. or validation. or relation, in a response not unlike "well, it comes in cycles, and soon you'll look back on this moment as a time when you felt more present." you don't quite remember what the normal response to something like this is, but you know nothing has made enough of an impact to convince you to stop bringing it up.

so today you hit the road for the solo 1.5 hour drive to sacramento. you've learned that common's in the speakers but you're inside your thoughts, to the era not so long ago when you made this drive every other day. sac and san fran were but opposite palms as you drove the state outstretched. work to school to work, and plenty of daydream in between. plenty of time to let words, and lines, and stanzas, and poems fester in your head, edit themselves, bronze, and dive into your loose-leaf notebook upon getting to your destination, or at least he nearest gas station. it's quite impossible to not mesh into yourself when you're making 4-hour commutes 3 times a week.

by the time you get to 5th ave's spot, you've spoiled yourself with so much li'l wayne, you're oozing of self-involved punchlines that you could only really imagine ever reciting while wearing a grill. "brain so sharp it might puncture my skull...ughhhhhhhhh!!..."

random joins when you're deep in the beat demos. with each track, you curve your eyebrows and let the beat find a point of marination with your interest. you settle on track 11, discussion begins.

"for this track," starts 5th, "i was thinkin of me tucking in my son, and i know the world's going to end tomorrow so this is the last time i'm tucking him in, and i'm explaining what's going to happen."

"busta did that on e.l.e." interjects random. oh. well, then. you decide the beat sounds like a good grounds to explain the moment as a kid that you realize you just lost your innocence. what ever happened to rapping about money and jewelry? geez.

the loop plays, and you wait for your queue to come up each time, trying to jump into the bars like double-dutch. three of you huddled in a room, each etching words into your books, whispering to yourselves like a trio of lunatics. you write:



yikes is that first part sexist? or just twisted? do people get satire? you've been trying to not bombard yourself with so many questions every line, not scrutinize every possible reaction, but you know that very obsession has been the root of your lack of poetry lately. metaphors, images, concepts smashed before even given the chance to see the light of day. you wonder if one day you'll have a general remembrance of all of the lines that you sent to their early graves, and regret malnourishing them.

when finished, you dash across the city to pick up lori. ahhh yes, sac is full of great musicians and you'd convene with them ALL today if you could, but you prefer the ones that go way bizzaaack with you. lori goes way bizzaaack. in fact, that last time you kicked it was almost three years ago, before she went to the philippines for vacation, happened upon an audition, extending her stay for a year to blow up, and deciding to come back home for family. "where do you wanna eat?" you ask when she hops into the car. her eyes illuminate and she shuts them, in a content shrug that heaves her entire body upward. "i feel adventurous!" she says. "well then," you smile, "i think we should just drive. and we'll eat somewhere neither of us have every been to." and at that, the three-year gap is closed shut, and we take off for random adventure like yesterday was till 04, before the new bel-air supermarket, and roundtable pizza, and shopping complex sprouted next to her neighborhood to make it completely unrecognizable. when surrounding area was still baron land, filled entirely by the purple sky that's come to signify what you miss most about sac.

by the time you drop her off, that purple has somersaulted into a blanket of pitch black, interrupted only by stars that lay pulp and shiny like spilt marbles. "well, driz," you sigh to yourself, "it's just me and you." the commute that you once found tedious, you're now incredibly geeked about. you travel the world now, but not quite with the solitude that you found during your quick and frequent roadtrips as a college kid. sometimes you need to kidnap yourself and just leave, allowing roads, mountains, oceans between you and anyone else you know, in order to finally find the space to get to be alive.







and that's why you're going to london next month.



(more on that soon)