The Metronome
I do not practice with a metronome because I want to become a better drummer. I practice with a metronome to practice focusing. To practice pretending that the world is objective. To meditate.
Student Work: Advanced Writing Course
In Defense of the Non-Place
I seek the sublime enclosed within banality; I seek a hidden form of secular revelation.
Imagining Berlin
I want to imagine Berlin. It yearns to be x-rayed. We must examine its broken bones.
Together at the Movies
My nickname is, in many ways, a stowaway from another life. The simple, happy life that my mom and dad had built in the Rockaways of Queens.
Home Is Where the . . .
Where I come from, there is graffiti everywhere. This place is their museum, an outlet for their frustration, inspirations, and pride.
To Texas and Back
The summer before college, Sarwat moved to Texas. It was a small miracle that she was able to convince them to stay put through the end of high school. Her parents wasted no time packing up after graduation.
Billy Corgan Shiny Pants
Sera wasn’t what you would call a “party person.” Yet here he was, walking in his tight shiny pants, to a party full of obnoxious theater kids.
Squirrel and Tanabe
Just as Tanabe turned a sharp curve, a squirrel ran out of the shrubbery, froze in the middle of the road, and stared straight at him.
A Letter to My Younger Self
The first lesson I want to teach you is that it’s okay to be sensitive. I know mom says that it’s your worst trait, but I think it makes you strong.
B. Horseman
It’s the quality of so much sorrow held at the brink that attracted me to "BoJack Horseman." It’s brilliant, at once both witty and belly-laugh silly, and often capable of being shockingly real.
Girls and Gore
In horror films, why is it so often only the lily-white, shy girls who outrun the big baddie?
Boo! The Surprise of “Fleabag”
The major surprise at the end of the first season of "Fleabag" is not your ordinary plot twist.
Scientology City, Fla.
At a 1949 science-fiction lecture, the prolific pulp writer Lafayette Ronald Hubbard—L. Ron, for short—opined that, “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.
Royal Soda
On my second day on the island, I was met with the extravagance of peacocks in my cousin Elisabeth’s kitchen.