Tag Archives: broken record

The Beauty of a Broken Record Is the Skipping

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Noons and nights. Suns and shadows. Rise and rest.

Well before the mind-numbing repetition of the pandemic clock dictated our daily existence, we slid from week to week, slaves to the schedule. We were wind-up toys wobbling in the waves of whatever felt like an accepted societal standard of a “good day’s work,” and we celebrated our victories by planting flags in some piece of future soil to mark a personal milestone or forever honor an arbitrary date of achievement. With fingers crossed and blinders fastened, we strove toward a fantastical finish line in some desperate hope for the fleeting opportunity to take a knee and finally catch our collective breath.

The needle dropped…and the record spun.

Resetting back to one, we built a fresh blueprint to pursue an even more impressive objective. A greater goal worthy of our newly acquired skill set…and all those gains gleaned from the grind.

But there is always a higher peak to summit. A wider chasm to traverse. Hotter coals to cross.

So, when we are presented with an opportunity to shatter the monotonous glass—even if we can only muster a few cracks in the corners—it’s important to let those shards fall. There is a deep release felt from the freedom of cutting reins and remembering how to run on our own two feet.

A lifted needle dragging along bumpy vinyl on a tilted table is specifically built to help us remember what sits in the cracks between the tracks.

Leave the broom in the closet. Watch the translucent time pirates sit helplessly in heaps on the floor.

Let the song skip.

Adolescence Interrupted

The Fixer

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I spend the majority of my time tucked behind computer screens, scrutinizing every comma, semicolon, and em dash, in an endless effort to peel back the layers of literary smokescreens in hopes of revealing an author’s genuine intent. After years of tapping squarely-lettered keys, I can resolutely stand behind one indisputable discovery. There is almost always more meaning in the mistakes.

It is my job to bend language by squeegeeing sentences to wipe away the dirty ambiguity born from a writer’s internal monologue. We are all guilty of celebrating the dizziness achieved from riding the carousel of private broken records. It’s not our fault. Revelations routinely sound sweeter when they’re produced between our own ears.

But consistently revising these misappropriated intentions makes me wonder how much real-world editing we do on a daily basis. How many conversations are buffered to limit impact? How often do we feign interest in the details of other people’s lives to pretend we still share a connection? What does truth look like…unabridged?

I am beyond lucky to live in this pretty plastic city, surrounded by a core group of friends who shun pretense and smoke-blowing so adamantly, we barely even notice the permeating artificiality waiting with disinterested fangs at every corner. We’ve miraculously been able to avoid the bite by floating above the nonsense and holding firmly to our East Coast roots while baking our skin in the California sun.

But on a macrocosmic level, the question remains. Are we editing ourselves so severely that even the notion of veracity will someday sit beside 1950s table manners in a dusty museum of relics?

Truth isn’t necessarily the most popular concept to hang a hat on these days, but its extinction will undoubtedly leave some craters no clever repartee can fill. We might be wise to lay the eraser down for a little while and speak from the heart. What’s the worst that could happen? Honesty?

Adolescence Interrupted