Category: Miscellaneous

Random sh*t we don’t know where else to put

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Miscellaneous

I went to Ocracoke Island

Yellow sand dunes by the blue green ocean
Sand dunes of Ocracoke Island, NC. Image licensed PDM 1.0 Universal.

Ocracoke Island – the death place of the one and only Captain Blackbeard.  

I had the privilege of spending the 4th of July week in Ocracoke Island, NC.  There, I got to enjoy the beach, local artisanal shops, tourist trap shops, some of the local restaurants, and even the holiday parade.  

Monday

I arrived by ferry on Monday evening, only having to pay a dollar to walk on.  I managed to make it onto the last ferry of the day.  The ride is usually around three hours long but I guess these people wanted to go home since we got to the island in about two and a half.  

Monday night, me and a couple of my people decided to go out to Springer’s Point and sit out here for a few hours in the breeze by the ocean with some music playing.  While the vibes were unmatched, I got personally devoured by mosquitoes.  Between the three of us out there, one person got maybe one bite, the second got about seven or so, and I got 41; I counted.

Tuesday

Tuesday happened to be the birthday of one of the people in my party so we spent part of it celebrating.  I spent a large part of Tuesday on the beach trying to hide from the sun.  The water was a little cold to start with and the waves were rough, but it was refreshing.  While the salt water stung my eyes a little, I got to enjoy some fresh fruit under the Shibumi Shade (wind stabilized shade).  

Tuesday night was primarily spent at one of the local watering holes: Howard’s Pub.  Me and a couple others moseyed on over and had a couple cocktails and some lovely french fries. 

Wednesday

Wednesday morning, we went to the town and checked out some of the local vendors.  Trying to fight a mild hangover that worsened throughout the day, we visited the Village Craftsman, an artisanal shop with pottery, handmade jewelry, some musical instruments, glassware, metal work, woodwork, and even ships in bottles.  Following the Village Craftsman, we got ice cream from the Ocracoke Ice Cream and then checked out Ride The Wind Surf Shop.  

After the surf shop, which was a tad pricey, we were invited to get lunch at Dajio.  This restaurant has a Shrimp Hour special for outdoor seating between 3-5pm wherein one is able to get ½ pound of steamed shrimp for cheap.  So to Dajio we went and got shrimp and cocktails.   After lunch, it started pouring rain and we proceeded to go home and I took a fat nap for the next 2-3 hours.  The 4th of July fireworks were supposed to be on this day, but were sadly cancelled due to weather complications. 

Thursday

On Thursday, we returned to the beach.  We spent the day playing around in the water, which was rougher than the other day.  Some of the people in my party decided to launch each other over the waves in a playful manner.  I got to fly over the waves twice.  The first time was really fun but the second time I landed flat on my back against the water, which proceeded to sting for the next twenty minutes.  

Thursday night, we went to a restaurant called Flying Melon to celebrate the birthday of another party member.  This is one of the few fancier restaurants on the island, but boy did it not disappoint.  Almost everything on the menu is either fish/seafood or vegetarian so if you don’t like fish and aren’t vegetarian, this might not be the place for you.  I thoroughly enjoyed my meal and got to try an espresso martini for the first time. 

Friday

Friday was of course the 4th of July.  I wanted to go to the one main coffeeshop on the island called Ocracoke Coffee Company.  This place opened at 7 a.m. and we showed up at 11 minutes after with an hour long line.  My party members had plans to go off-shore fishing at 8 a.m. so we had to scrap the idea and try again another day.

Instead of fishing, I joined some other party members back at the beach. After the beach, we hightailed it over to my party’s family friends’ place to watch the parade.  The annual 4th of July parade on the island is made up of local businesses and inhabitants driving their decorated vehicles, mostly golf carts, around the island with music blaring and tossing candy to the children watching.  

Saturday

On Saturday, we heard there was a tropical storm brewing which would make leaving the island the following day very difficult and dangerous.  We decided to leave early.  After packing all of our things up, some of us decided to go back into town for coffee and more trinket or souvenir shopping.  We then gathered over by the Variety Store to grab some lunch from the Old Salt Sandwiches and Such food truck.  I got a very delicious chicken sandwich and I swear that was the most perfect looking sandwich I have ever seen.

Perfect looking chicken sandwich in foil wrapper with crinkle cut fries and Ketchup in the background.
Chicken sandwich from Old Salt Sandwiches and Such food truck in Ocracoke Island, NC. Image by Sophia Dutton-Rodkin.

The ferry ride and drive back home was uneventful and calm.  We all made it unscathed and safely.  Despite having to cut the trip short, it was a very enjoyable experience.  While I didn’t get to do everything I wanted to, I had a blast and I guess I’ll just have to go back someday.  

— dj dragonfly

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Miscellaneous

This Too Shall Pass

Illustrated raven on branch
Raven, a common depiction of bad luck. Image by rawpixel.com, licensed CC0 1.0 Universal.

Having a hard time? Finding no joy in your favorite things anymore? Feel like things just keep getting worse and worse? If you feel like any of these things is accurate, you should know that it’s okay.  Sometimes, everything goes wrong and there’s nothing you can do about it.  I know it isn’t always a comfort but these things happen sometimes.  

If any of my readers are anything like me, then good and bad things usually happen in big clumps.  I can have weeks or even months of almost nothing bad happening and suddenly a storm of bad luck rains down on me.  Likewise the other way; sometimes I just have consistently bad luck and suddenly the sun comes out and I have a slew of good things coming my way.  

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Miscellaneous

How Do You Use Music?

Antique radio
Old Radio. Image by Alan Levine, licensed by CC A2.0 Generic.

Everyone is different: tastes, habits, needs, wants etc.  It stands to reason that everyone does things differently and treats things differently.  Music is no exception.  So how do different people use music in their lives?

Some people use music for a soundtrack to their lives while others use it as background noise and I know people who don’t really even like music.

I personally use music as a soundtrack to my life.  I carefully pick and queue exactly what I need to make the moment feel a specific way and make sure it fits the vibe.  Sometimes I let my playlists shuffle and I get a surprise but it almost always is still part of the soundtrack style I strive for.  

If I have a bomb fit on and I feel really good about myself, I’ll usually have music in my earbuds that reflects that.  Same with if I’m driving to campus on a rainy autumn morning.  I need the music I listen to to reflect how I feel and how I am as a person.  This is what makes life rich for me.  

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Miscellaneous

Anniversary Tours, Album Tours, are they different?

Björk performing on a stage lit in blue and green in front of people playing instruments.
"Björk jouant 'Isobel' à l'Accor Arena de Paris le 8 septembre 2023" by Vmv2705, permission via CC ASA 4.0 International license, cropped by blog.

Once, while driving to a venue whose name I can’t recall, my friend turned to me and began to say “I wish Glass Animals would perform more songs from How To Be a Human Being.” I agreed with her idea, not just because “How To Be A Human Being” is my favorite Glass Animals album, but because many artists have begun going on tours to commemorate the anniversary of an album’s release. Typically, artists perform newer tracks in order to promote their newer albums, yet some choose to play work that is almost exclusively older. If you’re a fan of an artist who hasn’t released new music in years yet is currently on tour, it’s likely an anniversary tour!

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Miscellaneous

The Album as a Storytelling Device with Some Recent Favorites (ADULT CONTENT)

A drawing of Okay Kaya on a pink background.
Okay Kaya drawn by Jessica Ganis, 2022, permission via CC ASA 4.0 license. Cropped to fit this blog post.

Note to readers: this blog contains brief mentions of sex, pedophilia, arson, drug abuse, gun violence, involuntary commitment, and more while discussing music that covers such themes.

Listeners now may not recognize how old the concept of an album as a narrative device is. The history of the concept album is murky, the history of strictly narrative albums with characters, setting, and a climax are murkier. Some say, including literary review writers at the University of Connecticut, that “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by The Beatles started the idea. Paul McCartney (alongside Boston-based radio station WERS) traces the Beatles’ inspiration to Frank Zappa’s “Freak Out!” released in 1966. 

Album cover for “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” by The Beatles.
Album cover for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by The Beatles.

Fiona Sturges at The Independent goes further, saying that commercially available song collections including a broader narrative may have originated with Woody Guthrie in the 1940s. If you consider musicals or opera as part of this history, you can go back centuries. Even in spite of its unclear origins, the narrative album continues to be a significant and growing part of contemporary music.

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Miscellaneous

Music and Language

Two Russian books
Two classic Russian books, "Dunno on the Moon" and "Alice in Wonderland." Image by Sophia Dutton-Rodkin

Whether English or Spanish or Swahili or Japanese, learning a new language is always going to be a challenge.  One of the best ways to help with language learning is to immerse oneself in media content with that language being the primary.

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Miscellaneous

Nostalgia, Fashion, and Music

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Nostalgia and Fashion

Nostalgia for the past is by no means a new thing. It isn’t just kids these days who believe they were born in the wrong generation, because culture has always been cyclical to a degree. The style of the 00s making a comeback with the “Y2K aesthetic” craze is no surprise at all. Many fashion scholars reference the idea of a 20 year cycle. The 50s heavily borrowed from the style of the 1930s, which borrowed in turn from the 1900s. Despite this, nostalgia today feels different somehow.

Walking into clothing stores is jarring, with the most chic decade changing from rack to rack. 60s style babydoll dresses hang right next to a bedazzled tank top right out of an early 2000s pop music video. Right next to that rack is a shelf of neatly folded sweaters with orange and brown stripes, which makes my mom cringe. “I haven’t seen that color combo since the 70s,” She says.

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Miscellaneous

The Importance of Variety

Black and White photo of record player on desk with guitar in corner
Fleetwood Mac "Rumors" album on record player. Image by Sophia Dutton-Rodkin

What does it mean to have a diverse musical palate? Does it mean liking many artists in one genre? Many genres but few artists? Many similar genres? A few wildly different ones?  As someone who loves exploring different genres, I don’t think there is a “right” answer.

Everyone is allowed to like whatever they like.  There is no right or wrong answer to the question: What is good music?

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” – Margaret Wolff Hungerford.

A less literal paraphrase might be along the lines of: “Good music is in the heart of the listener.”  Everyone has different upbringings and experiences and tastes.  There might be some music that is objectively bad but if someone likes it there has to be a reason behind it.  Maybe they are noticing something others aren’t.

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Miscellaneous

Playing Music with Animals

Person plays piano while puppy sleeps on their lap
12 week old puppy (Daphne) sleeping on lap of piano player. Image by Sophia Dutton-Rodkin

Any musician worth their salt could say with full confidence that practice is the cornerstone of success.  Practice at home, in the dorms, in the practice rooms and even in between classes.   While your roommates might think you’re strange, it doesn’t matter if you aren’t disturbing anyone.  In my case, the one most affected by my practice would be my lovely lady, Daphne.  She’s an Australian cattle dog mix and she both loves and hates when I play music.

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Miscellaneous

What do we lose? What do we gain?

bedrot, brainrot, mush, slop and stew.

The ability to coin it is just the tipping point; what is with these things that make our lives “easier?”

Is there something to be said about the valor and experience of having to do something, go somewhere or be someone?

When I talked to New York’s lo-fi dram pop duo Phantom Handshakes, they talked about being inspired by the “in-betweens,” the liminal spaces of work and play, walking on the street or on the train.

What do we gain by having it all at our fingertips?

Wilson from Raleigh’s Thirsty Curses mentions Christine Rosen’s “The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World,” elaborating on the advantages of “the trivial” — when you stop for gas, chatting with someone near you; meeting thy neighbor.


Proponents of the digital sphere talk about finding niche communities and meeting people you never would’ve before, and I wonder how good of a thing that is.

By nature of living in the same area, you’re likely to share more in common with your neighbor than someone through the phone.

I also want to posit about our associations of pleasure; it worries me that increasingly, our brains are accustomed and acquainted to eliciting pleasure from the silicon, plastic, glass, heavy metals and the like that go into these handheld dopamine machines.

When there are so many people in this world to love, to get attached to, to feel ties to and advocate for, I worry about machine-learning in our brains, making it so that the way we feel good is through touching plastic plugged in to some ether.

Beyond this, I wonder what that feel-good is.

Is dopamine the most sustainable neurotransmitter? I dont think so. Mostly built on action potential, it’s probably the reason we all feel so fried, so constantly tube-fed and sedated, which averages “content.”

Furthermore, what are the distinctions between art, entertainment, content and media? Where do we fit within that ecosystem? Where do we want to?

I encourage the harder route, the longer path, the possibly more scenic one, enjoying the effort of critical thinking in the hope it might dig us out of our incompetency hole.