fuck spotify
anne serre, de la soul, and your bibliomancy forecast for the week of dec 8
the eight of cups, and a paragraph from Anne Serre’s A Leopard-Skin Hat:
But perhaps she was infatuated with her because they looked alike and had a lot in common? There was a stage in Fanny’s life when she had wanted to be an actress. She had taken classes for several years and acted in a handful of plays. She wasn’t very good. Every line bristled with violence and the burden of some horrendous revelation. There was clearly something she wanted to say, something horrendous she was trying to convey through her performances, but she gave up. Actresses would remain present in her life, however, since in the months leading up to her death she hinted to the Narrator that she was seeing an actress, a very famous actress who also bore a resemblance to Fanny herself in being mystifyingly coldhearted and remote. Was it true? Was she making it up? She also told him, when she was barely out of her teens, that she had met Romy Schneider and was seeing her. Was it true? Was she making it up? It doesn’t matter. She died, at any rate, at exactly the same age as the actress who “took her own life,” as the reference books tell us.
the aleatory
Day-in-the-life vlog. Get ready with me. Meal prep. This one weird trick. Put olive oil in your vaseline; put vaseline on your teeth. Get rich. Make them buy your services in 2026. Top ten words of the day, number nine: fetus. Quiet rebellion. Hey guys. Should I do it, chat? Basil, sweet orange, cardamom. Flattered that the algo is recommending a new hot springs hotel to me. Did you know you can just … [puts coconut milk in a casserole dish and listlessly whisks in curry paste as if trying to actively die]. Stop healing! Like, share, and subscribe. P.S. all your friends hate you because you don’t plan enough activities. Quiz: Are you the dark horse? Is your attachment style spaghetti or coconut milk stirred into a casserole dish, alone, empty? God, you are so old that everybody used to go skiing. Top 1% fans of the holy wailing telephone holes. Wrapped! You fucking hag.
A bird in the hand is worth nothing. The birds in the bush: Also nothing. Put them back. They’re just birds.
Talking about what something is worth will always be a reduction to the known and frozen. In enough time, a grain of rice becomes a forest.
the forecast
It’s TOTALLY FINE. Okay??
writing prompt
Carry around something large and unusual. The poem is an unedited list of things that strangers say to you about your large, unusual object. Please note: If your object is insufficiently large/unusual, this may take you years.
a chune
“Patti Dooke” by De La Soul
Buhloone Mind State and Stakes Is High are intensely potent memory palaces for me because I listened to both of them a TON in the early 2000s, and when I wanted to revisit them many years later found that they weren’t on Spotify. Yet another reason that streaming sucks, and Spotify especially. Streaming gives the illusion of complete availability while actually hemming in the horizon and recommending that everybody listen to the same shit. It seems impossible to have taste of any kind if you don’t make choices … even less so if you don’t know that you’re not making choices. Anyway, De La’s discography is on Tidal, and listening to these two records lately has made them instant constant replays on DREAM-FM. How special is it to hear the first phrase of a track and realize that word by word the rest of it is tightly, invisibly coiled beneath the surface of your memory? It’s kind of crazy to realize that I first heard Maceo Parker on this album. (And Fred Wesley is also on this track?! Apparently?) I’m still reeling from the experience of hearing these albums again and feeling sort of sad and ashamed that I let my laziness and Spotify’s fiction of availability keep them from me for so long.
credits: small spells tarot deck by rachel howe
A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre
Buhloone Mind State by De La Soul
dear diary, I keep getting these spammy emails from book clubs, podcasts, and alleged PR people who say that they found my book online and love it but feel like I should be enjoying a larger audience. For a small fee, of course. But hilariously (?!) none of these actually mention my own books, but instead the books of OTHER Sarah Smiths, of whom there are many. Including one who has written a hockey romance series (major what the FUCK on that one; I felt like I was being surveilled for a second). Which leads me to wonder—is it really possible that I should consider a pen name? I’ve always wanted one, but I thought it was a little thirsty to actually enact. Yet … if the scammers who are trying to rip me off through my OWN LinkedIn page can’t even find my books … XS (X Raven Starfyre) (X A Cloud) (X Your Cloud) (X Venus Bilbao) (X Soleil Pearlmutter)