TLDR: there are friends everywhere for those with eyes to see
I think one consequence of urbanism is a sense of alienation or otherness from one’s neighbors, and especially from strangers. the average person you pass on the street is assumed to have little in common with you with which to establish a mutual connection. maybe this is a consequence of me living in the south, but i’ve been finding that most people are happy to start a light conversation in public.
ive been making a practice of being in public spaces with a posture of openness to interaction. no earbuds in, making light convo with people like service workers that goes beyond the transaction, striking up convos with people who are sharing a space i’m in, etc. most recently I stopped on a park bench at a skatepark during a bike ride and struck up a convo with a skater who beefed a trick and was describing in great detail how it happened and his history with skating. shout out cole I hope your collar bone isn’t broken.
these aren’t the same as a deep, intentional community that one has with close friends/peers (that comes from seeking out, plugging in, and showing up consistently), but seeing everyone around you as a possibility for human connection until proven otherwise makes one feel less lonely. there’s an intentionality in having a posture of openness to connection that can become a self fulfilling prophecy. it’s easy nowadays to feel like we live in social archipelagos, with our own clusters of friends and loved ones with little connecting each group to each other and little connection to others everywhere around us. but your average person is just as interesting and worth getting to know as anyone else. be curious, be cordial, and start integrating casual momentary connections into your life to tide you over between the deeper relationships in your life you might not have access to all the time
11h ago
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The other night, my friends and I went to the spring festival in my neighborhood, but it suddenly started raining so we sheltered under this artist’s tent and moved her wares so they wouldn’t get rained on. Now we’re also friends with the artist, another customer, and the other customer’s pet cockatiel he had in a cat backpack lol. I love talking to strangers (within reason), in fact later that night I was at a bar doing karaoke and two-stepped with a stranger. The first time I ever went to that bar for karaoke, I hung out in the back playing pool until karaoke started, and this guy told me he’d never done karaoke before. Later when I was singing Unwritten by Natasha Beddingfield, he came up and grabbed an extra mic because no one can resist that song lol. Strangers can become friends so quickly!
10h ago
Related Recs
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It’s nice to remember that the world is brimming with kind people. I by no means have lengthy conversations with them, but even a joke or an observation to the store attendant makes me feel like I am the sort of person who is casual about things. It’s fun and reminds me to get outside my (sometimes claustrophobic) bubble.
Jan 15, 2025
I love meeting new people with my entire being. I talk to everyone and have so many wonderful connections because of it. It’s an art, one must know how to enter a conversation and when to exit it. Never overstaying your welcome or coming on too strong. I think everyone in NY should be friends and I wish every weekend the entirety of prospect park was a picnic that anyone could join.
Aug 21, 2024
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over the past two years i’ve gotten quite good at speaking to new people, and in the past six months i’ve made it one of my favorite traits. i tell people i love their hair when i’m behind them at line at the shops. i befriended an older lady on the train home from work, we laughed and exchanged stories on the crowded rush hour car. i built a relationship with the lady at sandwich place near my work, to the point where she calls out my nickname (veggie melt) when i walk in, and gave me a free sandwich the day i lost my wallet. i draw her pictures every time, and the other day she offered me freelance illustration work as a result. there is so much beauty and possibility around us, so many stories we can unlock by talking to strangers. when im old and withered, i will mark my years by how many little threads i’ve woven into my life, how many gold links i’ve started by an innocuous interaction with somebody i simply hadn’t known yet.
Feb 26, 2024
Top Recs from @royallmonarch
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I consume a lot of music regularly, and a huge part of keeping a fresh diet of new listens going is having enough sources of recommendations that aren’t an algorithm that either 1) reinforces your existing listening patterns, keeping you stagnant in your tastes, or 2) platforms whoever paid enough to push their product to the top, serving you something that may not inherently be of inferior quality, but may not align with your tastes, may not be exciting beyond just being a new release, and realigns your current listening habits to be more in line with what the average user on the platform is also listening to — which socially might have benefits but which creates a homogeneity of consumption that can become bland since you’re listening to something really just because it’s the next product on the assembly line to have its public moment and not because anything about the music actually captured your attention. the current landscape of streaming is designed to keep you at an all you can eat buffet where you take what’s served to you, and as a result a lot of us have forgotten how to look at a menu and order.
so what does taking a more active role in your own music curation look like? for me, it’s meant not using streaming as a primary listening platform. I mostly use my local Apple Music library on my phone that I curate with the vestigial iTunes Library framework that’s still a part of Apple Music on my laptop. probably going to find an alternative soon since apple seems to be cutting integration progressively. I like this method because it forces me to choose what to sync to the limited storage space I have, forcing me to take inventory of what I actually listen to and what I can offload. the files I get are mostly from Bandcamp or Soulseek depending on whether it’s available for purchase or entirely unavailable online (as is the case for a lot of electronic music that was on vinyl only, which is where soulseek comes in clutch). I also have freedom here to change the ID3 tags to better sort and organize, rate, change track info, and track my own listening data.
Bandcamp and other music purchasing platforms are great because 1) it reshapes my relationship to music away from consumerism and back towards curation. I have to pay actual money for this thing now if I want to use it, so i’m forced to consider its value (usually i’ll stream a release first to gauge my interest). 2) having to spend money helps me to course out my meals so to speak, as i’ll buy a few releases i’ve accumulated in my cart over the month and cash out on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of my money is actually getting to the artist (TOMORROW IS BANDCAMP FRIDAY BTW!!!), and between purchases I can actually chew and savor and digest my last orders, they don’t get swept up in the deluge of new releases. my plate is full until i’m done and then I order more. also for the times of the year like now when new music isn’t coming out as regularly I take time to find older music that I would normally overlook while keeping up with new drops. currently very into early 80s/late 70s music with early digital production, kinda stuff that would evolve into synthpop and dance music.
so how do you know what to order? for me, I’m getting recs through trusted curation platforms. whether it’s bandcamp daily, y’all lovely folks here on PI.FYI, friends, or most importantly musicians who I follow on socials that share their tastes through posts, stories, playlists on steaming, interviews, etc. I like this last one especially because it’s kind of like a musical game of telephone. if I like an artist and they share their interests and influences it’s like every layer in this process is stretching my palate further from the sound that I was originally interested in and into a new territory that has some shared DNA but would never have been recommended to me by an algo because there’s no shared category or label between them, only the musical influence and interpretation of it made by the artist. as an example, I was a huge Skrillex stan, he signed KOAN Sound to his label, they collab with Asa who collabs with Sorrow, Sorrow takes huge influence from Burial, Burial makes some ambient adjacent stuff and takes huge influence from 90s rave music and drum and bass and 2000s rnb, now i’m listening to Brandy - All in Me, William Basinski, Aphex Twin, none on whom would get recommended by Spotify to me from Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.
LAST thing i’ll say — because in yappin about this i’m realizing how actually passionate about this subject I am: MAKE LISTS! playlists are cool, but they can flatten your music into vague categories of “vibes” and “aesthetics” and encourage picking one-off songs from artists that you never form an active audience relationship with. I make a practice of making my own year end lists of top 25 albums (plus some honorable recs and top individual songs) and keeping them in a notes doc that I regularly update and rearrange over the course of the year. this forces me to consider the actual relationship i’m forming with what i’ve ordered for myself. did I like it in the moment but it didn’t have staying power? is it slowly growing on me? it also encourages taking albums as a whole. maybe I liked one or two tracks a lot but the rest wasn't resonating. that’s ok! maybe I rank it lower but now i’ve actually taken time to consider it, it’s in my library, and maybe (quite a few cases for me) something I ranked like bottom 5 albums becomes a retroactive favorite from that year as my tastes evolve. also 25 albums to take with me from each year is really more than you'd think, i struggle sometimes to even find 25 that I formed a true connection with. I think the biggest thing the itunes era ruined that led into now is the single-ification of music, the ability to separate the hits from the deep cuts. albums are meant to be taken as a whole, and then once you've really sat with the whole you can find what actually stuck. even then I like to keep the whole around because soooo often i’ll write off a track that yeeeears later I come to love. trust the artist, they made it like they did for a reason.
aaannyyyywayy TLDR: get recs organically, be more active in deciding your listening patterns, fr*cken pay artists yall, trust the artist embrace the album, really consider what you consume
Feb 29, 2024
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i’m not gonna go into the state of politics in this country, frankly I enjoy that this site has been a politics free space for the most part. with that being said, resigning to despair and the feeling of powerlessness serves only the status quo. inaction is not the solution, nor is waiting for the government to be what you want it to be. politics over: here’s the rec
be the change you want to see
as much of a cliche as this saying is, i’ve grown to believe in it with my full being as i’ve gotten older. for the things you have control over, for the practical needs that you can meet within your community, for the little things you can do every day to ease someone’s burden or generally be a pleasant interaction in someone’s life: bring to the world what you feel it lacks.
where you live there are likely already communities that are arising to support each other and call for change. seek those out if that’s a motivating notion for you. participate as much as you are able and as little as you please, every bit counts. being a visible and tangible example of how the agency we all have can create something better will motivate others to find their voice. a lot of people feel like you, but even a few in action is better than multitudes in despair.
community is so key, and the world we live in has created a situation where isolation is the default so that individuals are forced to rely on the market or the state to meet their needs. how much better would it be to have neighbors and friends as a support network, mutually exchanging their time and resources to strengthen the communtiy and invest in relationships that benefit the whole. the moment we all realize that we can do for each other what the world tells us we need to do ourselves, the stronger we will be and the more we can come together and enact real change from the bottom up, rather than being divided in pleading for a top down approach.
this may sound revolutionary because we have become so detached from community that we cannot envision the changes in our model of living that would have to be made, but it’s sooo not that deep, and it feels more like investing in the good in others than sacrificing personal comforts. it can look like:
- shopping at a local business vs a corporate chain, get to know the staff, get to know your fellow patrons
- spending time with friends, there doesn't need to be a reason or occasion. make meals together, drive together to go do something, maybe literally just be in each others presence as you do daily life, share each others sacred presence amidst the mundane
- give things you don’t need to a friend who does, exchange clothes, exchange favors, share knowledge and resources, lend a skill or a craft, donate things if you don’t know someone who can use it, exchange things and experiences without the need for monetary incentive
- create things together, make art together, share and exchange media, try things for the joy of experiencing them without the need to be “good” at it,
- grieve together, worry together, talk out negative feelings, commiserate, support, encourage, motivate, share your accomplishments, celebrate together
- get to know your neighbors, why is everyone in isolation while in such proximity?
- get off that damn phone if it makes you feel bad, you wont miss out, the world happens outside of it, unlearn FOMO
- enjoy nature, go on walks, get outside, sweat and run and jump and see the sky
- remind yourself that life is about what happens right now, don’t be concerned with what could be or what was if you are unable to affect it in the present.
- go to a concert at a small venue for an artist you’ve never heard of, bring friends, don’t preclude experience for the perceived necessity of entertainment
- unlearn grindset, but also unlearn bainrot. don’t fester in your down time. rest can be active, activity can be restorative. your time is precious and you will meet your need for purpose and direction by literally choosing to pursue a “meaningless” hobby in even what little time you may have vs scrolling and taking psychic damage.
- learn to enjoy the abundance of freely available joy in this world, we have been tricked to believe that money is the sole provider of a happy life
idk i’m just becoming mindful of what brings me life in this world and so much of it is available to me solely by seeking it out instead of idleness in my free time under the guise of “rest.” so much if it comes from seeing the divine in others and creating bonds and relationships and support networks. so much of it comes from enjoying beauty and art, and moderating and savoring that experience vs endless consumption and media gluttony.
the world through a screen is bleak, the world in front of your eyes can be beautiful, the system is broken but you and everyone you know has some untapped agency. anyway imma get off my soapbox, go catch a firefly or sit around a campfire with the homies. you’ll be glad you did.
Jun 29, 2024
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not because you met someone or anything but because you take psychic damage every time you doom swipe on there and you probably never liked being on there in the first place and why does everyone seem to have a wack helen keller take and feel the need to put that on their profile like it’s cute??
time to do it the old fashioned way and mix and mingle at the sock hop or however our grandparents did it. after all, you just being around and living life is gonna be a better pitch for why someone should date you than those same 5 photos and your two-truths-and-a-lie prompt.
Feb 22, 2024