“It’s the dancer’s leap on the downbeat that gives the illusion of flight.” (Will Cordeiro on Presto)

Bang, the universe began—and ended. A cosmos is reduced to an epigram. Narrative allows us to dash through eternity as quick as a quantum leap.

“Hope, no matter how unlikely, is still worth singing for. There has to be magic in that.” (Maggie Warren on Presto)

For me, these realities of nature reveal a sense of presto: an inherent poetry to this life, a chance to find meaning and magic in a world we share with such strange creatures.

Literature, Music, Personal Essay, PoliticsGuestJuly 7, 2024Maggie Warren

"A ringing clarity, followed by smoke. Deliberate naughtiness." ([sarah] Cavar on Presto)

What would my craft be, we and I, if not for the lovers I share us with?

Literature, Music, Personal Essay, PoliticsGuestMay 28, 2024[sarah] Cavar, Leila Chatti, Mary Oliver, Chen Chen, nat raum

“There exists a joy and hunger for more in that younger self.” (Adrienne Novy on Crowd Surfing With God: 5 Year Anniversary Special Edition)

That intensity is impossible to replicate as an adult, I think, because it reverts to nostalgia for us.

Music, Literature, Personal EssayGuestDecember 9, 2023Adrienne Novy, Hanif Abdurraqib

At Least at Times It Knew Me (Lucy Hannah Ryan on You Make Yourself Another)

In the back alley of my mind a taxi leaked orange light against the worst of my wounding and I said, I want to leave that here.

There and Wanting

What we do, what two mistimed people have always done, only ever has one ending. It will never be clearer than it is right now.

Music, Personal EssayGuestOctober 22, 2022St. Vincent, William Faulkner, MUNA, Mitski, Yumi Zouma, Grimes

“I find joy in singing my dead to life just as often as I find ache.” (Anthony Thomas Lombardi on Elegy)

Elegy can be messy. Elegy is sometimes unhappy with itself, too. Elegy is regrinding the lens again & again & again. Elegy is a reconstruction of joy.

"Grief does not exist only in subtraction." (Geoff Anderson on Elegy)

Elegy is birthed from such discomfort, a speaker navigating a world that hurts precisely because of its horrible resemblance to the one left behind.

Music, Literature, Personal EssayGuestJuly 10, 2022Søren Kierkegaard

"To mourn is also to acknowledge the limitations of language." (Gavin Yuan Gao on Elegy)

Elegy is the séance we hold as we pray for a visitation from the ones we have lost. We invite them to haunt us. We sing to them, and listen for song in return.

Literature, Music, Personal EssayGuestJune 29, 2022Gavin Yuan Gao

Frank Haunts Me Across a Decade (Hazem Fahmy on Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo)

By 2020, Waiting for Frank Ocean in Cairo had become a kind of phantom; a project that haunted me, yet whose future seemed illusive.

Music, LiteratureGuestMarch 9, 2022Hazem Fahmy, Frank Ocean