In Which I Am Quoted in Fast Company

In further "Laurie is Increasingly Famous" News, one of my tweets is quoted this morning in Fast Company.

BOOYAH MOFOS.

But that article is actually about something more important than my twitternet celebrity (I know that's hard to imagine). It's about a kids album put together by my friend Ryan who is one of the most talented, inventive, and hardworking people I know. The album is called Do Fun Stuff and it is amazing, adorable, hip as fuck, and-- best of all-- 100% of the proceeds benefit the study of Smith Magenis Syndrome, a syndrome that affects approximately 1 in 25,000 kiddos, including Ryan's own Littlest Buddy.

Ryan has no mass PR machine. No multi-national corporate platform. He's just a guy. A dad. A husband, a writer, and an amazing photographer (who happened to shoot the wedding of one of my dearest friends). But Ryan is a great example of what you can do when you work your ass off, treat people with respect, and are an absolute fucking genius--

Do Fun Stuff hit #1 on iTunes on its very first day.

Buy it, peeps.

{ BUY }

(Hide the rest)

When You Break My Heart

 { laideron }

podcast: "when you break my heart" / music by: mixtapes & meltdowns

I went a month without calling. It's the longest I'd ever gone. I didn't email. I didn't text. I didn't send a postcard in the mail. I didn't Skype or Facebook or pin a note to a pigeon's wings.

I ran. I wrote. I played music. I started a business, or possibly three. For the first four weeks, I barely thought of him at all. I was consumed. I was on fire. I was busy and breathless and on the go.

It was a hollow sort of busy. A moth-balled, window-shuttered, dark-on-my-doorstep kind of empty. It wasn't sad; just vacant. It wasn't living; it was surviving, and I was doing it in overdrive. Someone told me I was brave, but courage doesn't make you run. When you're running toward something, there's something else you're running from.

I called tonight five times. I couldn't tell you why. I kept hoping he'd text back: Stop calling. I'm busy. Leave me be. I could have been angry then, could have thrown my phone across the room. I could have sobbed and raged and gone to bed tired. But there was no text. There was no hello. There was just the ringing of the phone, and then silence.

When you break someone's heart, that story isn't yours. When someone picks up the pieces that you've shattered on the floor, that you've shattered before, on other floors, in other halls of other houses, when someone kneels in those shards on bleeding knees and glues the parts together with glue that doesn't stick, when you leave in a car on Christmas, when you start again, when you forget and forgo, when you fade away, when you make anew, when you leave those words for her to mend, to put to bed, to pack away, to battle in her dreams and wake in a sweat, you can't keep it. You can't write songs about it. You can't sob it on another woman's shoulder. You can't laugh at dinner parties and say, "Once upon a time..." You can't spend it like a dollar at the corner store.

That story isn't yours. You left it broken in a bathroom mirror. You left it tar-stained in a coffee cup that never washes white. You left it in the crease of a pillowcase, mascara-black and still smelling of your sweat. You left it.

It isn't yours to tell.

(Hide the rest)

Not Entirely Shameless

Last night, in an effort to procrastinate from my actual work, I created a new website. Because it is important for me to own as many domain names as humanly possible.

The new site is called Groupon Everywhere and it aggregates internet-based Groupon deals for ALL cities (deals you can take advantage of from anywhere), as well as deals for major travel hot spots.





TWEET IT


If you find this useful, pass it on. Just remember: if I become a trillionaire, you get better birthday gifts. It's simple math.

p.s. This blog is up to almost 700 subscribers! Are you one of them?

p.p.s. I was interviewed last week by an actual newspaper and got an actual paid writing gig as a result. But it only pays $60, so you're still getting a shitty birthday gift.

p.p.p.s. Did you buy my new EP yet? It's seriously like $5.

p.p.p.p.s. Here is a dormouse. No reason.

(Hide the rest)

A Summer Stolen

I want to remember this picture.

It isn't flattering. It isn't pretty. I don't know when I've seen my eyes so hard, my hair so brittle, my mouth such a thin, sharp line. It is how I look this year.

I called this my throw-away year.

It's still August by a thread and last night the air smelled like winter. If summer came, I never saw it. There were no bronzed shoulders. There were no beach reads. There were no late night dances, no secret surprises. It was a season of quiet; serious and small.

In winter, the world is wrapped in gossamer. I am cocooned. The streets are silent but a hush, hush, hush. And then spring and green and light in my hair and yes, yes, yes, I am alive. Bronzed shoulders and beach reads; barbecues below the window where your homemade curtains hang. Fireflies and birdsongs and feet slapping concrete: I am alive.

But this winter there was no cocoon. There was a wailing, aching empty. I was stripped and bleeding and raw and when the spring came there was a scramble. If there were birdsongs I didn't hear them, only the rat a tat tat of my still-beating heart. There was a breathless grasping, a wanting; a pleading, desperate wheeze. There was a prayer.

I'm better now.

At night I sleep with two blankets. One for the summer night and one for my half-torn cocoon. I am shoring up; I am throwing away. I can be alright next year. I saw a crow last Tuesday and I'm letting this one go.

I'm letting it go.

(Hide the rest)

Paper Weight: My First EP

For the past three years, I've been making music under the name Mixtapes + Meltdowns.  Today I released a six-song EP called Paper Weight. It's sometimes pensive, often cathartic, and occasionally joyous. In other words: it's the lo-fi indie pop version of my blog. But with hand claps.

It sounds like it was recorded in my bedroom, because it was.

TRACK LISTING
Paper Weight
Tell Me Now
If There's a Way
Feels Like Rain To Me
The Onset (Bonus Track)
Your Last Bridge (Bonus Track)

(Hide the rest)