If you put lipstick on
a dinosaur, you must
be the kind of person
who sexualizes dinosaurs. I’m not trying to kinkshame:
I’m just looking for
a shade that will make
my young bones fuckable.

— from “Unlikely Femme”

I grew up pretending my life was a series of lyrics. I’d try to speak in the language of songs I’d heard, even if I’d never heard the song. It seemed like the thing to do. It was comfortable. I needed comfortable. I wanted to fit in with the people who listened to that style of music, those types of people. I wanted to fit in where I wasn’t, because where I was wasn’t working for me. It wasn’t me.

Colette Arrand’s The Future is Here and Everything Must Be Destroyed (Split Lip Press) is an homage to the body, to discomfort, to identity, and sex, and drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. It’s wanting to flirt, love, and thrive. It is Star Trek guiding the way through transition. It is George Michael, Danzig, and Korn. It’s Limp Bizkit doing it all for the nookie – while you are, too, but not sure why.

Music provides a table of contents for life. It doesn’t always make sense, but it’s the order of things and it tries to present some pretty scenery. It offers “surrogate families” that feel like protection. Because you are you and no one else can claim the you that you’ve become. Because “Fuck culture, you / are good, your wounds beautiful, / shouldered though few believe them / real. You are good. You are good.”

Purchase your copy of The Future is Here an Everything Must Be Destroyed from Split Lip Press.

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