Thank you for writing me back! I feel like 1995 has gone soooooo sloowwwwwwly. Ughh will this stupid age ever end? But yes, I did have a smashing summer, thanks for asking. I’m really curious what London’s like. I’ve heard it’s dark – dark in the daytime. Do people sleep, sleep in the daytime?

Have you ever been to Middle America, Justine? Have you ever been to the Middle America of California, where hella fuckin tight trucks are lifted or slammed, depending on your level of anger? Have you been to the flatland labyrinth of Auto Zones, Jamba Juices, where Big Dogs have No Fear and the aforementioned trucks have nuts? It’s sooo sweet, you’d love it, and you wouldn’t have to worry about being mobbed everywhere you went because Elastica’s not big with cowboys.

But wait, I think you have been here – at least in a disembodied, spectral form, on MTV. Actually, I’ve seen you a bunch of times and I am smitten by your perfect sneer. It’s so good! I think the video editor may have been a teenage boy too, because that sneer loop is played over and over and I can’t get that image out of my head. Sneer sneer sneer (bats eyes). I want to live in that lip curl.

I’ve been hooked on “Connection” – it’s an unexpectedly sweet confection spun from all my favorite contrasts. It’s laid-back while being totally showy and gaudy. Like a realist black-and-white film that is actually all neon squiggles. Atonal and counterintuitive while being highly melodic and naturally composed. It feels naïve despite being fairly sophisticated (how I fancy myself to seem). It’s also got the distorted “oooowhhhaa” approach that works so well in “Cannonball” and “Supernova.”

You and that video mean a lot to me, really. See, I never get celebrity crushes even though I’m a teenager and that’s the expectation. There aren’t any actresses or singers that stir unrealistic feelings. But uh… you, and this video, and this song, and this record… it’s made me go crazy for a potential world that may exist elsewhere, full of androgynous girls and boys who sneer, effortlessly make great pop records, have fantastic conversations, make cool art and make simple clothes like amazing, and don’t wear the kinds of sunglasses that make you look like you’re always angry. Does this world actually exist? Am I crazy? Is it just a well-crafted illusion?

I’ll admit, before your sneer came into my life, there was a “wink.” I was watching the “Girls and Boys” video and Damon Albarn – do you know him? – delivers the campiest, most dreadful wink to the camera (:35 in, nonetheless) and I absolutely fell in love with it despite knowing better. All of last year I was wearing my soccer warmup jumpers and trying to wear my hair like his but I ended up looking like a zitty Ringo with too-tight pants. I wanted nothing but to float around effortlessly in oversaturated colors dispensing devastating one-liners and bathing in my own glow. But I’m older now.

This letter’s getting a little long, so let me also say that you’re a total babe and that “All-Nighter” is what I put on loud when I want to thrash and jump around while also making myself really heartsick. Heartsick in the way that I dream that sometime in the next few years I’ll meet people that will be so exciting to me that I’ll want to stay up all night with them, running around until the sun comes up, hatching plans, making manifestos, chasing impossible romances, staying skinny from constant emotional/hormonal half-marathons. I’m looking forward to this, and if it doesn’t happen I’m going to be really really unimpressed with myself.

In the meantime, I’ll keep working on my drawings and music and hopefully they’ll get me out of the Auto Zone and to a climate more fitting, where even if I start listening to Wire it won’t make me mad that you lifted their songs, it’ll actually put a big smile on my face.

Okay hope everything is cool in London! Looking forward to that second album, hope it’s as good as the first!

Wyeth

RECOMMENDED LISTENING

Connection

https://loveletterstorocknrolldotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/03-connection.mp3

All-Nighter

https://loveletterstorocknrolldotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/10-all-nighter.mp3

Never Here

https://loveletterstorocknrolldotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/14-never-here.mp3