Released on August 25, 2020, Haley Blais’ Below the Salt is an album I wish I had during my first year of college. Coincidentally, that’s when I first started listening to Blais, a Vancouver-based singer-songwriter and vlogger whose wacky sense of humor and DIY bedroom-pop bangers resonated with me, a freshman living on her own for the very first time and trying to make sense of the world and herself. That unsure first-year is a senior now, but no less unsure, and I think that’s the point of Blais’ debut album: her label writes, “Below the Salt is a coming of age story that recognizes that there is no real ‘coming of age.’”
I Will Not Carry Your Heart
The first two lines of this E.E. Cummings poem are so often quoted that they’ve sadly been reduced to cliché. I can honestly say that I enjoy and admire Cummings’ poetry. For that reason, I have read and (over)analyzed this poem so many times that I’ve rendered myself incapable of reading it simply as a sweet message conveying the purest love.
This Must Be The Place
Valentine’s Day is often about gestures, gifts, and words exchanged that situate romance in the spotlight. Love, though, is obviously much more than that. It’s more experiential, imbued into aromas, the songs we hear, and significantly, the places we exist in together. I often think about the love stories held in the places on Reed’s campus over its hundred year history.