Backwords Press: Visit Our Weekly Blog

BACKWORDS blog explores the intersection between presence and history. The blog is a platform that honors the moment of encounter that any one person experiences—with art, literature, music, performance, or place. Often, reflections fit multiple categories—the opposite of a news program or style blog, BACKWORDS is not preoccupied with immediacy. An event does not need to be current to be relevant, nor does a memory need to be close to its origins to hold its potency.

Featured Posts

2020 and The One Where We All Try to Stay Sane

2020 and The One Where We All Try to Stay Sane

Tunnel Vision: Preparing to Hike the Pacific Crest Trail

Tunnel Vision: Preparing to Hike the Pacific Crest Trail

Giverny, This Way

Giverny, This Way

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays!

My First Foray Into The Wonderful Wallowas

My First Foray Into The Wonderful Wallowas

Spice and Rain

Spice and Rain

Traveling with Less

Traveling with Less

Antibiotics and Balinese Dance, A Winning Combination

Antibiotics and Balinese Dance, A Winning Combination

Let's Confuse Each Other In German: How I Turned 30 in Paris

Let's Confuse Each Other In German: How I Turned 30 in Paris

Recent Posts

Spice and Rain

Spice and Rain

Let’s talk about the Spice Girls, shall we? This past June, the premiere girl band of the 90s reunited for a 13-show UK tour, which amassed a whopping $78 million, and I was lucky enough to witness it in all its glory. While traveling to London and Paris for my 30th birthday, I noticed I was returning home just one day shy of the Spice Girls’ London shows, at the end of their tour. Luckily, they had another show in Bristol two days before I was flying home, and there were sti

Let's Confuse Each Other In German: How I Turned 30 in Paris

Let's Confuse Each Other In German: How I Turned 30 in Paris

I knew how I wanted to turn 30 long before the time arrived. What started as an inclination to do something big, a feeling, and a desire to celebrate and have a better thirtieth than my mother, eventually became a full fledged plan. From the time my mother turned 30 herself, I’d heard the story of how she was gifted a driveway lined with black candles and a package of adult diapers from her friends. I desired...adventure over somewhat cruel gag gifts. And oddly, to be alone.

I Won't Call It Country: My Americana Kick

I Won't Call It Country: My Americana Kick

I’ve written about my trip to China a couple times now, but one thing bears repeating: Shanghai is enormous. And since I was traveling solo, visiting a friend with a full time job, and staying in my own apartment, the crowded streets and sticky heat tended to wear me out. So, I fell into a routine – generally, I was back at the apartment by late afternoon with a few hours to kill before I’d meet up with Elizabeth for dinner. I started referring to my apartment as “going back

Used to Be Mine

Used to Be Mine

On a frigid New York City evening in January, I realized a hidden dream of mine – hearing Sara Bareilles perform her song, “She Used to Be Mine,” live. I say hidden only because I am that person who only remembers how incredible it is to see their favorite performers live when it’s actually happening. I’m not often the kind to plan months ahead of time to catch a show; it’s the procrastinator in me. World travel? Yes. Concert? No. But this past January I was lucky enough to b

Mystery Solved: My Favorite Moment in Rock and Roll History

Mystery Solved: My Favorite Moment in Rock and Roll History

When I was 12 or 13 – back when downloading music off Napster and burning CDs was a thing – the jam band my dad has been friends with since highschool acquired some home recording equipment. My dad, being a rockstar in his daydreams, was quick to put it use and show off the results. That’s how I came to have two Scott Duncan originals in my music library. One was a folk guitar bit about The Hatfields and McCoys, the other, more importantly, was a cover of “Gimme Shelter,” by

Falling for Florence and Jonathan

Falling for Florence and Jonathan

I’m not a podcast person. I have had more conversations about them than I can count, recommendation after recommendation pouring in, about which one to listen to next, or to try. “Trust me, you’ll love this one!” But let me just tell you: I’m not gonna fucking listen to it. I try and try but never make it past the five-minute mark. I can’t listen to audiobooks either. I don’t know if I’m too ADD, but they almost always bore me or I just end up tuning them out. All that change

Music and Memory

Music and Memory

A few weeks ago, my partner Alex and I were out for a drive on one of the first warm days of Portland spring. I was scrolling through the music library on my phone trying to pick some tunes; something that said “windows down, sunglasses on,” even though it was only 60 degrees outside. I settled on Sublime’s self-titled album. It seemed to fit the mood and Alex agreed. The minute the first riff of “Garden Grove” started to flow out of the speakers, I was transported back to ag

Can We Listen to Something Else: Love and a Love of Hip Hop in the 21st Century

Can We Listen to Something Else: Love and a Love of Hip Hop in the 21st Century

When it comes to music, hip hop has always held a small place in my periphery. I like it in the sense that I like to dance to it, both in “the club” and in the hip hop dance class I take weekly. Classic tracks by Cypress Hill (insane in the membrane, insane in the brain!), Snoop Dogg (...smoke weed everyday), and R Kelly (so baby give me that toot toot) are so ingrained in the radio culture of my past that they’re hard to avoid and even harder not to sing along to. But really

Wandering Through the Symphony

Wandering Through the Symphony

I’m making a habit of going to the symphony alone. It’s equal parts bad planning and an impulse decision, but this November, three hours before show time, I decided to attend the Oregon Symphony – again. I love a good excuse to dress up and struggle to tie a tie, even though part of the beauty in going to a symphony performance in Portland is that half the audience will be dressed to the nines, and the other half will be wearing flannel and beanies. It’s a beautiful mix. This

It Takes a Village

It Takes a Village

I’ve followed singer/songwriter Stephen Wrabel for years now. If you’re like me and follow him on Twitter and Instagram, you’ve probably seen him cry more than once, either in a video full of gratitude, or because something rough had happened. You’ve seen his doodles outlining his insecurity, what’s occupying his mind, or his dreams for the future. You’ve seen his impulsive shopping habits. You’ve seen him fiercely advocate for his friends and fans. I first heard him as a fea

A River in Big Little Lies

A Song, A Catch, Undone: An Admirer Reflects on Uncertainty

A Song, A Catch, Undone: An Admirer Reflects on Uncertainty

Visiting his old blog was a late-night, instinctual sort of stumbling. A way to reconnect with someone I had imperceptibly missed lately. That someone lived in Porto Alegre, on the southern tip of Brazil, and we had formed a connection through text and video conversations over Whatsapp, a messaging app. [Link to Part 1] The connection with Felipe fell in that zone between friend and romance which I took fairly unseriously and met hopefulness on his part with a joke or a laugh

A Night of Living Music History: A Trump, A Queer, and an Immigrant

A Night of Living Music History: A Trump, A Queer, and an Immigrant

On January 30th, 2017, I attended the Oregon Symphony’s performance of Romeo & Juliet, which was composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. That Monday evening at Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall followed a weekend of turmoil, coinciding with the President's (despicable) travel ban. Uncertainty, isolation, and a thick fear of what’s next, has persisted since the election. These emotions are almost palpable everywhere you turn, and because of this, I had decided that night

The Fourth of Three Wishes: Portland’s Aladdin Theatre

The Fourth of Three Wishes: Portland’s Aladdin Theatre

If it’s lucky, a place gets three wishes. The Aladdin Theatre, built in 1927, located in Portland’s now-gentrifying southeast quadrant, got four wishes and hasn’t needed a djinni since. People know The Aladdin today as a concert and comedy venue, capacity 620, with its few surviving touches of vintage décor and its reputation for intimate shows, all barely hinting at its colorful (and sordid?) past. The word, intimate, is the giveaway. The Aladdin’s third wish was for a porno

Work Song

Work Song

The scene is set for something dark and slow – the camera follows the silhouette of a man making his way through a small crowd. Slow claps of rhythm begin and the man finds his match – a woman in the audience with a shock of red hair. As the music begins to unfold he turns to her with purpose, gives a look that could almost be menace. What we know for sure is that these two are not strangers. She closes her eyes as the next beat hits. The song pushes forward and the camera c

I Can’t Listen to Michael Bublé (A Story About Zombies)

Pre-teening with The Fugees

Pre-teening with The Fugees

In 1996, I was twelve years old. Pokemon the cartoon debuted, before smartphones, before Pokemon Go, before you could catch ’em virtually. It was also the same year that my little brother and I were obsessed with the anime series, Gundam Wing. My parents bought and ran a restaurant at the Hillsboro Airport named after the World War I fighter ace Eddie Rickenbacker. My family made good money for the first time in our whole lives – serving white people juicy cuts of prime rib –

Americanism on Broadway: The Book of Mormon Musical

Americanism on Broadway: The Book of Mormon Musical

In March of 2011, at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre on West 49th St in New York, “The Book of Mormon: The Musical” opened to packed theatres and rave critical reviews after eight years of development and workshops. Its creators, South Park showrunners Trey Parker and Matt Stone, along with Avenue Q composer/co-lyricist Robert Lopez, called it “an atheist’s love letter to religion”—this to Katharine Whittemore of The Boston Globe, in a 2011 article about the Broadway’s relation to

Rihanna & This Heart "Work"

Rihanna & This Heart "Work"

I don’t normally blog about things so soon after they happen, but sometimes a song like Rihanna’s “Work” will follow you and your homie for an entire night. The DJ will play it multiple times at the after-party, it will come on once or twice in two different Ubers, and again at your last stop of the evening, the Plaid Pantry, where you buy Cheddar & Sour Cream Ruffles–which you have not done since your mid-twenties! But, you were out on a Saturday night, which doesn’t really

Daughter and the Decline of Selfhood

Daughter and the Decline of Selfhood

Billboard’s Paley Martin claims that Daughter’s latest album, Not To Disappear, enables “each lyric [to morph] the melancholic into an expansive and visceral soundscape” and the album as a whole “contemplates fate & presence.” This fate & presence is something I see as an extension of the mission of BACKWORDS Press’ Blog – exploring the intersection between history & presence – and I would have to agree with Paley’s review. Collaborating “with the BAFTA-nominated Iain Forsyth

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