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

2020 and The One Where We All Try to Stay Sane

Antibiotics and Balinese Dance, A Winning Combination

Antibiotics and Balinese Dance, A Winning Combination

By the time we got to Banjar, my then-boyfriend (and still dear friend) Jesse and I had been in Indonesia for a couple of weeks. His Uncle and Aunt live there, in Banjar, on the northern coast of Bali. After spending those first few weeks in hostel bunks and eating more food stall fried noodles than could possibly be healthy, I was relishing the fresh market vegetables and steaming hot shower on offer. We had our own room with a big comfortable double bed, a pool out front, a

The Art of Going Alone: A Story in Three Parts

The Art of Going Alone: A Story in Three Parts

Part One: The Concert The Summer of 2018 was not the best I’ve ever had. I was going through an unexpected breakup, my job was boring me to death, and there were heat waves that left my bedroom at upwards of 95 degrees. I was feeling restless, lost and uncertain – my confidence low. So I did what I normally do when I’m feeling out of sync: I stayed busy. I started hiking on weekends, made loads of plans with friends, signed up for a few trail maintenance crews. The summer wen

Date Night ft. Chad Valley

Date Night ft. Chad Valley

I had the perfect city date-night on the books. One of my besties, Lori, and I had reservations at a restaurant I’d been wanting to try, dessert plans, and tickets for a show at The Doug Fir, a hip Portland music venue. It was a beautiful summer day and, being someone who doesn’t go out much anymore, I was feeling very cool. Dinner was delicious, dessert the same, and by the time we arrived at the show I was excited to grab a drink and dance. The headliner was Chad Valley, an

Delightfully/Disappointingly Crazy

Call Me By Your Synergy, Call Me By Your Name

Call Me By Your Synergy, Call Me By Your Name

For me, world-building is one of the greatest aspects of reading, but the images we translate with our own minds don’t always match what’s on the page. A person's life, what they’ve experienced up until whatever it is that they’re reading, impacts how the story plays out for them. I think that’s why film adaptations of a novel can attract such high levels of scrutiny – how does the page match the screen match your mind? This past Fall, in anticipation of the eagerly awaited f

Hey, who are all those dudes playing marimbas?

Hey, who are all those dudes playing marimbas?

It had been a rough day. At work, in general. Word back from an interview was past due, close friends were in the throes of relationship turmoil, one of my favorite temps at work relapsed and was fired from his job. I walked out of my building into the nearly-raining night feeling tired and a little bummed out. I made the two-block walk to my train stop in a bit of a daze, and was met with a wave of music. It’s not unusual for there to be buskers on the corner outside of Pion

Trapped by Crows

Trapped by Crows

Imagine a square-shaped stage. People sitting on the floor all around. With no introduction, around 20 diverse women stand grouped together at the edges. Slowly, one enters the stage, then two, sometimes 3 at a time. Sometimes a single woman again, and so on, until all are standing throughout, each of them facing different directions. All of the women are dressed in black with a white cloth wrapped around their hair. Suddenly, half of the group begins to rock forward while th

That Time I Saw Michael Jackson Perform in Piazza De Popolo

That Time I Saw Michael Jackson Perform in Piazza De Popolo

Okay, so maybe this particular Michael Jackson was an Italian imposter. But in makeup, a bright red jacket, white socks, and black loafers, he strutted around his small section of the square in a fairly successful imitation of the King of Pop. My classmates and I watched among a large half-circle of tourists – all taking photos or videos and occasionally staying long enough to drop a coin or bill into the performer’s hat when he passed it around the crowd. Until I started tra

Mozart’s "The Magic Flute"

Mozart’s "The Magic Flute"

Mozart’s The Magic Flute was my very first opera. I was in college at the time, still at BYU, and my boyfriend decided to surprise me with a trip to Salt Lake City. It was to be a night of firsts: my first opera, my first date with Luke outside of a bedroom or a BYU apartment, my first night in public where open affection was the rule of the day. Opera, to my delight, made Luke lower all his defenses against the world. Neither a night at the opera, nor Luke really, would have

A Tradition Continues

A Tradition Continues

When I mention I’m going to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival I often get a similar set of questions: When? Where? Do you, like, dress up? I can imagine people assembling a scene in their heads. Maybe a large field full of white tents. A long weekend of Elizabethan nerds in whimsical dress (I can say that, right? Since I fall into the category). Swords and/or jousting might be involved. In reality OSF is something of the opposite. The festival runs eight months out of the year

Three Plays in Seventeen Days: Blame the Victim, Populist Fervor, and a Farce

Cavalia’s Odysseo, Finally

Cavalia’s Odysseo, Finally

I had walked by it, ridden the train by it – probably hundreds of times while the show was in Portland – so it was surreal to finally be inside the “White Big Top.” But instead of my hometown, I was in Irvine, California visiting my friend and former roommate, Shonna, and the Big Top was the reason she was there. Shonna works for Cavalia – the Montreal based entertainment company – and was (and still is) working on tour with their show, Odysseo. The space inside the tent was

Too Good To Cruise: Music on the Seas

The Wonderful Town

The Wonderful Town

Over the weekend, I was hosting a Portlander here in Hollywood—my friend, Ginger Duncan, down from the Pacific Northwest for her first visit to Los Angeles. Her visit comes on the heels of my own relocation just three weeks before: a sort of fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants uprooting that has repotted me back home and also not home. Home, in the sense that I was born in Los Angeles; home, likewise, in the sense that home is (as my friend, Asaf, is fond of saying) wherever you are.

Prolonged Performances of Grief

Prolonged Performances of Grief

"Matty" Photo Credit: Molly Choma Matty and I are texting back and forth about the Season 7 premiere of The Walking Dead. At the end of last season, a terrifying sociopath with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire bludgeons someone to death, but we don’t get to see who. Tonight, we find out who dies. Even though Matty and I live together, I didn’t watch it with him.

Pokémon Go'ing Somewhere: How One Mega-Player in App Gaming Might Be A Small Step for Privacy an

Pokémon Go'ing Somewhere: How One Mega-Player in App Gaming Might Be A Small Step for Privacy an

On a relatively clear July evening in Central Park, dozens and dozens of New Yorkers—men and women, some teenagers, some even with children in tow, across a surprising spectrum of racial identities, gender expressions, and (presumably) backgrounds—flooded a section of the park in search of a single Pokémon. The members of the "mob," as some on YouTube called it, were all users of the new Niantic app for Android and iPhone, called Pokémon Go, which allows players to use geoloc

Giselle

Giselle

We’re going to the opera house. THE Opera House. The ground was still sloughing off yesterday’s storm rains as we walked, threatening to soak our dress shoes. I can’t believe we’re walking toward THE opera house. I kept babbling at my companion, who received my constant exclamations with shared enthusiasm and a touch of patience. I was a little excited. Ever since I was young there was something about the white sails of the Sydney Opera House that called out to me. Not only d

On Queer Spaces, Pride, and the Shooting in Orlando

On Queer Spaces, Pride, and the Shooting in Orlando

For a while now, I’ve been debating the merits of Pride, and had all but decided this year to not make an effort to attend. The performances and shows, the exhibition, the commercial enterprise that is Pride, and Pride month in June, can feel overwhelming and stripped of the real reason to have such an event amidst the abs, sponsored vodkas, and glitter. It’s easy to neglect the older I get, that Pride was an event I used to come out. It was how I got the conversation really

Ernesto Pujol's Awaiting in Salt Lake City

Ernesto Pujol's Awaiting in Salt Lake City

On 8 April 2010, I was invited to photograph a 13-hour durational performance art piece called “Awaiting,” in downtown Salt Lake City. The piece was organized by Ernesto Pujol, a Visiting Artist at the University of Utah’s Department of Art & Art History, and its first Endowed Art Residency recipient. Ernesto invited me personally—after a meal we shared with my photography instructor (his friend), Rosi Hayes. For some reason still unclear to me, especially as an undergraduate

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