POPMANIA

I remember the exact moment I knew I wanted to write. I was 14, sitting on the couch e-chatting with some internet friends I’d made through this tiny band i loved called R5, and we were all energetically fawning over a new article about them that had just come out. The piece was poignant, descriptive, gripping, and evoked this absurd sense of intimate emotion through mere words, and I realized that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life: tell good stories.

Six years later, I’m here sharing an article I wrote for Local Wolves about this not-so-tiny band called R5. A lot changes in that duration — I hadn’t necessarily kept up closely with the band’s endeavors throughout it, but within a month found myself at 20 years old dancing in the same room as them celebrating at a release party in LA, and then sitting on my bed talking on the phone with Rocky, smiling like i was 14 again.

It goes without saying, then, that this conversation triggered a landslide of nostalgia and introspection. I could go on and on about how this feels like full circle in every sense of the term, but I won’t bore you — I’ll just say that there are slivers of moments where every little nuance and intricacy of the narrative makes sense, and this is one of them.