feat: blog talk to a star interp

Author: wade-cheng

src/blog/talk-to-a-star.typ

@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+#import "../../templates/blog_post.typ": conf
+#import "../../templates/utils.typ": *
+
+#show: conf.with(
+  page-title: "How do you talk to a star?",
+  date: "2026-01-27",
+)
+
+Everybody's Worried About Owen has a song I like titled "How Do You Talk To A Star?" This post is a little bit about how I interpreted it, noting that listening to song for the first time, often without lyrics, makes you hear different things, and this can lead to neat things happening.
+
+Before looking up the lyrics, to me, the song was about an ex.
+
+#quote(block: true)[
+  It's funny how you spent the days \\ \
+  Being a beacon for me and my hopscotch plays \\ \
+  I got a desk drawer full of letters that I never sent you 'cause you were just too far away \\
+]
+
+It goes on and on, painting pictures, scenes, _memories_, of a time well spent. To me, the breakup might have been amicable, mutually beneficial, or at least there are no lingering negative emotions that are able to over-power the nostalgia this song instills.#sidenote[Maybe there were negatives, there's always some, but singing this, right in this moment, we are thinking about the good times.]
+
+We sing about memories of "White boots and a tongue that's feeling extra dry," of "Something caught in your teeth, a smile bigger than An-?dro-?me-?da," of "Ruddy cheeks as I look up at the estate in my head that you founded." The ex lives in our mind rent free.
+
+And this is where the mishearings start being real fun.
+
+Without having the lyrics, the ambiguities of English language in song cause me to hear the end of the song as this:
+
+#quote(block: true)[
+  and I never paid for the baseball cap \\ \
+  The bowling alley at midnight, cheap beer on tap \\ \
+  And you are a lithograph, sketching my history \\ \
+  Under the floodlights, you look more like God to me \\ \
+  I forget the way you#sidenote()[Or "to," depending on how I was feeling---they sound similar enough.] talk \\ \
+  Three shots of tequila, the speed you're walkin' \\ \
+  And I guess what I'm trying to say here is thank you \\
+
+  But I go \\ \
+  Cold \\
+]
+
+Rent free indeed, we sing that we "never paid," that is, we never regretted, never suffered from having and having memories of the baseball cap, the shit beer, the dates and outings and experiences together.
+
+We sing that maybe we are forgetting some things as time places distance between us ("I forget the way you talk, [the] three shots of tequila, the speed you're walkin'"), and this makes me feel sad. The song is bittersweet, this is an ex-partner and not a partner, after all. Or maybe I hear "you" as "to," and the line becomes "I forget the way to talk," continuing to regale the awe we have at you. Either way, both sentiments are true, in this line and throughout the song. Thank you. Thank you, for being a part of my life, in all the ways. It was a good time.
+
+Anyways, the actual stanza is this:
+
+#quote(block: true)[
+  and I never looked back for the baseball cap \\ \
+  The bowling alley at midnight, shit beer on tap \\ \
+  And you are a lithograph, sketching my history \\ \
+  Under the floodlights, you look more like God to me \\ \
+  You're way too fucked up, you're way too tough \\ \
+  Three shots of tequila to speed you up \\ \
+  And I guess what I'm trying to say here is thank you \\ \
+]
+
+It's a bit different, isn't it? That's pretty cool, and probably lends itself to some kind of slightly alternative-universe interpretation.
+
+I also went to a concert of Owen's and I think he said the song, to him, was about new people that you're in awe of, instead of old? So it's real cool that media, art, can create these really different interpretations. The contents of the story is locked in time, but they spawns infinitely possible alternate universes when observed.#sidenote[Uhh mumble mumble heisenberg?]
+
+I like this song, I like midwest emo. This song is tied to my university freshman experience, temporally and in a feelings sense, and it holds a special place in my heart, or whatever. So this is pretty cool.