This is the first entry in Listening Rituals, a series devoted to the practice of tracing ourselves through music.
This week, my essay on Lightning Bug's gorgeous 2021 album, A Color of the Sky, and the way some friendships hold up a mirror to who we’ve been and who we’re becoming.
Last month, I flew to Cleveland with my friend Anna for the long July 4th weekend to visit our old friend Em—one of those friendships that feels stitched into the fabric of who I am. I met them both when I was eighteen, still dazed from the move to Boulder, wide-eyed and hungry for a different kind of life. I lit my first cigarette with Anna in the garage at the house on Table Mesa, wrote strange poems in workshops with Em before I even knew what I was trying to say. We worked at the campus radio station together and found the kind of music that cracked something open in us. And on many nights, we danced into oblivion at the radio’s dance parties…nights that seemed to shield a future that felt so big, so unknown.
On the night of the Fourth, at dusk, along a path that skirted Lake Erie, I saw fireflies (or, as some call them, lightning bugs) for the first time in my life. All these little bursts of gold hovering among the grasses in the darkening, humid Ohio air, almost beckoning us forward. “Look! Fireflies!” I felt like a kid, full of awe, wondering how I had never seen these beautiful creatures before.
Later, that same night, I saw them again when Anna and I went outside to smoke. I stood out in the yard of Em’s beautiful Tudor revival house, and I kept watching them flicker in and out of sight, like magic, strange little messengers trying to tell me something, as though speaking a different language, inscrutable and ancient. It didn’t feel like seeing them so much as being met by them. Like a spell had been activated, or as though something I didn’t know I’d been missing had returned.
I stood, hypnotized. Fireworks bloomed above the treetops.
I felt much the same way when I first heard Lightning Bug a few years ago, which is why I decided to make this the first post for my Listening Rituals series. There are times when you hear a song or an album, and you can feel a shift inside yourself at a cellular level. That’s what Listening Rituals celebrates: those moments when music leads you to a fundamental realization, maybe in who you are, who you or were, or who you long to be. Those moments are sacred, in my eyes, and become bookends to our most intimate experiences. A Color of the Sky, by Lightning Bug, is one such album for me.
I first heard A Color of the Sky at a time when some rituals in my life were as strong as ever, some were quickly fading away, and others were surfacing anew.
I had just moved into a new apartment in 2021, I was still sober, and I had just gotten my first deck of Tarot cards. I was pulling cards and setting intentions during new moons, trying to find parallels between my life and in the images of the Rider-Waite set. I was also dating again, meeting up with guys from Hinge, hoping to find a partner I could see myself marrying one day. After six years of sobriety, I eventually decided to drink again later that same year, wondering if this time it was from a place of choice or from succumbing to the social pressures of dating. I knew that the work I had done during my years of sobriety had healed me in many of the ways I had hoped, but I also knew I still felt so fragile and raw, as though the slightest misstep would break me. Still, I felt more content with my life than I had in a long time.
Lightning Bug’s “Song of the Bell” details a similar uncertain space of reformation:
"If I empty me of all myself, am I a vessel or a shell? / Mining for substance in the dark and precious well / Pour out my convictions till I'm hollow as a bell / If I empty me of all myself, am I a vessel or a shell?" - Audrey Kang
Singer Audrey Kang has noted in interviews that she wrote the song during early quarantine—days suddenly hollowed out for many of us—and she was thinking through Taoist ideas around emptiness, asking: can one empty oneself and remain whole, to be vessel not shell?
I suppose it’s a question that resonates looking back on the past decade of my life. Was I a shell, pushing away the people who played such a big part of my adolescence and early adulthood as I became more hollowed from addiction, or was I a vessel all those years, holding space for the experiences that would lead me back to those very people, ready and open to share my revelations from some liminal, fragile space? "If I empty me of all myself..."
The words felt less philosophical question than lived fracture. I thought of all the years when I felt hollowed—grief, doubt, dislocation. But I thought too of the unexpected fullness in being reseen. I was a vessel, emptied and made whole at once.
So much in my life was changing in 2021, but this album was the one constant that year. I was in awe from the first bits of percussion and guitar that open the album until the very end, Audrey Kang’s airy voice threading it all together.
"When the light of day decays… I lie awake / And in the night I see / all the people that I used to be...All the friends I failed, or lost / or left behind of me / And all the things I didn’t mean to break / I lie awake" - Audrey Kang
"I Lie Awake" is a song that creates a stillness, a reminder that all versions of us, bright and broken, linger in view, urging us to trust what remains even as it shifts.
That weekend, as Anna and I caught up with Em and her husband, Dan, I felt a kind of homecoming I hadn’t realized I’d been needing. The good kind, the kind where you don’t have to explain yourself from scratch, because you’re with friends who have known you before you’ve shed so many skins yet calloused so many others.
Over the years, our friendship has held its own rhythm of distance and return. I remembered versions of myself I thought I’d lost. And not in a nostalgic way exactly, but in the way you recognize the shape of something even after it’s changed. I was tracing the outlines of a life that I thought was long gone, only it was always there, flickering, like those tiny, magical creatures glowing in the thick of the Cleveland night air that weekend. The ache of past selves, past choices...somehow it all felt right in the context of us spending time together after all these years.
The entire trip to Cleveland made me think of the kind of friendships that vanish and reappear, gaps in time closed in a single sentence, flickering like sparks from a fire. You blink, and they’re gone. You blink again, and you’re back on a couch in Boulder, laughing like nothing changed at all; blink, and you're in your mid-thirties together, at the dinner table, laughing at the dumb shit you used to do when nothing and everything seemed to matter all at once. Just like old friends do: you lose touch, move across states, change through your own seasons of life, and hopefully, if you're lucky, have the chance to share it all years later, old and new versions of yourself combined, on full display.
It’s the weight of these realizations and more questions that entered me when I left Cleveland:
Is continuity (of the self, of relationships) only meaningful if there’s room to hold new light, room to be witnessed by each other? What stories do we tell our loved ones (and which do we choose not to tell), especially after years have passed, and is that kind of storytelling truly the only way to become whole again, to integrate all versions of the self, past and present?
Sometimes, it takes being witnessed by people who knew you before everything broke to feel balanced. In my unspooling, a years-long unspooling, years that made me question everything, it took being witnessed by two old friends again to remember there was something whole underneath it all. To realize that I don't have to bear a cross of guilt and regret over past choices, because these are people who have always accepted me, even as those choices seemed to make me flicker in and out of view. Time…it stretches, collapses, rewinds. I kept thinking how rare it is to sit beside someone who remembers the earliest drafts of me. I think of Cleveland, and I think of that Fourth of July weekend as a vessel, maybe even a portal, to parts of myself that were for so long dormant, now awake.
The other night, at home, I went out to the backyard for a cigarette. I listened to the whole Lightning Bug album again, in awe of its quiet beauty.
“All the people that I used to be,” Kang sings. Old selves that I’d forgotten… decisions I didn’t expect to survive… friendships I thought had ended. But here—in the dark, seeing those fragments—it felt like remembrance rather than regret.
I listened, letting the songs become a mirror and a balm.
Maybe that’s what listening to music is, at its best. Not just taking in sound—but letting it call back the parts of us that we thought had drifted beyond reach. Noticing which selves rise to the surface. Which memories flicker back to life, soft and shy as fireflies.
There’s a stretch of time that lives between stories. Not the beginning, not the end—just the hush that follows a decision, the ache that comes before the shift. A moment suspended in breath. A space where nothing blooms, but everything stirs. That’s where we begin.
I didn’t know I was unraveling when it began.
I thought I was just tired.
Tired in a way that felt earned, maybe even noble. Tired from doing the good work. The necessary work.
The kind of work that demanded my disappearing into it.
But the disappearance lasted longer than I expected. It outgrew the job. It outgrew the calendar. It followed me home, into my journals, into the part of me that used to sing.
Eventually, I couldn’t find my way back to the creative life I once knew—not because it was gone, but because I no longer knew how to name what mattered. What to keep. What to mourn. What to rebuild.
That’s where this began—not with a resolution, but with a quiet truth I could no longer ignore:
I had abandoned my voice. And I wanted it back.
But I didn’t want to “start over.” I wasn’t interested in reinvention. I wanted something else—something slower, more honest. I wanted to trace what had carried me underneath the noise. To remember the shape of what was still alive.
That’s how The Reclamation Plan was born.
Not a list of goals I had. Not a productivity system to do more. I no longer wanted more. I wanted less. A lot less. My spirit and mind felt fried, and I was the live wire sparking, about to catch fire.
I also felt completely detached from myself. I couldn’t keep up the appearance that everything was fine, that I was okay.
God, I wanted to curl up in bed or on the couch and stay there forever, or at least stay until I felt like myself again. Until I had will again.
So I sat down to write. To mine the depths of a years-long archive that grew in shape and form like a long shadow in the heat of day before the sun sinks behind the mountains.
I created The Reclamation Plan as a kind of compass, a gentle structure to hold the fog of creative return, the messy middle of healing. But I still didn’t know what the healing would look like, and even now I still don’t completely know.
Back in April, when everything felt raw, I didn’t realize I was at the throbbing center of sharp realization: I no longer wanted to pursue the career I worked so hard to build, maybe forever; no longer wanted to strive to become the perfect version of myself, nor wait for my writing to do the same.
In this mental state? In the midst of yet another depressive episode?
No. I couldn’t do it anymore. I felt split to the core.
This plan wasn’t conceived as linear. And it still isn’t. In fact, so much of what will follow here is my act of tracing, of remembering. Finally shining the light on years of writings, in the context of my life now, in the thick of a nervous breakdown.
This plan doesn’t promise transformation on command as I so often tried to do in my twenties. It simply offers a container for myself. A way to walk with what still pulses and to shape it into something more.
Over a short period of time, it’s become a framework for this entire archive. A loose rhythm. A spiritual and creative practice I can continue to attune to, my words my tuning fork.
A reminder that I don’t have to be fully healed to create something meaningful and put it out into the world. I don’t have to wait until I’ve placed every piece of the puzzle before I begin.
Why, why, did I feel like my life needed to reflect some sort of thing I fantasized about years ago in order to pursue the one thing I always loved? To pursue the written word? To create the art I so desperately craved to read?
At least I knew bone deep that I could start now. A true leap of faith. A scattered, frantic scramble to sift through the fragments and finally put some sort of a semblance of self in words, into the art I wanted you, dear reader, to read.
You’ll notice it unfold here as I make sense of it all.
Each phase of this so-called Reclamation Plan has its own rituals and writings. Its own pacing. Its own questions.
All of it is part of the same practice: learning how to live again without abandoning myself.
If you’re here, maybe you’ve known some version of collapse, too. Maybe you’re already standing at the edge of return, unsure what to bring with you.
I know I was.
I know I still am.
So, then, a blessing, for me, for you, for us:
Let this be a place where I don’t have to rush becoming.
Where I can rebuild my voice slowly.
Where I can trace the life that still wants me. And, maybe, along the way, fall in love with a life meant to be lived.
Let this be a soft season.
Let it be unrushed, unnamed, unfinished.
Let it begin like breath.
The map begins here. My map. The very start, the inhale, the story in reverse, but forever unfolding.
In rhythm,
Michael
For years, I wrote in the margins—of teaching schedules, sobriety anniversaries, album reviews, unfinished songs and half-hearted routines. What would it mean to thread it all together? What would be revealed?
Welcome. I'm so glad you're here.
This isn’t a typical blog or newsletter.
You won’t find hot takes or how-tos here.
There’s no algorithm, no productivity hacks.
Just a mirror for anyone in a season of return. For anyone craving a softer pace. For anyone rebuilding voice, identity, or creative practice from the inside out.
Tracework grew from my own season of unraveling—professionally, emotionally, spiritually. After a long and quiet rebuilding of something like a self, I didn’t want to just write content.
I wanted to trace the creative work I had abandoned—what still pulsed underneath the ash, what still sang—in the context of my life now.
Because for years, I wrote in the margins—of teaching schedules, sobriety anniversaries, album reviews, unfinished songs, and half-hearted routines.
What would it mean to thread it all together? What would be revealed?
So I’ve been gathering those margins, rewriting them, listening for the
shape of something larger.
Each post, each ritual, each thread of language here is part of a slow return—a rebuilding of voice, of rhythm, of embodiment.
Not a performance, but a tracing.
To follow memory where it leads.
To map the shape of becoming—more honest, more rooted, and somehow more whole.
Tracework is a living archive of creative return.
Inside Tracework you'll find:
- Personal essays that walk the line between memoir and myth—my own story, yes, but always with a doorway for yours
- A monthly series called Tracing the Arcana—reflections drawn from the tarot, each piece a meditation on healing and inner archetypes
- Listening Rituals—essays that use music as emotional and spiritual entry points
- Seasonal offerings that align with the year’s natural rhythms—rituals, playlists, guidebooks, and prompts that have helped me slow down and reimagine my life.
This isn’t a space for quick answers.
It’s for slow witnessing.
For attuning to your own rhythm.
If something in this speaks to you, I hope you’ll stay.
You can subscribe free to receive my main essays and reflections. Or, become a supporter to read more content like seasonal guidebooks, audio rituals, tarot spreads, and early access to my memoir-in-progress.
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Thank you for reading. Your presence here matters.
You are a part of this tracing.
- Michael
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The Fools Notebook. This is where the road begins. The Fool is the card of beginning, trust, risk, becoming—the energy of stepping forward without knowing exactly where the road leads. This series is a record of the early steps—fragments, sketches, and reflections from a life and memoir still taking shape. Here, I share process notes about my memoir-in-progress, Fire in My Mouth. Nothing here is finished. A sketchbook and seedbed.
Listening Rituals. A devotion to sound, story, and the emotional texture of music. This is where I write about the albums that shape me, the songs that haunt me, and the soundscapes that echo through memory. Part criticism, part meditation—these are sonic essays that move between the personal and the collective, the beat and the breath. Listening becomes ritual here.
Tracing the Arcana. Essays, reflections, and fragments shaped by the archetypes of the tarot. This series follows the Major Arcana as a map for healing, transformation, and return. Each post traces a card—not as static meaning, but as invitation. Through shadow and light, memory and myth, I write my way into what the tarot reveals about queerness, identity, and the lifelong ritual of becoming.
The Reclamation Plan. A seasonal blueprint for creative return and personal renewal. What happens after burnout, rupture, or loss? This series is a living document of that question. Here, I share the phases and rituals that are helping me reorient my life around art, authenticity, and healing. It’s both a map and a mirror—for anyone tracing their way back to themselves.
The Deeper Thread. Become an annual supporter of Tracework. This is a space of gratitude to those of you who have become founding readers for this publication. Free and monthly supporters can't access these pieces. More to come soon.
The Minor Arcana. A different kind of way to explore this living archive. All work is also organized according to thematic, tarot-aligned themes that align with these four suits: Cups, Swords, Pentacles, and Wands.