On Being an Island

Memory, Music, and the Parts of Us That Endure; or What Happens when You Go Home and Meet Yourself Again

This year, for the first time since 2019, I went home for the holidays. Home, being Shelter Island, but also, New York City. I moved to LA in 2020 and have had many wild nights, packed days, long dinners, and big moments back in the city since then– but something about this trip felt different. Maybe it was wandering down 7th Street, all the way down between Avenue C and D, where I lived for a few years in a tiny studio I was so proud of. Maybe it was one best friend getting married, and the other boarding a plane for Amsterdam, where he’ll live for the next two years– perhaps being dragged to the 20 year reunion from the high school I didn’t graduate from– but I was feeling incredibly nostalgic.

When I walk through the door of my parent’s house, I am not necessarily struck by the– putting down your heavy bags feeling– the warm wave of relief I think you’re supposed to feel when you walk into your childhood home. Shelter Island has always been an incredibly complicated place for me. It’s a place of extraordinary natural beauty. It afforded me the kind of childhood where I could spend most summer days sun-soaked, in the water, or on the water– in boats, on skis, or a surfboard. Most people, when they ask where I am from, mistake my response for “Shutter Island”. It’s not quite an asylum I had to escape from, but, the moment I walk through that front door, I time travel back to the year 2000 when I was a powerless, angry, and basically– a lonely teenager.

I traced my fingers along the walls that had been painted since I moved away, now decades ago. Lyrics and band logos drawn in black sharpie are still visible, just barely, underneath. Little artifacts I have left behind. I’m blushing as I disclose that sitting on my bookshelf was the teacup I made when I was 14 with my favorite AFI song lyrics swirling up the insides “Am I the star beneath the stairs? Am I the ghost upon the stage? Am I your anything?” Anchors in the wall from a guitar hanger that held my first shitty Squier electric. My Green Day songbooks. Photos of me in a Catholic school skirt and knee high platform boots on my way to my first Blink show.

First going to shows, then playing in shows, quickly became the best way to get “off the island”, but the Amityville Music Hall was still a far ways away, even if you had a boyfriend who could drive.I didn’t stay long in any of those spaces, but they were the first moments that made me feel like I wasn’t entirely alone.

I ended up somehow replacing my boyfriend in his band when he quit, which I suspect was simply because there weren’t very many bass players in the scene, and even fewer who wore mini skirts. But my bandmates were extremely patient with me, and I became a pretty confident player of Nu Metal in 2001– slightly before it was cool.

Our band If Winter Ends was a mix of metal, emo, and hardcore right around when the Long Island Hardcore scene was shifting towards more emo-leaning bands like Taking Back Sunday, Bayside, and Brand New. Our lyrics are certainly an embarrassing capsule of my sophomore and junior years of high school, and had much less edge than other bands in the scene (like my favorite, Radio Rahem), but we did win the Long Island Battle of the Bands in 2005, which honestly, remains a very proud achievement of mine.

Now as a 38 year old, I am sitting staring out my window in Los Angeles, a place I always dreamed of escaping to, wondering what life would have looked like if I continued playing music, and why on earth did I take such a long pause from something I loved so much. Honestly I am laughing out loud as I remember, it was Phish that made me stop playing music! The fall I started at the University of Vermont, I brought my bass, but after trying out for a few jam bands, I just gave up. It was SO not my scene. Nectars, the birthplace of Phish, couldn’t have felt further away from the energy of DIY shows and mosh pits in Suffolk County basements– the angst! The rage! The energy! Where were the high and tight drums? I had finally escaped my small town, only to end up somewhere else where I truly didn’t belong. I am also laughing because as I write this, my partner is preparing to attend his third night of Phish shows in a row, and writing his Substack entries about it. It’s so easy to make fun of Phish– but I am so happy for anyone who finds any sense of community at a show, who can look around and feel at home, who just even for a minute, can drop the weight, be in their body, and feel in that moment that they are truly alive.

I started an accelerated pre-med program in 2005, and by 2008 I had partied myself through organic chemistry and would be moving into senior year with a GPA that would definitely not allow me to go to medical school in the United States. Still for years I persisted, trying to fit myself into this box. I flinched as I heard my mother casually recounting the path I took to my friends over Christmas, because it was SO not punk to do exactly what my parents expected of me.

This summer, my friend John Moods was looking for a bassist, and once he saw a photo of me playing from over 20 years ago, I thought I was in. During an informal try out two weeks before his East Coast tour (which I had already told pretty much everyone I knew about) he stopped me, almost immediately (while wearing a purple beret), and told me I was “too metal.” It turns out it was a dangerous combination of words to hear for a person on the verge of a midlife crisis.

After a decade of working with Martha Stewart, 3 cookbooks, and 5 years in a recipe content making vortex– while most of the experiences I wouldn’t change– I did suddenly I became allergic to my entire wardrobe and began to question almost every decision that got me to this point. I got my first very visible tattoo on my arm, cut my bangs much shorter (still not baby bangs), and pushed a bunch of middle aged men in fairly tame mosh pits. I’ve been completely sober for almost 6 months, and have rediscovered the goth club scene I was too shy to fully explore alone in my 20’s. And I hope so much that by writing this it forces me to make the time in 2026 to take my music seriously again.

So this week, standing in the basement of the Shelter Island Legion Hall, when one of my classmates who had showed up to the reunion pointed to my Rick Owens platforms and told me “you’re not going to be able to bowl in those Frankenstein boots” I felt solid atop those 6-inches of rubber. It took 20 years to fill those shoes. I’m almost certain I was the only person in the room that wasn’t or have never been married, I have not been a full-time employee since 2013, and I do not own a house or hold any additional degrees. I didn’t bother to tell anyone about the six foot sculpture I spent days making in November (that when I backed up turned out to look much more phallic than I had intended), that I was the number 4 listener of Arthur Russell in the entire world, or about the Genesis P-Orridge documentary I had just watched and couldn’t stop thinking about.

They honestly remembered me as being too metal, and treated me exactly the same as when I was 14 and wore UFO pants. To them, I had never lost myself along the way, which for the first time, was a total relief.