Kicking Rocks 001
By: Andrew Hilmes and Serene Pandey
Good evening and welcome to the first ever edition of Kicking Rocks! Andrew and I (or Sandrew if you will) are proud to present our little blog/newsletter/public diary/void. It’s the first building block of all the beautiful wonderful things to come, and I sincerely hope that y’all enjoy. This week, Andrew wrote a stunning piece called Give Me Something Good to Eat, but before we get into those gorgeous words, I present to y’all my off-week offering: my thoughts on the humble artform of the TikTok edit.
I’m sure you are all aware of the recent banning and subsequent unbanning of TikTok (that was accompanied by a strange pandering to the annoying orange that kind of read like he was standing behind the person typing holding a gun to their head). A lot of people worried about the loss of laughter, brain rot, and 30 second snippets of songs, but something occurred to me whilst opening my messages on the app just a few days before the ban. What is going to happen to the TikTok edits?
It was in that moment that I truly felt the impending doom of the downfall of TikTok. Where else am I going to find a revolutionary edit of Challengers to the song Buzzcut Season by Lorde? A truly terrifying edit of the final battle at Hogwarts set to the eerie 1915 recording of Taylor Holmes reading Rudyard Kipling’s poem Boots? Any and all of the heart-wrenching media comparisons made to Like Him by Tyler the Creator featuring Lola Young???
This is all to say, I think in the spirit of TikTok’s return we should show appreciation for the humble art form of the TikTok edit. And in that spirit, here’s a few examples!
Give Me Something Good to Eat
Andrew Hilmes
No two clementines taste the same. One sack contains twenty flavors. When I buy them at the store, I expect a citrusy, rejuvenating experience. One that wakes me up and releases me gleefully from a banal lunch break – but I find they often taste too tart.. So many clementines bite back. Why do I keep choosing them? Why do I insist on eating the whole of it every time, suffering one more unsatisfying bite until I’m swallowing slices whole, avoiding the flavor altogether.
I enjoy the taste of oranges, which I find deliver a much more consistent flavor. I think I remember enjoying clementines, but when I imagine eating one now, I see my face puckering in dissatisfaction. Despite all this, I delight in having them at my disposal. There is a good chance I buy them just because I like them as objects – something to fiddle with at the expense of my tastebuds. I gain a great deal of pleasure in attempting to peel a clementine all in one go – a challenge sparked by my cousin, and one I have never let go. An orange is a commitment, a clementine is charming. I am filled with hope, or delusion, each time I bite into one.
So why is it I keep going back to clementines, when no two taste the same? Always the same letdown, my expectations consistently managed. I am never rewarded, always waiting. For something. I think better days exist, but maybe they’re happening already. I grab another clementine, I shake another hand, I scroll and scroll and scroll, ask and ask and ask, wait and wait and wait. Though I am changing with each passing second, my revisions are too miniscule for my liking. Give me a cosmic shift.
Fuck your tart clementines, let me bite a banana and taste the tender red meat I haven’t had in years. I want a harsh reaction, I want radical acceptance. When I step outside, let me swim to my car. I wonder, every morning, when will this all change? When will the sun set the sky an eerie green, when will the waves turn the other way, sick of meeting the shore? When will we stop pretending to understand, when will fire cool me down?
Or I could just stop eating clementines.
Surrender to my preferences.
Or I could eat another clementine.
Until they taste like salmon.
Until two people can love each other without fear and my walls change color when I blink.
Author's Note: I vomited a lot of this out over the summer and revisited it this week. I made some edits and I think this feeling has only grown for me, but it also scares me. Let me know if you feel the same, or not at all, or if you hate it, or if you like it – I wanna know!
Thank you for reading our first edition of Kicking Rocks! If you’d also like to kick rocks, please submit using the link below :)