Every few years, I become fixated on an album and listen to it on repeat until my husband, children and cat are all desperate for reprieve. During the winter of 2021, Lotta Sea Lice was that album. A collaboration between speak-singing indie darlings Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett, it’s a subtle, well-crafted album that’s perfect to write to — it plods along pleasantly in the background until, one day, you realize that the songs are sneaky earworms and you never feel like listening to anything else. I was shocked when Spotify told me I’d listened to “Over Everything” more than any other song in 2021. “Really?” I thought. “That song?” It felt like a rom-com “Aha!” moment — I’d fallen in love with my best friend without noticing.
I’d bet Lotta Sea Lice was playing when I wrote “The Rabbits Are Waiting” because it was playing in our house for almost the entire third wave of the pandemic. Sorry for the repetition, husband/children/cat!
Nicole Boyce’s writing has appeared in The Awl, EVENT, Joyland, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Prairie Fire, and more. She has won the Prairie Fire nonfiction prize and been listed for the EVENT nonfiction contest and CBC nonfiction prize. She received her MFA from UBC’s Creative Writing Program.
Read Nicole Boyce's story "The Rabbits Are Waiting" in Issue 295 (Spring 2023)
