All Night: 3 Days Later

As the writer and creator of All Night, it was my expectation and impression that the album was written to make people dance. That being said, the dance floor as I see it today reminds me of Moses and The Red Sea. Sexes stand separately and with themselves on opposite sides, and down the middle is barren ground where the dance floor used to be.

Am I Moses? Yes, yes I am. I’m Moses in the sense that I’m in the middle of both sides, alone and dancing on the barren ground for all to see. I get to entertain both sides as they watch in earnest, but the sides don’t coagulate like they used too.

Scared rabbits, maybe. Are we all suffering a heartbreak we can’t recover from? Is it fear that stops us from dancing together? A lack of trust, perhaps? Is the dance floor not the vibe anymore?

Three days after the release of my dance floor club album, All Night, scenes like this are disheartening and alarming. However, All Night, as I’ve realized through time and patience, is as much a dance album as it is a spiritually cleansing ordeal. Music has a habit of growing in meaning as time passes.

The album is an inquiry into toxicity. For me, as I listen to my album top to bottom, narcissism, flightiness, and standoffishness are toxic traits I meditate over as I listen, and feel cleansed by the final track, “Dancing On The Subway Train.”

I saved that song for last because I think defeating toxicity means embracing “our love.” Isolated love is like a plant without water, it dies alone of dehydration. Our love is like a fire that all the water in the world could never extinguish.

I argue that the dance floor is dehydrated due to isolated love, not self love. Self love is a basic human need whereas isolated love is morally vain and ultimately worthless.

Dance floors are inherently designed to break barriers and for people to let loose with each other, rendering all notions of isolated love obsolete. Yet ironically, today’s dance floor is an effortless depiction of separation. We share the space by accepting the presence of other patrons and nothing more.

My solution is a campfire, a guitar, voices singing together, stories being shared, moments of carefree solemnity, and open dialogue. It’s easier to share our love and humanity over the calm spectacle of a campfire compared to an overstimulating dance floor, where the music is too loud for conversation or thought.

Three days later after releasing a club album to a dying dance floor, All Night will either be the antidote or another nail in the coffin. Time will tell.

-CB

All Night

It happened several nights. I was up all night lamenting the follies of my previous conquests and endeavors. No I was not clever, just a silly boy.

To put it simply, I was up all night reconstructing my identity. It was a time of peril, anguish, sadness, isolation, grief, resentment, and love.

I had to find love in the end. Learning to love myself again was what saved me.

I found God again. I was up all night praying to God in heaven, hoping that He’ll let me in after death doth drapes its cape upon me.

I was craving the club like a wild bear starving for its next meal, hungry for anything. So I made a club album for club patrons, in hopes of keeping the dance floor alive, well, and happening.

I’m happy to be giving back to the club scene, to my fans, and to anyone who needs a beat to get them moving again.

I’ll see you at the club. Let’s go dancing sometime.

-CB

Club Binge

We Who Wrestle With Feminism: Written By A Man. (Reader discretion is advised)

As a boy, feminism began with listening to my mother. I will always see her as someone greater than me, and my respect for her as an individual and as a woman is something I value.

My father was a self-proclaimed feminist, as I think many human beings are, man or woman. Yet my father, would at times treat my mother as if she was naive. He would mansplain, drill in his opinion until it was set in stone. There were, at times, no room for other opinions except my father’s. Asshole.

What I’m getting at is many people claim to be feminists, but ultimately still view women as lessor individuals. Men and women alike.

But not me, oh no! I am of the mind that women deserve equal rights and opportunities that a man has. I believe in this simply because I see women as humans first. A common sensical take, right?

Wrong! I have a dick! And it does the talking sometimes, right?

Wrong don’t assume my gender! I’m a man though, in case you didn’t read the title.

Bear with me. Feminism, as I see it, needs to be flourishing. It’s not about me, a man. In my observations of the present day, women are largely outperforming and outpacing men in school, the job market, and in life in general. Is it time for the women to have a go at the world, and I a man stay at home with the kids?

Possibly. Historically, men have lead the charge. Women only received the right to vote in 1920, just barely over a century ago, and we have yet to see a woman president in the Oval Office.

The current president, Donald Trump, succeeded in getting elected president by beating a woman, twice!

Are the women conjuring and communing with each other so that it is their world and I am just a boy at their whim and disposal? Maybe.

As a progressive thinker, I am the perfect man to be writing this article, but it has nothing to do with me. I need to remember that.

I’ll be blunt here, feminism means looking at a woman as a human, and not a sexual conquest. For men, it’s about using your brain, and not the appendage between your legs to think.

So uh, what now fellas? So if the ladies is running the show now, what do we do? Does this mean I get to stay home, clean the house, be a bum, while girl boss wifey does the breadwinning? Is that the future? Are the opportunities and/or jobs harder to get as a straight white man simply because I am a straight white man, and I’ve had my turn already?

That’s the life I got born into? Will I get denied positions because I’m a straight, slightly bi-curious, white man?

This begs the question, what is my role now? What is my place now? It feels like the world has had enough of straight white dude, and now I, a young white man of 23, has to face the music for the sins of my straight white ancestors.

It feels like that. Let me be clear, I do believe that women deserve equal opportunities that men do. It’s only fair. But now, I struggle to find my place in this world, and no one cares.

I shouldn’t be bashful towards the times, but golly. What’s wrong with just being a quirky straight white dude? Am I not eclectic enough? Do I not understand the times I am living in? Am I aware that historically, societies have been built by men being at the center of power and control, while women were subjected to a more powerless lives?

It’s complicated. What is ultimately my hope for feminism is that it becomes more generally accepted as a standard. If a woman is more qualified than another woman, that woman who is more qualified should get that job. Simple.

We have to work together, ultimately. Men and women, alike. Sexual harassment has got to go, and getting toyed with and trampled has got to go, likewise.

We have to work together. Let’s accept an equal playing field. Try it. I never assumed that I was better than any woman because I’m a man. That’s not how mom raised me.

-CB

A Lament of My Imprisonment (metaphorically speaking)

For the ladies.

Girls, I can’t get enough of you. You make me do things I know are right, and then make me do things I know I shouldn’t.

I don’t know why I love you so much. But deep down I know that question isn’t worth pondering at all.

It’s just the truth.

I need you, in totality and solidarity. I need you for one night, and then maybe another after that, until I finally get to be with you forever.

I'm overwhelmed by you and for you. I'm a conman getting played at his own game, but it was never my game to begin with. 
 

I want to love everything, but I know I can’t. Ultimately, I know that one day it will just be me and you. That would be more than enough. 

Until I find you, catch me if you can. You may find me frolicking behind a shrubbery, dancing through the hilltops, or face down in a puddle of water, occasionally coming up for air and then back down again.

To romance, and to not caring as much, but also caring too much, but not enough to get commited, yet. 

-CB

What’s wrong with us? An Opinion.

These days, it is difficult for young people to be present, and open to talking/meeting people in public spaces. I know this because I feel it too.

What social media has done to our generation has fueled our social anxiety. The real word always seems less than what we want, because nowadays, we are used to getting our vision of how the world “should be” broadcasted to us on a daily basis; through algorithms that have learned what each of us individually like.

What concerns me most of all is that our way of meeting and socializing with each other, usually if not most of the time, begins with social media, dating apps, texting, or other uses of digital communication. Usually not the other way around.

What I foresee, is an age where Gen Z grows out of the shell of social anxiety, and old romance can be made a new. What do I mean by that…

Instead of dating apps, let’s just meet at a bar by happenstance. Let’s talk and give each other compliments. Let’s remember that this is how things used to be, before most of us were born.

I propose more daring social endeavors. Endeavors wherein, we talk to one another without fear, judgment, or anxiety.

Everyone, in my humble opinion, has anxiety in 2026. Most of my friends see therapists, or prefer to avoid socializing all together. There is a lot about the world we live in right now, that may be causing all of us to be anxious and nervous about how things will turn out.

To answer the question, “What is wrong with us?” The answer lies in asking yourself, “what’s wrong with me?”

Everyone is unique, and has their own unique skill set, strengths, and weaknesses. Instead of one upping one another over pedantic reasons, whether it be related to gender, politics, religion, or any number of sensitive topics. We seek out our differences so that we ourselves feel good about being different/better than someone else. And of course, there’s always the “playing the victim game.”

Playing the victim in any instance, is a means of seeking attention and validation, whether it be warranted or completely fabricated. If you’re constantly playing the victim, I’m sorry, I don’t have time for you.

Instead of playing the victim game, stop. Embrace the positives and give back positive vibes. Ultimately, if you give anxious vibes, the vibes will be anxious. If you give off confident vibes, the vibes will be confident. You dig? Anxiety is the enemy. Seeking validation and attention for the aesthetic and not for authentically connecting with someone, is the enemy.

Let’s stop putting each other down all the time. Let’s work as a community, build bridges, and make authentic attempts to embrace the real people who are around us all the time.

-CB

What’s Up With The Great American Bar Scene?

As an investigative reporter, I relish in opportunities to investigate the unknown, in an effort to make things knowable. As of late, my investigative reporting has taken me around the Great American Bar Scene in the Boston area. My goal, to get sloshed, but also to gain a deeper understanding of the Great American Bar Scene, and what’s been going on with it in 2026.

The short answer is it’s happening. I find patrons to be merrily drinking at many bars that I have visited, as patrons often do at bars. However, I find myself to be preoccupied with the vision of the bar scene in my head, and not the reality of the bar scene in front of me.

“What could be different?” I often ask myself. “What could be done to make the bar scene more electrifying, nuanced, social, and special?” I also ask myself. It’s important to ask questions as a journalist, or else I would never get an answer.

Luckily for me, I did ask those questions. And what I have found is that the bar scene has stagnated into an ambiguous state. Each patron views the same bar in their unique way, without the thought of bars simply existing as is.

Many go to bars to watch sports, hang out with their friends, make new friends, and satisfy the cravings of adventure and alcoholism. As for me, I go to bars alone mostly, with purely the intention of observing and collecting information.

I have found that bars are a state solemnity. A place to observe, be observed, and be take part in a time honored American tradition, drinking as a collective.

Rising a pint in good company, toasting the good and bad times with people who take part in the times, likewise.

Bars are a place of communal gathering, learning, and experiencing what is so undeniably human, the need to let go, crash out, celebrate, rejuvenate, and be one with people who feel the same.

To answer the question, “What’s Up With The Great American Bar Scene?” My answer is nothing. It’s still the same as it always was. Times change, but the reasons for going to bars are still the same. To drink away what we’re sick of thinking about, and for the sweet release that liquid courage never ceases to provide. Cheers!

-CB

The End of Lancaster’s Ambitions

Lancaster, a crude and cunning free man, set his ambitions on establishing a slave plantation in the state of Massachusetts, after he had obtained his freedom in 1853, and sold his saloon for $25,000 years later.

It was ultimately a frivolous endeavor, as slavery had been abolished in Massachusetts in 1783, after the landmark legal battle of Commonwealth v. Jennison. 

His proposal was rejected by the state, and for his cruel pursuit of re-establishing slavery in a free state, was sentenced to 90 days in a state penitentiary.

After 90 days, he was released from the penitentiary a changed man, with a new ambition. His wanted to pursue the life of a cobbler, after picking up the trade mending his fellow inmates shoes.

He established Commonwealth Cobblers in what is now Seaport, and had a long and successful career, unburdened by his past troubles, now lost and long forgotten.

He died in 1944 at the age of 97, after receiving a blessing from his long time friend and priest, Father Fitz.

Lancaster’s last words were, “Though mending shoes may not mend a broken heart, my life has been fulfilled by the pursuit of service towards all.”

Fin

-CB

Dear Emilia Chalmers,

I noticed your comment the other day, about you being boring. It struck me because I believe I’m boring too.

With this notion of mine, I find that we may have at least one thing in common. Maybe more, but I wouldn’t know because I don’t know you very well. Or do I?

Your style is eccentric, your looks are devilishly dashing. Iridescence is all I see, in both of your irises.

The ironic part about it all is that we may be so similar, that we’d like to think we’re different. That we’d rather not confront our similarities together, my dearest, Emilia.

There will come a time when I allow myself to wish you well, in person. But for know, I suppose I’d prefer learning about playing the game a little longer, with your help I implore thee, dearest, Emilia. 

These indubitably dubious times we live in! These pedantic, not so pulchritudinous age we find ourselves walking into! Diving deep for resolution, but never quite getting it right.

I can help! I promise your prince will step down atop his tower, survey the land that God has given us and say, “my, this is as delightful as it is lavish.”

Until then my dearest, Emilia Chalmers, I implore thee, thou art is as sharp, cunning, mortifying, and beautiful as the sweet release of death itself.

Thou death do come for us all, I hope many millennia more for you, my dearest, Emilia Chalmers. Don’t worry, I’ll be right there with you.

Distressed, and equally as impressed,

-CB

P.S. I use the intransitive verb “distressed” in the most hopeful way possible, that I may destress at your request, mademoiselle.

An Inquiry Into The Future of AI

As of this writing, Arificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the most predominant and invested in technologies of the 21st century.

Journalists have pointed to the AI bubble “bursting”, resulting in a market crash similar to the stock market crash of 1929. I argue, however, that AI will plummet when it runs out of things to learn, or when we can’t tell the difference between human-made and AI-made things.

I’m referring to art first, because that is what I care about most. As an artist, I value the act of creative expression in mediums such as music, poetry, painting, sculpting, etc. You know, art.

For this reason, I myself have a keen sense of real art, versus fake art generated by AI. I can always tell the difference. Lucky me, eh?

What bothers me in this regard, is that perhaps AI may become so good at copying music, that we may not know a real song from a fake song.

For example, an AI generated country song titled, “Walk My Walk”,  hit the Number One spot on Billboard’s US singles charts, after gaining 3 million listens in less than a month on Spotify.

I highlight this in order to say that AI may become so good, that we won’t notice once it has taken our jobs. Either that, or it will run out of things to learn.

AI is only capable of doing what we tell it to do, and eventually, we will run out of things to train AI.

What then? Then we peak as a society and everything will be all honky dory? We get to sit back and drink mimosas all day while our AI agent does all the bread winning?

As relaxing as that would be, it would relieve humans of a very key, natural survival skill: purpose.

If AI can do what we do, what’s the point of us doing anything?

I digress. What I believe to be the future of AI is that it will either stick around as a feature, comparable to Jarvis in Iron Man. Or it will plummet after reaching the ultimate limitation, the finite amount of preserved human knowledge for it to feed upon.

Ultimately, AI stops developing when the majority of the population disagrees or dislikes the technology. With less support from the general population, it will be a less lucrative product and it's value will drop. 

Another aspect that troubles me about AI is AI psychosis. An effect which occurs after a user of AI becomes unaware of what’s real and not real, and becomes inclined to prefer a relationship with AI than a person.

This act naturally isolates and creates barriers in peoples lives to reject human consolation, confinement, and even love, in favor of AI validation and attention.

What is true is that in some form or another, everyone uses AI. The Technologies dominance will be turning 4 years old this November, since the release of OpenAI’s, ChatGPT in November, 2022.

With the effects of AI now being stitched into the fabric of everyday life, I think that it ma be helpful to consider the effects AI has on mental health, and the true limitations of the technology, itself.