The insane girl’s definitive guide to spring
By rayne fisher-quann, a.k.a internet princess
I’ll be honest -- historically, spring has always been my least favourite season. I don’t really like the rain and I think I used to resent the fact that every part of the natural world was having sex at the same time and I wasn’t explicitly invited. But I’ve come to realize that spring, like all seasons, has incredible aesthetic and ontological potential!! It just has to be lived with purpose!!
This is my spring checklist: No makeup, lots of good perfume, fresh flowers in hair (go on a walk in an expensive neighbourhood and steal them from the gardens of the rich; always carry little clips in your pocket so you can attach them on the fly). Find direct sunlight, bake something, buy lots of ribbon, smoke mint and lavender. Windows open as often as possible, especially when it rains!!!
Aesthetically, you’re going to want to live in the big shirt/ugly underwear/flip-flops combo. This is an outfit that CAN be worn outside which I know because it is literally all I wear. (Use discretion, of course — I’ve come to realize that an unfortunate amount of my fashion and lifestyle choices are directly influenced by my inability to accept that my decisions have “consequences” or “stakes”. I don’t want to romanticize this, but I would no longer be an agent of the truth if I tried to pretend like walking around outside in your underwear isn’t fun). If the big shirt/panties combo is unavailable to you for safety reasons or modesty reasons or otherwise, I think you can catch a similar feeling by wearing weird eyeliner and a huge skirt with NO underwear.
I live in a place where there are cherry blossom trees blooming literally every-fucking-where, and let me tell you, wearing boyshorts as pants and raggedy flip flops as shoes while stumbling bleary-eyed down a hill lined by one million of god’s most beautiful creations as petals float around me in ACTUAL SLOW MOTION … makes me feel one with the universe! I am reminded that I am oh so small and the world is oh so big -- I revel in the co-relation of ubiquity and insignificance -- and I realize that I am feeling, in this moment, the same existential ecstasy that makes pious young women think they’re having sex with Jesus. Then I arrive at the store and grab a bag of Jalapeno Cheetos, which are my favourite snack.
I curate my media seasonally because I like to feel connected to nature when I spent eight hours a day on my computer. For more context, my autumn roundup, autumn media for the craziest girl in the sephora sale section, is here.
Here are my rules: In spring, all music should exist on what I call the hyperpop-homesteading continuum. This is because, for me, spring can be separated into two distinct vibes:
- Revealing in the unfurling of the natural world before your eyes, feeling the first inkling of a notion that things might someday be good again, that you, too, can be healed and perhaps even reborn, there is sunlight on your skin and the water’s getting warm, you like taking the bus again. Hyperpop.
- The cocoon of winter is behind you; the hedonism of a neon summer lies ahead. For now, you are humble -- you are strong and steady and rough-hewn, you do laundry, keep your windows open, neither dance in the rain nor trudge through it but simply accept it upon your face as your ancestors did before you, there is dirt beneath your toes and a straw hat on your head, you would like to grow a tomato plant. Homesteading.
The key to nailing spring is finding the middle ground between Charli XCX and Bob Dylan, and including both on your spring playlist. Mine is here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/29Xi8M7v9gDCi9LgM7ZEO0?si=a79b395907de4729
When it comes to books, spring is all about expanding your mind. Everyone makes the mistake of trying to get into the tough stuff in January, when we’re all hopped up on corporate new-year optimism, but the winter is long and dark and you’ll get all tired out by the time the real season of rebirth comes along..! For me, literature consumption is a cycle: Spring is for essay collections and other brain vibes. Summer is for beach reads, romances, fantasy novels, sci-fi, and books you loved when you were 12. Fall is for atmosphere reading (Secret History, Sally Rooney, Wuthering Heights). Winter is for all of the above.
I’m currently reading Amia Srinivasan’s The Right To Sex and Mikki Kendall’s Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot, and re-reading Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror. For a relentlessly fresh take on mental illness, I read P.E. Moskowitz’s substack Mental Hellth religiously.
My last piece of advice: spend as much time as possible in public parks. And talk to strangers!
Xoxo rayne