velvet oraclerecurring columns
Three columns run through Velvet Oracle, and all three are built from what readers send in. Read what each one is, then send me yours. Selected entries run in the magazine.
dreams from friends
Send me a dream. I print them anonymously, and every so often the same one arrives from people who have never met. Describe it in as much or as little detail as you remember.
submit a dreamdreams from friends — issue 01
“I had a dream I wrecked Justin Bieber's car. I was super freaked out because it was a pretty bad wreck and I thought I killed Justin Bieber, but it turns out he wasn't even in the vehicle at the time and he didn't mind. Didn't even make me pay for it cause he knew I couldn't afford it. Really nice guy overall.”
“I don't really remember the content anymore, but my earliest remembered nightmare was one where my family abandoned/deserted me at a grocery store. I remember waking up in a panic to find my brother and his bff playing SMB on the NES. I have never had any practical reason to be afraid of being abandoned, but the roots of that nightmare have stayed in my subconscious.”
“I've had the same dream since I was five or six. I'm in the town centre. A mushroom cloud erupts in the distance and moves fast. I jump into the fountain just before it hits. From underwater, I watch everything burn. I surface to find nothing left. I'm 24 now. It gets me every time.”
“Monsters, end of the world, being chased — none of it phases me. But once I dreamed I was buying groceries and when I looked in the bag I found things I knew for certain I hadn't put there. I was sweating. I was panicking. Still can't explain it.”
“William Shatner was stabbing me with a fire poker. We were in a grand study — expensive furniture, dark wood — and he was laughing and smiling the whole time. I'm still terrified of the man.”
“Every evening, we had to knock them out, wrap their bodies in the customary shrouds, and hide them under the sofa bed. We didn't remember why. Only that we must, in case we got targeted during the nighttime raids. While we waited to learn our fate, we drank and played Rummikub. No one came that night. In the morning, we unwrapped them, fed them breakfast. They were grateful for coffee and stale toast.”
“I felt possessed. It was almost like a false awakening — night, my bedroom, but I wasn't in control of my mind or body. I found myself standing at the foot of my bed. I could feel something there with me. I've had plenty of dreams. That one was a first.”
dreams from friends — issue 02
“I had a dream that lasted a lifetime. I met a girl, and we ran away together. We were in love, and we spent our whole lives by each other's side — anniversaries, vacations, a long list of sweet memories. I've never felt so connected to another person. Then I woke up and immediately began to sob. I knew it was just a dream and I'd never see her again. I still miss her.”
“I slept for five hours and dreamed I was falling through different lives — rich, then a Vietnamese Vet, then a garbage man. I was happiest as the garbage man because I kept getting high fives.”
“I dreamed I was back in college, weeks from graduating, when I got an email from a professor I'd never met saying I'd missed every single day of a class I never knew I was enrolled in. I was in a blind panic trying to figure out what to do. Then I woke up and remembered I'd already graduated and had a job.”
“One morning, I woke from a nightmare and went to the kitchen to get coffee. My dad was there — an hour earlier than usual. I told him about the dream: a giant scorpion on the ceiling of an all-white room, and I couldn't move until it started falling toward my face. He said, 'Was it brown and really hairy?' I said yeah. He said, 'I just had the same dream.' To this day, neither of us can explain it.”
“I had a dream last night that I was at a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert and Anthony Kiedis went into the crowd and started humping people while singing. He humped these two guys from behind, and they just decked him. He got knocked out. They had to cancel the rest of the show.”
“My house was suddenly full of water. All of the townsfolk decided to stand on our roof and defecate onto what was essentially a giant toilet. I was swimming toward the surface in a panic, dodging what was sinking all around me. Between depleting oxygen and everything else — I don't think I made it.”
“I recently realized I have a haunted house I've been going to in my dreams over and over for years. Maybe even my whole life? I think it's my subconscious underworld. The more times I go there and work things out, the less haunted the house gets. Or, at least, less scary.”
“I have a dream where I live, work, and interact in various towns and cities. I catch trains to different destinations. There are pubs, restaurants, and shops that I visit frequently, and other places in the main city that I've been to several times. I see the same people regularly. Almost every dream I have is set there, and I've been visiting it for about 30 years.”
“Tony Stark fighting the Power Rangers. He wasn't wearing his helmet but was still about to wound a few of them until I asked him where his helmet was.”
“I was shot and killed by Gordon Ramsey. He was yelling at me out of a school bus window and I had no idea why he was so angry. So I start to walk away, and he shoots me in the back. My first thought is: okay, if he thinks I'm dead, he won't shoot again. Then he proceeds to shoot me exactly 12 more times.”
“I once dreamed I was being hunted by a human-size pigeon. I woke up terrified.”
“The Joker is hovering outside my window in a lying-down position, looking at me with his trademark smile. For some reason, his shoes are painted onto his feet.”
“I have a recurring nightmare where I'm performing CPR on my grandmother after she stops breathing. As I'm doing compressions, her chest caves in and her broken ribs stick out everywhere. I start trying to put her back together.”
“One of my recurring nightmares as a kid was the schoolyard turning into a lake. We realised there was a dinosaur in it, and that a T. rex was on its way. We'd run up all six floors to the top of the building. I'd wake up every time the T. rex's head appeared in front of me, our eyes locking.”
“I was walking the corridor of my apartment at night. An old woman with a cloth tied around her head stood at the end of it. She dropped her walking stick, and her eyes were black; her mouth twisted into a snarl. She sprinted at me. The corridor never seemed to end. When she was inches from my face, she was smiling. She told me to stop and look at her, was about to say something, and I woke up. It was 8:47 in the morning. We were moving from Singapore to India that day. When we got to our rented room in India, the room number was 847.”
the joy archives
The small, specific, slightly embarrassing thing that keeps you going. Send it in your own words. I print it exactly as you wrote it.
submit a joy archivethe joy archives — issue 01
Joy doesn't announce itself. It hides in a sandwich that's gotten smaller. It plays on repeat when nothing else will hold you. Every issue, real people send us the small, specific, slightly embarrassing things that keep them tethered to being alive. We print them exactly as they came.
“The original Burger King chicken sandwich is my favorite because it reminds me of my dad and all the times he used to take me out for lunch when I was little. Something about how the sandwich used to be so big in my hands and now that I'm older and the sandwich seems so small is a weird comforting feeling about the passage of time.”
“It's a Beautiful Day by the Kiffness, Rushawn, and Jermaine Edwards. Honestly, that's my go-to song when I'm down.”
“Cumulonimbus clouds!!! I get so ridiculously emotional and excited whenever the sky is full of them. I imagine there is a world up there that I can't see with my human, mortal eyes.”
“A delicious cookie really does make me happy.”
“Beach beers and seeing my woman happy.”
“For me, it's feeding my inner child by watching my comfort movie Ponyo and curling up in bed with my Gameboy.”
“I love riding my bike; it's something that helps me be mindful. I take that time to reflect on myself and gauge what I want to improve on.”
“A drive with a nice breeze in your hair, feeling free of all responsibilities in that moment, either my hair in the wind and some good music in the background.”
the joy archives — issue 02
Side quests submitted by readers — small, recurring practices that make the ordinary feel like something worth returning to.
“I have a standing side quest of trying a doughnut from any doughnut place I come across. Specifically, jam doughnuts.”
“I used to hang out with nuns at our local Catholic Church. I used to walk there by myself. I'm talking like 6-10 years old. They used to give us fresh baked bread with the good butter. I think their early imprint is why I'm kind and generous. My mother was not kind nor generous with me.”
“I pick 25 fun 'goals' for the year and put them on a bingo card. Some are more intensive than others, but it's a good reference for me whenever I need some whimsy. Examples: visit a new state, go on a picnic with friends, learn a new sewing skill.”
“Collecting antiques. Curating my apartment with cute things. Having, watering, propagating, and repotting plants... and making my living room look like a jungle. Putting a bunch of prism suncatchers in my windows. Doing silly little crafts. Helping my friends and neighbours. Going to the beach and collecting rocks and shells and sea glass. Going on hikes with friends. Putting fairy lights around my apartment. Rocking in my rocking chair. Filling my bed with a million cozy pillows and blankets.”
“For me, it was building things out of LEGO. 2020 was hard for everyone, and I was dealing with depression and in a terrible relationship. I built my first LEGO set to get my mind off of things, and last year I started building my own stuff out of LEGO. I'm no longer in a terrible relationship; I still struggle with depression, but being creative helps me feel like I'm doing something positive. (As a bonus, my neurodivergent brain loves it). I hope you find your thing.”
“Thought I would learn Norwegian as a bit of a joke. Put my Tinder to Norway and thought I could just practice/have some harmless online flirting, nothing serious. 10 years later, I am married to a Norwegian and living in Norway.”
“Go on eBay and buy yourself your favorite childhood toy. The one you lost or the one you always wanted but your parents wouldn't get you.”
“I'm counting how many times I sneeze this year! I keep a note in my phone and update it when I sneeze.”
“Last year's was line dancing. My current side quest is to become a regular at a coffee shop; I think it's the millennial in me. I go twice a week to start my workday. I've run into multiple friends & am starting to get to know who the other regulars are. Something about it just feels cute. The baristas haven't memorized my order yet, but we are getting there.”
“I got back into reading for pleasure & walking last year. I combined the 2 by mapping out a Thrift Shop Trail for myself, which I walk every weekend. I take a backpack for all my book finds, & I hit 7 different thrift stores within 5km of each other. I've built up a beautiful library of good-quality used books that I want to read, & it brings me joy. I also recently did a Master's in a field completely unrelated to my Bachelor's degree & professional occupation. It was a huge achievement.”
“I took up cross-stitching last year because I realized I needed a screen-free and creative hobby. I just stitch away and listen to audiobooks. It's been good for my soul.”
the oracle's playlist
Every issue I hand someone the aux cord. Twelve tracks, no theme required. The only rule is that each pick means something to you, a song you would know from the opening four bars. No filler.
submit a playlistthe oracle's playlist — vol. 01 (inaugural)
Music is evidence. What you play when no one's watching tells more truth than any interview. Every issue, we hand the aux cord to someone from the scene. Not a publicist, not a brand ambassador, just someone with a point of view. The rules are simple: twelve tracks. No theme required, but one will emerge anyway. It always does.
The only ask is that each pick mean something — a memory, a session, a period of your life you'd recognise in the opening four bars. No filler. No crowd-pleasers you don't actually like. This is the first one. The shape of what comes next.
01Breathe (In the Air) — Pink Floyd · opener
The one you put on when the session ends and the car is quiet and nobody wants to go home yet. The whole argument for why music exists in three minutes flat.
02Money Trees — Kendrick Lamar ft. Jay Rock · anchor
The patience of it. The slow build. Everybody who grew up watching people grind for something that never quite arrived knows exactly what bar this is about.
03Everything In Its Right Place — Radiohead · essential
Sounds like the inside of a head that's trying to hold itself together. For anyone who's ever been mid-trick and thought: I either make this or I find out something about myself.
04Nikes — Frank Ocean · mood shift
Eulogy, love letter, and indictment at the same time. Frank Ocean doing what Frank Ocean does: making you feel like the song already knew you were coming.
05Crystalised — The xx · late night
Late-night geography. The space between people who don't say things directly. This one plays best when the streetlights are the only light source.
06A$AP Forever — A$AP Rocky · mid-point
A Moby sample flipped into something that sounds like nostalgia for a version of yourself that doesn't exist yet. Cinematic in a way that feels earned, not manufactured.
07Lost In the World — Kanye West ft. Bon Iver · essential
Sacred and chaotic in equal measure. The sample is a folk song about transcendence. What Kanye did to it is also a folk song about transcendence. They're the same song. They're completely different songs.
08Motion Picture Soundtrack — Radiohead · surrender
Second Radiohead entry, no apology. This one is the closer that isn't the closer. It sounds like giving something up you were holding too tightly. Good for parking lots. Good for airports.
09Caroline — Aminé · levity
Pure forward motion. Plays like a Saturday that actually went the way Saturdays are supposed to go. Rare enough that a song for it counts as documentation.
10Dreams — Fleetwood Mac · classic
Still the most composed breakup ever committed to tape. She's not angry. She's watching. That's so much worse and so much more interesting.
11My Silver Lining — First Aid Kit · stripped
Two sisters harmonising about the fact that nothing is guaranteed and that's the deal. Country-adjacent without the reassurance country usually fakes. Honest in a way that makes you sit up straighter.
12Pyramid Song — Radiohead · closer
Yes. Three times. The piano is irregular enough that you can never fully anticipate it, which is the point. The only logical way to end something that started the way this one did.
A note on the curation: There's no theme here. Or rather: the theme appears after you've already lived inside these twelve tracks for a while. Something about patience. Something about the gap between what a moment costs and what it returns. The sequencing is intentional. These tracks are an argument about how feeling moves — from openness, through weight, through motion, into acceptance. Not a narrative. More like a room you walk through. Play it in order the first time. After that, do whatever you want.
Curated by Pascale Arahia · @filmbypascale
the oracle's playlist — vol. 02
Twelve tracks for the hour between leaving and arriving, when you are still deciding what you want.
A note from the curator: There is a want that has no object. You feel it most clearly on public transport, watching a city you already know go past a window, and you cannot say what it is you are missing. These twelve are the closest I have come to a language for it. Three are anchors, placed early so you can calibrate what I am hearing before I take you further out. Three are Australian, marked AUS, and they carry the weight of the back half. The rest go deep. Sequenced for the train. Around forty-five minutes, which is most commutes, which is the point.
01The Wild Hunt — The Tallest Man on Earth · anchor
Kristian Matsson writes like someone describing a landscape he has already left. The images stack up and none of them resolve into a destination. He is not going anywhere in particular. He is just going. That distinction is the whole song and it is why this opens.
02Two Weeks — Grizzly Bear · anchor
Sounds triumphant and is not. Ed Droste is asking someone to say something they will not say, and the arrangement keeps swelling anyway, as if the music has not been told. Play it loud enough that the harmonies separate.
03Blood Bank — Bon Iver · anchor
The last familiar thing here. Two people in a car in a parking lot, saying something almost significant and then not following through. The song ends before either of them decides. Justin Vernon knows exactly what he is withholding and holds it anyway.
04Half Return — Julien Baker · essential
She sings about the gap between who she was and who she is now and refuses to make either one the villain. The title is the argument. You do not come all the way back from anything. No resolution offered and none earned.
05On the Sea — Beach House · deep cut
Victoria Legrand's voice sits so far back in the mix that the words arrive as suggestions. Deliberate. The song is about distance from something and it enacts the distance rather than describing it. Best track on Bloom and not the one anybody names.
06In Undertow — Alvvays · deep cut
A pop song wearing the disguise of a pop song. Molly Rankin opens with a question about what is left and spends three minutes not answering it. The guitars are bright and the lyric is not, and the friction between the two is the entire mechanism.
07Tyres — EXEK (Naarm / Melbourne) · AUS
Albert Wolski will not tell you what any of this is about. He calls each song a vignette into an abstract milieu, which is a way of saying the meaning is deliberately just out of reach. Seventh album, first for DFA, and the bassline owes a straight debt to Public Image Ltd. The most refusal on the record and the reason it sits here, immediately after the turn.
08Trouble — Cat Stevens · deep cut
Under two minutes. He asks trouble to leave him alone and you understand immediately that it will not, and that some part of him is not asking in earnest. The oldest song here and the one that has aged least.
09want light! — Dumbhead (Naarm / Melbourne) · AUS
The palette break. Everything around it is guitars and reverb and this is post-punk guitar dropped over a trip-hop beat, with Billie Raffety's jazz-trained vocal floating on top of an operatic chorale. The lineage runs through Portishead and HTRK. The title is an instruction with no object, which is the whole playlist compressed into two words.
10Motion Sickness — Phoebe Bridgers · deep cut
She lists what she does not have and the list keeps going and the absence at the centre never gets described directly. Bridgers writes negative space better than almost anyone working. The title is a commuter's title. Put it on the train.
11Lover, where'd you go — Olivia C. Dacal (Naarm / Melbourne) · AUS
Berklee-trained, working in alternative R&B, and she builds a song the way a producer does rather than the way a songwriter does. The question in the title never gets answered. She keeps asking it anyway. The quiet one before the close and the one you would play alone.
12Reckoner — Radiohead · closer
Radiohead closes every Oracle's Playlist. That is a convention now and I am not planning to break it. Reckoner because it is the only Radiohead song that offers something like peace without explaining what the peace is about. Ends the set without answering it.
Curated by Pascale Arahia · @filmbypascale
the oracle's playlist — vol. 03
Twelve tracks for the morning after you get the thing you wanted.
A note from the curator: Vol. 02 was about wanting something you could not name. This one is about getting it. Nobody warns you that arrival has its own strange weather, that you can stand inside the thing you chased and feel the wanting quietly pack up and leave without you. We are fluent in songs about wanting and songs about loss. The feeling between them has almost no vocabulary. It is not disappointment. Disappointment means the thing was worse than you hoped. This is stranger. The thing is exactly what you hoped and you are still standing there afterward, holding it, aware that the wanting was doing more work than you knew. These twelve sit in that flatness without trying to fix it. Best heard alone, with no particular plan for the rest of the day.
01The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades — Sufjan Stevens · anchor
He is remembering something that has already happened and cannot be gone back to, and the horns keep lifting as if they have not accepted that. Opens the set because it is the sound of a person standing on the far side of a thing they wanted, looking back at the wanting itself.
02Wolf Like Me — TV on the Radio · anchor
The one moment of pure forward drive on the record, placed early on purpose. It sounds like the chase, the appetite, the version of you that still believes getting the thing will fix it. Everything after this is the comedown. Enjoy the hunger while it lasts.
03Gold — Chet Faker · anchor
The last familiar thing here. Slow and warm and already a little nostalgic for a present that has not finished happening. He has what he wanted and he is watching it recede in real time. The comedown starts in earnest right here.
04Two-Headed Boy Pt. Two — Neutral Milk Hotel · essential
He gets to the end of everything he was building toward and what is left is a man and a guitar and the sound of a chair scraping as he walks away from the microphone. The most literal enactment of anticlimax in the American songbook. It ends and you are just there.
05Night Time, My Time — Sky Ferreira · deep cut
She got the pop-star thing and the record about it sounds like a hotel room at four in the afternoon. This is the title track, and it is the emptiness underneath the achievement, produced to sound expensive and hollow at once. Arrival with the lights left on.
06The Party — St. Vincent · deep cut
Everyone else is celebrating and she is describing it from a slight distance, like someone narrating their own life from the doorway. Annie Clark understands that the loneliest place is often the middle of the thing you wanted. The strings do not console. They just witness.
07Pyramids — Frank Ocean · essential
Ten minutes that build a whole empire in the first half and then set it down in a strip-mall motel in the second. The grandeur was the point and the grandeur curdles. Sits right after the turn because it is the most ambitious version of the record's whole argument. The comedown, orchestrated.
08A Case of You — Joni Mitchell · deep cut
She has the memory and the love and the knowledge of exactly what it was, and having it fully is its own kind of ache. Joni understands that possession and loss are closer than anyone admits. The oldest song here and the one that has understood this the longest.
09Motion Picture Soundtrack — Radiohead · deep cut
Wait, not yet. This is the false ending, placed at nine instead of twelve on purpose. It sounds like credits rolling, like a life being packed away, and then the record keeps going anyway, because arrival is not the end even when it feels like one. The fake-out before the real close.
10Nikes — Frank Ocean · deep cut
Second Frank Ocean entry, no apology. The pitched-up voice is a person talking to himself about what everything cost and whether it was worth it. He got the things. The things are named, brand by brand, and they do not add up to what he thought. Arrival, itemised.
11Videotape — Radiohead · deep cut
The penultimate slot, and the quietest arrival on the record. A man at the end of something, trying to record how it felt before it goes, and the mechanism keeps slipping. This is the calm that comes after you stop expecting the arrival to feel like anything. It just is.
12Everything In Its Right Place — Radiohead · closer
Radiohead closes every Oracle's Playlist. The title is the joke and the whole thesis at once. Everything is in its right place. You got what you wanted, it is all arranged exactly as you asked, and the song sounds like unease anyway. There is no line about what is wrong because nothing is wrong. That is the feeling. Ends the set without answering it.
Curated by Pascale Arahia · @filmbypascale