✍ Writing & Words
✍️ New Blog Post Up Now // The Oldest Game
I feel like I am always changing language, changing location, changing myself. If you told me that the most ancient game in our universe was a game of transformations—of survival by means of constant change—I wouldn’t hesitate to agree with you. When it comes to longevity, life is a free fall—and all that matters is how many wings you can grow before it’s time to kiss the earth.
The most linear thing I’ve ever written (or best drawings I’ve ever drawn)? Nope. But I had some things to say.
✏️ New Word Learned:
Circumlocution: the use of an unnecessarily large number of words to express an idea
A conceit that I excel in.
👻 This mysterious flyer has been poppin' up around Brooklyn
✏️ New Word Learned:
Tramontane: a cold, dry, and often fierce north or northwesterly wind that blows out of the mountains down into the western Mediterranean and Italy
✏️ New Word Learned:
Pampero: a strong, cold, and often violent wind that blows from the west, southwest, or south across the pampas (grasslands) of South America
✏️ New Word Learned:
Peneplain: a gently undulating, mostly featureless landscape formed by prolonged erosion, particularly by rivers, over immense spans of geologic time
✍ New blog post up now // Get My Good Side
The irony about people posing for the camera (at least in street photography) is that they often stop doing the very thing that made me want to take a photo of them. The more they try to look like how they’re supposed to, the less they look like themselves.
The chest expands, the lips get tighter, the chin tilts a little less daringly. Even if their appearance remains the same, you can tell the spirit has left them. It’s astounding how one camera can turn a whole man into a mannequin.
“The words rolled off the woman’s tongue with irresistible tenderness. Her care was stated with such conviction that even the eavesdroppers understood it as a promise, or perhaps, a prayer. Her modelesque features—sharp cheekbones, perfect posture, and piercing eyes— had just minutes ago caused everyone in the room to rearrange themselves, but now felt eerily irrelevant. She was no longer an ornament. She was a girl— love-giving, hand-holding, life-nurturing.”
✏️ New Word Learned:
Fianchetto: a chess development pattern where a player advances the pawn in front of their knight one or two squares forward, and then places their bishop on the newly opened long diagonal
✏️ New Word Learned:
Dilatory: slow, tardy, or inclined to cause delay
✏️ New Word Learned:
Siroc: A siroc (or more commonly sirocco) is a hot, dry, and dust-laden wind that originates in the Sahara Desert and blows across North Africa into Southern Europe.
✍️ New blog post just published // Read the full thing here: bradley-andrews.com
Counting Car Horns Instead Of Sheep
Months into the summer, I was expressing to a friend the sudden and uncharacteristic urge I had to wander into a church. “My ass has done its ten thousand hours of warming a pew and I could care less if I ever heard another sermon. I think I just wanted to feel at home,” I remember saying. He let my statement linger, and after staring pensively into the ceiling, he replied, “Bradley, I thought the goal was to feel at home everywhere.”
I let that statement linger too.
✍️ Seven Minute Drill (5/27/2026) // bradley-andrews.com
✏️ New Word Learned:
Encomium: a formal expression of high praise or a glowing tribute
✍️ Recognized that I have not been believing the best in others recently. Wrote this post as a reminder for why I should be more open-hearted // bradley-andrews.com
And while its true that our culture undervalues simplicity, we have more than a few examples in fiction that embody, and even exaggerate, this virtue. Inspector Clouseau, Mr. Magoo, and Mr. Bean, are great examples of what is essentially the same character. They are simpletons in every sense of the word, always out of step with the rhythms and conventions of modernity, yet still one step ahead of the deceivers, thieves, and robbers who try to take advantage of them. The satisfaction we receive from watching these individuals expose hypocrites is the same triumph we feel when the Road Runner escapes Wile E. Coyote. It is the victory of austerity over cleverness, simplicity over scheming, and humility over genius. A person who chooses to be simple, surrendered, and accepting is choosing a path that is both incomprehensible and intractable to the hypocrite, because the hypocrite has optimized for complexity, power, and force rather than simple, unassuming honesty.
Would love if you took the time to read and let me know your thoughts! I am quite fond of the closing paragraphs (not included above), if I am allowed to say so. ❤️
✏️ New word learned:
Hypnagogic: of, relating to, or occurring in the period of drowsiness immediately preceding sleep
🃏 Recently, a friend of mine who has been single for a long time showed up to a party dressed as a USPS worker. I said, ‘What’s with the costume?’
She said, ‘What do you mean? Everyone keeps telling me that I should be appealing to the mail gaze.'
✏️ New Word Learned:
Bituminous: a dull black, intermediate-rank coal
✍️ Decoding Jay-Z’s Quadruple Entendre // bradley-andrews.com
There are very few pursuits that are more creative than hip-hop music, but it’s endlessly overlooked as an art form because of it’s urban roots. I just did a brief breakdown of one of my favorite rap verses (not even a full verse, actually, just four lines) to help prove my point. Let me know if you agree.
I father, I Brooklyn Dodger them.
I jack. I rob. I sin.
Aww man — I’m Jackie Robinson.
‘cept when I run base, I dodge the pen.
— Jay-Z, Brooklyn Go Hard
✍ Social Note: There Is Nothing To Be Sorry About // bradley-andrews.com
Wrote about some of the encounters I have been having with strangers and the underlying meaning behind a verbal tic I’ve noticed. Does anyone else make big meanings out of small interactions like this? Or is it just me?