That’s how I (and I suspect many others) perceive Firefly. On one hand, she’s the friend I’ll have wonderfully long, meandering chats with whenever our schedules align. On the other, she’s this radiant force of nature effortlessly brightening every space she enters, brimming with creativity in a way so constant that, much like with the sun, I sometimes forget to pause and marvel at it.

Then she’ll drop a new song she’s poured her heart into, or land an impossible trick on her skateboard, and suddenly you remember: oh right, she’s a total powerhouse.

Her latest single, Weekends (which I am absolutely obsessed with), just came out and for the first time since we met, I got to sit her down and dig into her world. We talked about everything: her creative process, whether she’s secretly a trust fund baby, the strange backlash she gets online when she posts about her wins in music or skating, why she wants her romantic partner to be a fellow skater, and the tangled threads of racism, misogyny, and addiction in those spaces. Also why IS her favorite color is orange?  :)