I don’t really have any hobbies, having fallen into the class trap of the working creative that is essentially a pile of bills and immediate needs placed gently over a hastily piled patch of grass. Most things I do, I do because I need to eat and other annoying
Essays
I worry that we have let Sad Song mean too many things, that it’s too easy a phrase to describe such a deep well, and it’s time to find new words for the walls we hit on the way down.
Essays
There are new things standing and waiting out there, each of them a mark on the days ahead, as if they are lighthouses steering me and my most tired bones away from the rocks that might shatter us once and for all.
An act of clearing by just putting all the extra snow in scores of uneven piles that are half on the sidewalk and half on the street, ensuring that at least this way no one will ever run the risk of being terribly happy
I have to trim down my coffee intake, and it is highlighting the grip of addiction in my brain. I currently drink an amount that is shocking to anyone not similarly afflicted with the same predisposition towards self-destruction as me, but normal for those who would see themselves in ruins.
Blog Posts
I am perfectly on time with this, which is to say I am late.
Essays
“Wonderful Christmastime” is not a perfect song. It might not work on your holiday playlist, or stand proud on a list of beloved classics, but it might be that it’s not a song to be played at home with intention
Writing through all the thoughts that haunt a life
The lesson learned in all of this is that I need to work harder on allowing myself to celebrate the victories and the little things, that I'm allowed to be here living this life.
This is the beauty of the song, the heart of it in those who lost their lives in service of building a world many believed they never belonged to, as if they are men out of time.
Maron is vulnerable, but he is also allowed to be in a way that many simply are not.
I have long described myself as Taylor Swift agnostic, which is not really true because I do believe she exists, and the truth is that I always misuse agnostic when I really mean atheistic.
When I lived here, I was always chasing something, the perfect idea of a life in the wild and untamed north. Partied and thought about parties and how each one would be the answer to the questions that kept me awake and pacing in my living room, like a raven seeking food half-buried in the snow.
The second time I ever came out as trans, it was in an Arby’s drive-through in Alberta on a flip-phone in the height of the oil boom. A decision made with impassioned haste that left lingering memories of trying, failing, and the desire to try again regardless of how
I started smoking, and I don’t remember the first one at all, but that is often the way of firsts.
Tasting heaven only cost $.49, and each bite brought me closer to God.
Do you ever think about how the emotional core of “Such Great Heights” will never feel the same due to an alarming lack of answering machines? I mean, yes, sure, even without the machine it is still an emotionally resonant song about long-distance yearning, but that distance feels cheated now.
The Weakerthans second album, Left and Leaving, turned 25, and I am late celebrating it. I started writing this on the day of its anniversary with the best of clear-eyes intentions. I started and stopped sentences, cleaned out spelling mistakes, went back and recompiled half-considered paragraphs. I thought about the
The uber driver on our way to the Harvard bookstore didn’t know what a memoir was, and I’m still at a loss as to the chain of events that leads to someone being legally permitted to own and drive a car, but live entirely unaware of a dominant
Every interview I’ve done lately has been connected by a single, unexpected thread. A red string tacked to disparate faces weaving an unexpected story from happenstance and stray thoughts. This isn’t true of every conversation I’ve had, but enough of them have created a trend. I was