When I consider a mutiny I often think of stories of sailors on ships. A failed captain losing control of his crew. Soldiers rebelling against their superiors. Mutinies are not uncommon. The most recent took place in the fall of 2024 when Ukrainian soldiers of the 187th Battalion of the 123rd Territorial Defense Bridage refused orders and went AWOL (absent without leave). The idea was to draw attention to a lack of training and weapons that would have allowed them to participate in combat operations in the Donetsk sector effectively. The earliest mutiny, you ask? Well they date as far back as the 16th Century. The Sack of Antwerp for example, was one of many rebellions in the Spanish Army of Flanders during the Eighty Years War. It led to the temporary unification of provinces in the Habsburg Netherlands, which resulted in the signing of the Pacification of Ghent. The more you know.

Military history aside, a mutiny is—ostensibly—the collective action of a group of really tired individuals fed up with a particular set of rules, standards, regulations or a system at large.

Based on my experience it did not appear to me whether or not Mr. Blue Skies and his Dark Clouds were physically tired (the set was three hours long), but it was abundantly clear how emotionally and spiritually exhausted they all seem to be with (among other things) the bureaucracy of today’s music business and the lack of fun we are having in this country right now. And thus, this album and its accompanying tour are an open revolt against a deeply flawed system that has created an inextricable bind between art and capitalism. A joyless, bloodsucking, spineless culture long due for an overhaul (to say the very least). We live in a time when artists of all stripes are either taking a stand or they are not. It should not feel monumental when an artist speaks their mind with regard to something of sociopolitical import. To quote Pardon The Interruption’s Michael Wilbon, “You don’t get credit for doing what you’re supposed to do.” And yet, in these strange and ever-so trying times, it’s remarkable and invigorating when an artist stands ten toes on the ground, and proudly exclaims, “Wanna make America fuck again / Wanna make America wanna to love again / Wanna make America not suck again / Wanna start a revolution / Watch it begin.”

In an interview with Playboy (never thought I’d be able to say that), Mr. Blue Skies said, “If we’re not going to burn it all down, we might as well go dance. This country was founded by a bunch of people who burned it all down over a three-pence tax on tea, and now we’re just bitching in the comments.” He’s right. We must do something. Quite literally anything, and Mutiny After Midnight offers us a host of ideas all while refusing to let us forget how much trouble our world is actually in. One such idea is perhaps forgetting about our problems for a little while. Maybe, just maybe, one of the ways we can figure all this out is by loosening up a little bit.

Over the course of a nearly three hour performance Johnny Blue Skies and the Dark Clouds unleashed a fury of rock and roll, country, blues, soul and everything in between upon an audience held captive; and I myself could not have been more willing. It began in “Excited Delirium” with the largest disco ball I’ve ever seen sprinkling light all over the Garden, and just like that we were off. He spoke to the audience once, maybe twice, but mostly he just played. They all did and it was masterful. They explored every nook and cranny of every single song on the list, a list 28-songs (!!) long.

Of the night’s many beautiful, surprising and uproarious moments one of my favorites was a “Scooter Blues” slower than Monday morning rush hour traffic on the expressway. Their rendition of “All Around You” brought me to tears. I wept helplessly, and it was one of those magical moments at a gig when you feel like the singer is singing just for you. Something interesting I felt as the show progressed was the physical and emotional toll it took on me. It was nearly 11:15 p.m. by the time I left, long past curfew, and I felt transformed. The air felt different, I felt buzzy and at the same time I felt totally spent. Exhausted to the point of wondering why I had just put myself through it. Then I realized the exhaustion, the frustration and the elation—all of it—that’s the whole point. The questions the band asks of you when you show up are very simple: 1) Are you game? and 2) Can you take it?

It was interesting to try and gauge who was up to the challenge. Over the years I’ve spent a lot of time bellyaching about audience participation and how as an audience member you owe it the artist on stage to be present, open and willing to go wherever they feel like taking you. I’m sure there were a pretty sizable percentage of people in the crowd who felt like they’d had enough. Folks who were sitting around waiting for it to end and it just wouldn’t. I understand, three hours with not one single break is an awful lot to ask. However, I’m reminded of something I hear a lot of spiritual teachers talk about. The idea that on the other side of suffering, on the other side of a painful or heartbreaking experience is a whole new way to experience life.

This was a mutiny, absolutely. An all out rebellion against everything the establishment says a live music experience can and should be: how it’s presented and how it’s experienced. They don’t give a shit. They don’t. They show up, they burn the building down, and they leave. It very well might be the single most rock and roll thing I have ever seen in my life… and I witnessed the Rolling Stones in concert once. It has been many years since I have felt so cracked open after a show like this. Ram Das taught us that having a broken heart is one of the healthiest things to happen to a person. When the heart breaks, it can hold all. Love, pain, joy, sadness and everything in between. This show will break you open and allow for you to see everything, feel everything, touch, taste, smell everything.

It is a once-in-a-lifetime show. If it is in your town find a way in. Show up, be on time and stay until the very last note. It just might save you.

It was Thursday April 9th. It was an uneventful day, or at least it started out that way. The night before I had gone out with my then partner and a friend of ours. The next morning I was debating whether or not to go for a run, and at around 1:00 p.m. I decided it was the right thing to do. I was about to start training for my second marathon and I needed to get in the habit of Doing It Anyway. The original plan was to run to Mt Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge. I got myself together and took off. I was feeling really good when all of a sudden everything went black for a few seconds. I woke up on my back in the middle of the crosswalk in excruciating pain. I had been hit by a car and my left leg was in two separate pieces. A gentleman named Dan got out of his car and came to my aid, he held my hand and told me it was going to be ok. The man who hit me also came over, he held my other hand and called 911, and the next thing I knew I was in the back of an ambulance in a neck brace on a board on the way to the Emergency Department at Beth Israel Hospital. I stayed there for two weeks. 13 days to be exact.

Both my tibia and fibula had been broken. It looked like a log snapped in half. I was put on all kinds of horrendous painkillers. Beginning the following day I received the first of four operations in the span of seven days. I was housed in the Rosenberg Building on the sixth floor, the trauma unit. It was impossible to sleep, I was high a lot. I barely ate, I watched the entirety of The Masters, two complete NHL playoff series, NFL Live and PTI every evening before dozing off for a nap and I had blood drawn every four hours for the entirety of my stay. I received two blood transfusions, I did not gain any magical powers or the ability to levitate. This was a huge bummer. I also watched the first chunk of Phish’s residency at Sphere. Aside from my family and the few friends who visited, it was the only thing that really brought me any joy. I’d find the comfy spot in the rather uncomfy hospital bed, put on the headphones and lock in. Though I wasn’t there in person on drugs, I can attest to the great power of partaking in the Phish at Sphere on a consciousness altering substance, or in my case, some serious pain medicine. Wiggling around in bed while listening to “You Enjoy Myself” on dilaudid or percocet was not something I had on my bingo card, but it brought me joy during what was certainly one of the roughest stretches of my life so far.

I wanted to dance, actually dance, so bad. I already had all my tickets for the Fenway shows long before this accident, and I was scared that I wouldn’t make it. The injury was so bad, the healing process was going to take so long and it wasn’t clear to anyone what the rest of the year, let alone the rest of the summer, was going to look like. I left the hospital on April 22nd, and subsequently walked–or rather was wheelchaired–into a new version of my life. At least, at the time, that’s what I thought.

Cut to this past weekend, and me and my dad are in our seats at Fenway Park, dancing to the Phish, gazing up at the moon and considering the many miracles of modern medicine. This, of course, doesn’t happen without a mighty village of doctors, therapists, nurses, family and friends who have been supporting my recovery in whatever way possible. For their determination and kindness, selflessness and hope I owe them all everything.

Now. For the good stuff.

To put it simply, the shows were extraordinary. The internet discourse regarding the band’s current live output has been notably positive since the beginning of this tour, so it feels safe to say expectations were high. My father, who’s the farthest thing away from a jam band guy as you could find, came with me to the first show. He was excited mostly to be there together, whether or not he was excited for the music is something I’m still trying to figure out. I understand that asking one to sit there with you for three hours and listen to the prog-rock, jazz, funk, improv situation that is Phish can be a big ask. But my dad is the best dad, and so of course, he said yes. The boys took to the stage and were off the races as they launched into an enormous “Carini” immediately painting the ballpark technicolor. It was hard to explain any of this to dad as it was happening, so I made the choice to just let the experience was over us both.

A gorgeous “Free” and a revelatory “Harry Hood” were major highlights of Friday’s first set. Set two featured top tier versions of “Fuego” and “Run Like an Antelope”, but it was especially notable because it saw the band play “Melt The Guns” for the first time since 1987. I would love to know the number of folks chasing that one who were there that night. It was a remarkable show and it was a huge delight to share it with my dad, who really is the best sport ever. But Saturday, oh man. The second show, the more I think about it, very well might have been one of the finest performances I’ve seen put on by anyone.

It began rather innocuously with a humble rendition of “My Friend, My Friend”. As my friend John finally made his way to our seats, the band was deep in the pocket of an epic Tweezer that would expand and transform throughout the entire performance. The ingenious and seamless transitions from “Chalk Dust Torture” into “Stash” and “Ghost” into “Possum” are among some of my favorite live music moments of the year. The moment the band went from “Character Zero” into “Tweezer Reprise” during the encore the building erupted. I’ve only ever heard a cheer that loud at a gig a handful of times before, and one of the first was at my first Phish show seven years ago.

Over the course of two nights Phish explored the farthest reaches of their musical universe, and as always, invited all of us to tag along for the ride. It was fun, awe-inspiring, freeing on a level I never could have anticipated. After everything my family and I had been through, it was exactly what I needed, and so I guess I really wanted to tell you that. Life can be hard and unexpected and strange and scary and you will not know what to do. But you will get through it and you will dance again.

So thank you Phish, and thanks dad for tagging along.

I never thought I’d see the day when TTB and The Cult would live in the same musical neighborhood, and yet here we are. While these two songs are vastly different, their similarities are cause for celebration. I’m a heavy rock kid. Always have been, always will be. It’s the music my parents brought me up on. The Who, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Ozzy Osbourne, Led Zeppelin, et al. and I will always have a special place in my heart for loud amps, power chords and big riffs. “Future Soul” is a valiant attempt at showcasing the band’s capacity to inhabit these kinds of musical characteristics, but it didn’t quite stick the landing. While the solo at the end of the song is massive and compelling, something about the amount of distortion on the instrument felt like too much. A little less fuzz would have done the trick. I’m also of the belief that Susan is too good of a singer to use her voice in this context.

One of the reasons Ozzy Osbourne and Phil Lynott appeal to me is because they don’t have the vocal prowess of a Robert Plant or a David Coverdale. They yell, they strain their voice, they don’t have the ability to perform the same kinds of vocal gymnastics. And that is ok!! The rawness, the roughness, the sandpaper-y nature of their voices is what makes young people think they can also be the singer in a rock and roll band. They sound like us. Susan Tedeschi, on the other hand, has such a remarkable understanding of all the colors contained in her voice and her control over each one of its facets is an astounding thing to witness. But. It’s ok to throw it all out the window from time to time. On a song this unruly I would have loved to hear her a little more unhinged. Let your hair down for god’s sake! Please, I beg of you!

Elsewhere on this album we hear the band inhabit more familiar shapes, “Who Am I” being the obvious example. The chord progression doesn’t evoke the same ethereal melancholy of “Midnight In Harlem”, but it’s close. This might be one of my favorite songs on the record because, it’s a little deceptive. From a musical perspective there is a definite sense of, maybe not hope, but promise. Whatever sadness you feel, will one day end. Each time Derek plucks a string it’s as if glitter starts to fall on the floor. It’s so pure and innocent but as I read the lyrics, I couldn’t shake this feeling of helplessness. It’s not as dramatic a declaration of unrequited love as their exploration of Layla and Majnoun, but it’s certainly mournful. “Who, who am I without you in my arms?” The repetition of the word ‘who’ covers the whole song under a soft cloud of despair. Where has my Self gone? Who am I without this other person? Who, who am I? It’s about the grief and the loss we feel when we have sacrificed part of our Selves for the sake of loving another person.

In 1850, Victorian poet Alfred Tennyson, 1st Barron Tennyson published a long elegy to his beloved friend, Arthur Henry Hallam, who died at the age of 22. In Memoriam A.H.H. is famous for its exploration of grief, loss, faith and Tennyson’s spiritual and intellectual revelations. It’s also famous for the following stanza: “I hold it true, what’er befall / I feel it, when I sorrow most / ‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” Often people will pose the last line to you as a question, and the language contained in “Who Am I?” is what we grapple with on our way towards that question. Is it, in fact, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? Our narrator would say yes, unequivocally; “You walked into the night / vanished from my sight / but you stayed in my smile,” our narrator tells us.

It’s one hundred and fifty percent true. Every word. And anyone who has ever loved anyone and had their heartbroken will understand. Those who don’t aren’t listening.

This record is also remarkably short, it just breaks forty minutes of total run time. It’s not that it cuts corners by any means, but it is notably more efficient than much of the band’s previous work. As far as I’m concerned, the jury’s still out on whether or not this is a good thing. I was disappointed by the way “I Got You” ends, however. As Derek begins to find himself settled in a gorgeous and effervescent solo, the song fades out. To the producer or whoever was in charge of such a decision I say, how dare you. In an age where guitar solos are finally no longer an endangered species, I feel slighted that I was robbed of the second half of a great one.

“What In The World” is one of the strongest pieces out of the whole bunch. I’m a sucker for a break-up song and this is a really good one, and it sees Derek express himself honestly. He sounds about as a good as he ever has, the notes ring out with the pain of a relationship on the brink and the comfort of knowing you will survive whatever comes of it. His playing has always managed express the vast expanse of human emotion and it was nice to hear that on top of such a compassionate, soothing rhythm. In a catalog that features many a perfect song, “What In The World” is the perfect song on this record. Far and away.

“Under The Knife” brings to mind the steady groove and the swampy-ness of a song like “Leavin’ Trunk”. Brandon Boone really got deep inside of it and his bass line at heartbeat of this piece is irresistible; this may be one of his best. This tune will be in heavy rotation, especially as the weather starts to warm up. From then on, I found myself thinking the same thing for the next four songs: “All the best parts are at the end.” I’m still torn about how to feel. As I sit here, my gut is telling me to just keep saving my money so I can stay on the road because when they put these songs on stage they are going to soar to new heights, and I want to be there when that happens. So that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna swallow my pride and wait until the next show, because unlike the book always being better than the movie, the music is always better on stage.

I Am The Moon is the high point of their artistic output—I will die on that hill. However, I’m perfectly happy with this record. It’s fun and unexpected and shows their willingness to try new things regardless of what cranks like me have to say about it. And honestly? What more could I ask for. As artists they owe me nothing. My job as an audience member is to receive whatever they have to share and this what they have. This record was well worth waiting for and I cannot wait to see and hear them explore its every nook and cranny as tour rolls on.

We live in the time of Tedeschi Trucks Band and for that I feel blessed.

Future Soul: 4 out of 5 plums

I feel the way I felt after we lost Tom Petty, Garth Hudson and Aretha Franklin. I have no idea what to say. I’m only left with one question: Now what do we do? Now what? In this moment I’m reminded of something Iggy Pop said when he and The Stooges were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In his speech he said, “Music is life, and life is not a business.” He was speaking from the podium in the “belly of the beast” and anyone with their ears open understood. D’Angelo was on a singular mission: to put music out into the world that came from a real, honest, deeply authentic place. It was music—it is music—that makes you feel alive. Impossible to sit still while listening to, impossible not to be moved, be touched, be heard, seen, understood. To hear his music, especially for the first time, is to have your world expanded and forever changed.

Over the last few days I’ve had countless conversations with friends, many of them musicians, and they all have said a similar version of the same thing: there is life before you hear Brown Sugar and VooDoo and life after. You are not the same person because everything you thought you understood about music has been singlehandedly transformed. It’s why this loss feels particularly distressing, because he wasn’t that far removed from people I know both in terms of age and influence. There are so many friends who have made extraordinary contributions to the art form because D’Angelo made his.

I don’t want to think about what the world would sound like without the artistic expressions of those I love personally, and none of us can fathom a world where someone with the radiance and brilliance of a D’Angelo does not add anything else to the conversation. There was talk in the last year or so about some recordings of his sitting in some kind of vault somewhere in Brooklyn, where he lived. It was rumored these recordings would be coming out one day. Will this come to pass? Only God knows. What is for certain is D’Angelo was cautious about whatever contributions he would make after he was sent into the stratosphere with VooDoo.

Fame is a strange and clearly debilitating problem for a pure artist. It seems to me that someone who makes art for art’s sake is not going to be good at being well-known on any kind of level, forget about the kind of level someone like D’Angelo experienced in the mid to late 90s. That isn’t to say that folks who want to be famous are any good at it either because often they aren’t, but there is a particular resentment and anger I sense from artists who don’t care about being famous. It’s an important distinction we have to make.

The current state of music is rather precarious for those who want to follow in his footsteps. It has always been that way. Real music, music with soul is never going to pay the mortgage, nor for the yacht the record boss will be spending his summers on. It’s what happened to Jeff Buckley. Instead of allowing him to make the record he felt compelled to make, the record label badgered him into releasing something quickly which never ended up happening. To have to deal with the burden of having a certain kind of image thrust upon you by someone who thought it would be a good idea, and helpful for sales, must be agonizing; and I don’t blame him (D’Angelo) for wanting to back out of the limelight. Not one bit.

If I didn’t have any self control this piece would go on forever. I’d talk about how in his music folks could hear their parents record collection reconfigured and reinterpreted for a new generation; I’d talk about how his style and the way he carried himself so represented his home city of Richmond—I would go on and on and on, but I only have so much time. As I said at the beginning of all this, I’m confused and confounded and at a loss for what to do. All of our heroes are passing the torch in, what feels like, rapid succession. One after another they are leaving us, and it’s our job now to take the lessons we’ve learned and keep moving forward.

If we want to do right by our teachers and those who have inspired us, we are obligated to make our art, to share it and to do so in the fullness of who we are. Critics be damned.

**********************

The band had broken up less than two years prior.

I first saw The Sword open for Opeth in 2016 shortly after Sorceress was released. They were doing one night at the House of Blues on Landsowne St in Boston and it was the first concert I went to without a parent or an adult. At the time, I was too nervous to go by myself so I went with a kid who lived on the same floor of the dorm I was in. I made a strong effort not to listen any of The Sword’s music before showtime because I wanted to be surprised. No spoilers!! In the moment I wasn’t aware of quite what I was seeing, but I knew it was important. I felt like I had found something profound. This perfect mix of all the things I loved: heavy riffs, a mammoth rhythm section and a singular lyrical universe. Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath and David Bowie all wrapped up into one mighty band from Austin, Texas. I couldn’t have asked for anything more if I tried.

I didn’t get a chance to see them again until a few years later when they went on the road with Clutch. After The Sword finished their set, I took off. I’d gotten all I needed and that was the last time I saw them. That is until last night when they made their triumphant return to the north east to headline the Paradise Rock Club with support from Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol and Moon Destroyers. From start to finish it was as loud and powerful as one would expect. It was also rather emotional in a few particular ways. Namely, it wasn’t lost on me that if were not for bands like The Sword, High on Fire, Electric Wizard and others, bands like Rickshaw Billie and Moon Destroyers don’t exist; and so to see it all come full circle on a cold, rainy night in Boston felt really special.

Between the two supporting acts, it’s hard to pick a favorite. They both gave it everything they had and it’s difficult not to walk away a new fan of either. Each brought their own flavor to the party. Moon Destroyers delivered a set with hints of the Melvins and Sleep, while Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol brought a light-heartedness and a much appreciated sense of humor the show. I heard pieces of Pantera, T. Rex and Primus with a little south western swagger.

Speaking of which.

It was around 10:00 p.m. when the lights went down and The Sword finally returned to the stage. There was no stroking of one’s ego, there was no indulging oneself in the adulation of an adoring audience; they appeared, they plugged in and they played. And the burned the place to the ground. At the start of the gig Cronise took a brief moment to acknowledge the crowd and said only, “It’s nice to be back.” That’s about all the talking I remember. It was just banger after banger after banger for close to 70 minutes.

The opening part of the set featured a collection of some of their finest material from across their catalog. “Maiden, Mother & Crone” and “Empty Temples” nearly brought me to tears. To hear music you’ve loved for a long time live for the first time in many years is a deep and emotional experience, and it was clear the crowd had been waiting for this moment. It was, for the exception of the weirdo who crashed the stage, one of the most respectful crowds I’d been a part of all year. Anyway. After a David Bowie cover that did in fact make me cry, the band played Warp Riders in its entirety.

When a band gets back together after some time away, you never know what you might hear when they come back. Sometimes it’s better, sometimes it’s worse, sometimes you can’t tell if it’s either. Generally you can tell though, if something is different. The good news about The Sword reunion is The Sword have only gotten better. With age comes wisdom and a new sense of gratitude, and it was apparent they were so happy to be sharing this music again with such a loving and joyous audience. I should also mention we’re dealing with the tail end of a rainstorm up here in New England and folks were lined up at least an hour early braving the elements to make sure they didn’t miss a note. This moment has been a long time to coming, there was celebration and elation in the air. And likely a little bit of relief too.

This was not an Oasis level reunion, not by any stretch. But it fills me with hope knowing one of the great bands to come out of the scene in the last 20+ years is refreshed and energized and happy to be on the road again. Is there new music coming? Maybe. I for one am not in any rush. I’m perfectly content to just appreciate the opportunity to tip my cap and dig the music again. Sometimes that’s all you need.

It’s one of those movies, when I heard about it I started jumping for joy and at the same time knew I would be terrified to see. Since its release I’ve danced around buying a ticket. I knew I’d sit in the theater and cry and sniffle and cradle my popcorn as if it were some kind of emotional support animal. Yesterday afternoon that’s exactly what happened. I went to the 4:20 p.m. showing under the presumption there would be no one else there. I was one of three people, and I cried the entire time.

Amy Berg’s documentary is compassionate, empathetic, joyful, sorrowful, enlightening, sad—it encompassed all emotion because Buckley was all emotion. He was the living embodiment of the music he made and consumed and, in allowing such a quality about him to come through, Berg’s film allows us as viewers to catch a glimpse of a once-in-a-lifetime artist almost in real time. From the moment it began it felt like we were being let inside some sacred place. His friends, former lovers, family and colleagues in the music business all seemed to have this kind of protectiveness over him. I got the feeling that if they were going to tell this story it had to be true, it had to be honest. There was no faking it. Nothing about the way this film presented their memories, recollections and feelings felt artificial or forced; so when you watch it, you can feel there’s a trust between all of the energies in the space—Jeff, Amy, you, all of the folks in the film. It was deeply powerful.

Not many artists get the opportunity to make exactly the record they want to make exactly the way they want to make it. It’s even stranger if they get to do it on a major label in the early 90s at 25, but Buckley got to do just that. Grace is an astonishing collection of songs encompassing the life he’d lived up until that point. He would write little poems and set them to music, songs would appear to him in dreams. Music and art flowed through him in a way I’ve only ever seen in a few people. The songs on Grace are diverse, intricate and fully realized pieces of music. They are boundary-pushing and genre-defying (I hate that phrase) and they represent an artist wildly ahead of his time. Shades of Edith Piaf, Nina Simone, Leonard Cohen, Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn and Led Zeppelin all conversing with one another in songs that came from some other dimension through a singular vessel.

Only certain kinds of people are capable of creating art like that. I’m thinking a lot about Flannery O’Connor and her devout belief in God; how in her prayer journal she talked about wanting to be so present, so in touch with her faith, she could get out of the way completely and just allow the spirit to speak through her in her work. Buckley’s work feels really similar. He was able to get out of the way and allow the sounds he loved to move through him to create something we’d never heard or experienced before. It’s best explained in his exploration of Qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional music. When he interviewed Kahn for Interview Magazine in 1996, Buckley wrote in his introduction, “Through his ecstatic performances, Khan’s Qawwali acts as a living testament to music’s power to link all humans, unashamed of emotion, to the divine. At once soaring and penetrating, these sounds seem to rip open the sky, slowly revealing the radiant face of the beloved. Qawwals don’t sing, they are born to sing, and the men who accompany Khan in his ensemble do not just play music, they become music itself.”

The same can most certainly be said of Buckley in his own way. He surrendered himself to a force beyond his understanding and you can hear it, you can see it, and you cannot help but fall for him. And he was 27. I imagine it was as rare in the early and middle 90s to find emotionally intelligent and mature men in their 20s as it is now. He had such a way to conveying sensitivity and emotion and sensuality in his lyrics and when I listen now (I’m 27, turning 28 in December), I can’t help but wonder what the world would be like if there were more men who hadn’t had their sensitivity beat out of them in one way or another.

His inexplicably beautiful interpretation of Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is one such example of this grace. It is deeply sexual and turns a song about God and the comfort we find in God when we have nothing else, into a prayer about deep, unexplainable love. The space in between all the bullshit. When it all goes away what’s in between you? When the lights are off and the doors are locked, what’s left? Hallelujah. Cohen said of the song, “You look around and you see a world that cannot be made sense of. You either raise your fist, or you say Hallelujah.” Put it all aways and bow down to the thing has no inside, no outside, that just is. This unbridled worship of love, sex, intimacy, God as expressed through Song—it’s all present in Buckley’s “Hallelujah” and how lucky are we to get to revisit it over and over and over?

To be young and creeping ever so slightly towards 30, I find myself listening to Jeff Buckley with new ears and seeing him with new eyes thanks to this film. A lot starts to make sense around now. Feelings about love and relationships and my future and how I want to live and the kind of life I want. It’s scary and frightening and exciting and thrilling and new and old—it makes sense and it doesn’t make sense and the books on my shelves and the record in my crates—I find answers to some of my questions in there.

Buckley’s struggles and his triumphs as displayed so effortlessly in this movie and his music, whether he wrote the words or he didn’t, are for me a touchstone. We are never going to have all the answers, certainly not at our age, and we only have time to figure it out. How much time? We don’t know, but we have it now and we have to make use of it. We have to love and live and cry and dance and try and taste and feel as much as we possibly can. And we have to make art, as much of it as possible, as often as possible.

Give thanks for Jeff Buckley.

Showtimes for the film can be found here.

My day job is that of a barista and hostess at a cafe down the street, and as one of Lou’s neighbors, I wanted to drop by a day or two after they first opened to say hello and have a drink. I couldn’t believe how they brought this space back to life. It’s warm and inviting and beautifully decorated. The voices of Etta James and Sarah Vaughn drifted out of the speakers and the music of the kitchen filled in the cracks. Everyone I met was kind and gracious and so clearly excited about this endeavor. There’s a buzz I feel when I think about this space, and so last night I decided to pay our friends a proper visit for Jazz Underground.

I arrived around 6:30 p.m. and the sounds of glassware and cocktail shakers intermingling with that of LaVern Baker filled my heart with so much joy. I sat down at the bar just before show time and was delighted to hear tunes by Eric Hofbauer and his wonderful quartet. This group of veteran players used jazz techniques to explore rock, pop, ambient and folk styles of music and thus created an intellectually challenging and musically adventurous evening. Fascinating renditions of Charlie Paker tunes sat next to unexpected interpretations of Radiohead deep cuts. It was wonderful and if I didn’t have to get up in the morning I would have stayed all night. Hofbauer, believe it or not, was my teacher too at one point. He used to teach a class at Emerson College on the history of jazz. That class was pivotal for me because everyone needs the person in their life who will tell them to go home and listen to John Coltrane for homework. That guy was Eric Hofbauer and I have vivid memories of walking through the Tufte building listening to “My Favorite Things” on a loop and finally getting it.

Sitting at the bar last night I found myself becoming a student again. One of the things I remember most from that semester, aside from my horrible grades, was how much it blew my mind to learn that Jazz was the basis for almost every rock band I’ve ever fallen in love with. The Allman Brothers Band, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa—they were all jazz nerds. And last night I had that lightbulb moment all over again listening to them reimagine a Sigur Ros tune into this free jazz thing. It was reminder of why it’s important to understand the story of where the things you love come from. If you love The Allman Brothers Band, you need to listen to A Love Supreme. Understanding why Duane Allman loved Coltrane so much will make you love The Allman Brothers all the more. It deepens your connections to the music you love and ultimately to art as a whole.

Before I get really carried away I want to shift gears and talk for a second about snap peas. Lou’s, as I mentioned briefly is also a restaurant, and very good one. Whenever I try out a new place, especially a new bar, I order a martini and fries. In my experience if your place can make excellent martinis and french fries without costing me an arm and a leg, I’ll be happy to be your patron. The food at Lou’s is really good, their fries are a delight, but last night I had the roasted shishito peppers and snap peas with a togarashi mayo. Spicy and tangy, fresh and delicious. I would have gotten a picture but the plate was almost empty by the time it occurred to me. Snap pea season is sort like tomato season. When they’re fresh and they’re prepared well, there really is nothing better. A caprese salad at peak tomato season is one life’s great joys, and I would say the same is true for snap peas in almost any preparation. Oh, and make sure you pair the dish with a Bond Martini (my favorite of their martini options). It’s kind of like a 50/50 using London dry gin, orange bitters, dry vermouth and a twist.

It’s hard for me for find a better word to describe my evening other than ideal. The food was delicious, the cocktails were delicious and the music was superb. Not to mention the wonderful service, which is the glue that makes the whole machine go. Without good people at the heartbeat of the operation it goes nowhere. To know there are people in this marvelous new space dedicated and driven to delivering high quality experiences to neighbors and tourists and artists alike in an area of Cambridge desperate for some soul, helps me sleep at night. It really does.

For a for information about Lou’s including menus and upcoming shows, please visit their website.

The other thing? It gives me hope to know a multitude of artistic expressions can coexist. At the start of the event, the forget forgets (Manchester, NH) delivered a visceral, high octane set of original tunes that captivated everyone in the room. No frills, all-killer-no-filler energy from start to finish. Powerful vocals, unrelenting rhythms, blistering guitars—it was furious, angry, and relieving. It’s refreshing to see such a young band up a stage with so much confidence. They walked up there as if they belonged there. I’m not in the prediction business, I’m not that good, but I will remember the forget forgets and I’m fairly certain I will see some familiar faces in the audience the next time they roll through town. While it was a small gig, in a small room the sounds were huge and definitely could’ve filled a room two and three times the size. They emptied their tank and not one person could dismiss them by the end of their set, a rare thing to see these days.

Before I move on, a little context. O’Briens Pub opened its doors 1984, but didn’t become a “proper” club until the early 90s. It’s the place a band goes to get off its feet. It’s where they cut their teeth; where they learn how to deal with an audience, a staff, sound—everything. It’s the kind of place you go to see that band your buddy’s put together; it’s where the neighborhood gathers on Friday nights after a long week of work; it’s the hideout, the clubhouse and the sandbox all wrapped up in one. It’s the place you play to learn the craft before you start playing big places. It’s one of the last true landmarks of a scene in Boston that doesn’t really exist anymore and to have gone there one more time, to see it and feel it in all of its glory before it inevitably changes meant something.

When I spoke with Craig Peura of Sundrifter about what it means to play a small place like this now he said, “So O’Brien’s is like your favorite local baseball field that you played on when you were nine, and you’re out there and you’re learning how to play baseball… that’s the O’Brien’s experience, so that’s just super important to the community to have a place for artists to come out and try stuff.”

The scene around here is not what it was 35 years ago, and Allston is a shell of itself these days; so to see O’Brien’s still thriving and staying true to its roots makes me feel something akin to hope. It is vital to have spaces for young artists to cut their teeth, to make mistakes, to try things and fail. Peura’s group has also played the original Great Scott, and is looking forward to playing the new iteration of the legendary club when it opens in the coming year or so. He added, “[Hopefully] with the new Great Scott, we can reward those people who have been working so hard and cutting their teeth.”

Not only are local places important for artistic development, they allow for audiences to expand their tastes and meet new people in their communities too. I bellyache all the time about how live music is a two-sided interaction. The band needs the audience, just as much as the audience needs the band and if both of them are in conversation with one another then you can make magic. The key though is that both sides are open and willing to give and receive energy. Now, another thing that struck me about last weekend’s show, was how many women I saw in the crowd. It never ceases to amaze me how many girls and female-identifying people I see in audiences as the years press on.

Crystal Spiders (Raleigh, NC), lead by Brenna Leath, is one of an ever growing number of bands celebrating and championing women in the genre. Some of my earliest memories of going to shows when I was in college were of staying the bathroom between sets because I was one of only a small handful of girls at the gig. And so to see really kick ass women like her up there.

In a brief chat after their set Leath said, “I play heavy music same reason men and other people do which is, I have a lot of feeling that need to be expunged in a somewhat healthy way… I think a women have felt deterred from heavy music and fortunately that’s starting to change. It seems like it’s becoming more accessible and there’s a lot more bandwidth for what heavy music means… and I’m just happy to be a part of it.”

She went on to say that because of how the music itself has changed women don’t feel pigeonholed in ways they may have once felt. Girls don’t have to be up there growling and screaming if they don’t want to. Strong melodies and passionate singing can be heavy too and Crystal Spiders excels at doing just that. As they began their set I was immediately transported to the late 70s. Big riffs, tight jeans, mirrored sunglasses and cheap beer cans. I had images of Kim McAuliffe and Enid Williams, Jan Kuehnemund, Lita Ford. Badass no bullshit women who played it better than the boys did. I should also mention Crystal Spiders is a power trio and I fucking love a power trio. There’s a rawness and an intensity you get when you break the structure of a band down to the barest essentials: drums, bass, guitar and one of those people singing. It’s real and tenacious and beautiful. I was awe struck, I really was. I can say with certainty they rocked our world and Leath put all the boys to shame.

Despite a small delay, Sundrifter closed out the evening with one of the loudest shows I’ve heard in a long time. There was so much gain on the amps, I thought my ears might pop. That’s a good thing! I’m of the belief if you’re gonna commit yourself to this music in one way or another, you have to go all in. There’s no skimping, there can’t be any beating around the bush. Jump off the cliff, turn it up to 11, and go for it. It was a powerful display. Authoritative, lush, profound. The set didn’t last more than 45 minutes if I had to guess and the only thing I would say is that I wish the curfew was a little later. A few more songs would have more than welcome. I appreciated how, not just Sundrifter, but all the bands didn’t box themselves in. They allowed their artistic instincts to take the lead and in so doing created a much more textured, layered and varied sound than what one might assume a metal show to sound like. If you listen to Sundrifter’s latest record, An Earlier Time, you can hear it. Soaring vocals on top of rich, deep grooves and melodies galore.

It was a beautiful evening and I feel lucky I got to be there. Sundrifter heads back into the studio soon and is currently working on new material set to come out in the coming year.

New Music from Two Heroes:
On Single Awareness Day (a.k.a. Valentine’s day) this year, everyone’s favorite Canadian is releasing another one of his lost records. Yes, you heard me right, we get new/old Neil Young music in exactly one month. Outside Countryside is the latest entry in his Analog Original Series (AOS) and it will feature a collection of songs recorded between May and December of 1977. What makes this release particularly exciting is the mixes featured on this record are the original mixes produced during these sessions. Nerds rejoice! By the sounds of it, it seems we’re getting a country-twinged version of Young. Twangy and light and as unexpected as ever. The thing I’ve always admired about him more than almost anything, is his steadfastness. He’s always on the hunt, always following the muse wherever it leads him. He is unafraid to take risks for the sake of his art. Whether or not this record presents a risk-taking version of the genius, I almost don’t care. It’s Neil Young music we haven’t heard before and that is always cause for celebration.

In a second dispatch from the Good News Desk, Jason Isbell has announced his first new solo record in a decade. Foxes in the Snow arrives on March 7th and will feature a collection of songs recorded over the course of a week at Electric Lady Studios in New York using nothing but a 1940 Martin 0-17 acoustic guitar. This is my kind of stuff. Quiet, sparse and solitary. Jason Isbell writes the kind of songs one can only dream of. They emerge as windows into an alternate, subterranean America. I’m doing my best there to quote Steve Silberman when he tried his best to illuminate Robert Hunter’s lyrics for the Grateful Dead. Isbell’s lyrics exist next to those of the greatest writers the art form has ever known and knowing those lyrics will be at the center of this offering… oh man I am just chomping at the bit to get this records into my ears. Your homework, dear reader, includes listening to “Bury Me” on a loop for at least an hour at some point today. You’re welcome.

Reading Books I Already Own (!!!)
Ok this is a big one. I feel excited about this prospect, and also relieved. I have been buying books pretty much nonstop for the last four years or so. Give or take. I have assembled a home library and I am damn proud of it. It’s disjointed and disorganized and totally unruly, but it’s a library nonetheless. Hundreds of books fill my little treehouse apartment and there are few things in the world that make me happier than an apartment full of books; and I’m extremely blessed. There is a but here however, and it’s that most of the books are unread. And now, at long last, it is time to read them. For those of you, who like me go to the bookstore every week to see what’s new, you know browsing it an art. You have a routine, you have favorite sections, a useful loop around the store before settling on an idea of something you find interesting and going on the scavenger hunt looking for it. It’s about time I’ve started applying this routine to my stacks at home and I cannot wait to see what treasures I already have.

Frequenting Sports Bars

Not too terribly long ago, my sister, my dad, my sister’s boyfriend and I went to a Bruins game. It was a Saturday night and it was snowing. It was brutally cold and there was nothing I could have imagined doing on a frozen night in Boston other than watch a hockey game. We had a lovely dinner before hand at a small mom and pop restaurant in the North End and walked as quickly as we could to the Garden. I’ve been very fortunate in my day to attend many many sporting events in my beloved hometown. However this one felt different. This game didn’t matter. It was still relatively early in the season and the playoff discussion wasn’t much of a topic of conversation among anyone. Since being out of a real job, I’ve had to work harder than normal to be in spaces with other people. Frequenting my local hangouts is always wonderful, but it’s good to add other places too.

Since all my friends are home from tour and I haven’t had anywhere to travel to yet, it’s been extra challenging to feel connected to things outside my own little world. That is until that one Saturday night. Growing up in New England, sports is the law. You don’t get a choice. You are a Bruins, Patriots, Red Sox and Celtics fan. That is it. You are locked in for life. And no, you can’t switch if move elsewhere. To make a long story short, that evening I felt deeply reconnected with something sacred. Something powerful and much larger than any one person. Being in a large number of people, rooting for our team to get it done. That felt so good. I watch when I can. I don’t own a television nor can I afford to pay monthly to watch all my teams (e.g. it costs nearly 700 dollars a month to watch the NFL). And so I am going to make an effort to frequent my local sports bar to make sure I’m as caught up as possible in the coming weeks and months. Especially as hockey and basketball season kick into high gear. To feel connected to something bigger than yourself, even on a small scale, means a lot to me right now.

Going to The Movies
This has been a goal of mine for years and now that I have the time on my hands, there is simply no excuse anymore. I was proud of myself recently because I went out on a weekday afternoon and saw Babygirl. It was fabulous. The movie was fabulous, but also going to the movies alone was fabulous. I don’t know why I’ve had it in my head that movie going is strictly a group activity. I never felt this way about music because music is the single most important thing to me; and so there’s some unconscious decision-making that happens when it comes to the concert calendar. I’m not entirely sure, but whatever the case, I’m gonna make an effort to make solo date night include more than just dinner. Movies count too. Films, like museums and concerts and book events, are artistic presentations. I need to remember that.

****************

So those are a few things I’m looking forward to in the coming year. Even though it will be challenging with the world continuing to turn itself upside down inside out and backwards, there is still light to be found in there. I’m thinking about something Jon Batiste said during his Grammy performance last year. He said, “The joy of living is still available to us.” I believe in that. If we try just a little bit harder, we’ll get there. Find your joy wherever, however you can. Don’t let anyone take it from you. Exercising your joy in times of crisis is radical and badass and its own kind of rebellion. Take good care.

****************

I hope you’re ok. I’m here. I’ve been here, but I haven’t been as diligent as I should have been these last few weeks and months about my writing. The only major update is I was rejected from a position that would have been my dream job had I gotten it. I found out in mid December that I wasn’t going to be moving on in the application process and it crushed me. I’m not looking for pity or anything, it’s just a thing that happened and it did, it broke me. And the more I think about it, the more I’m starting to believe it was the best thing to ever happen to me. The day was December 19th or 20th. Somewhere in there. My birthday came and went. I was hungover and I opened my email for the umpteenth time and there it was. The email from the guy with the star next to his name who I’d been waiting to hear from. My heart fell to the floor:

“Hannah, I had a wonderful time getting to know you over the course of this application process, however your application will not be in the final round of discussions. If anything changes, I will consider you. Wishing you nothing but the best and much success in your career.”

It went something like that. Rudimentary and blank and lifeless. No feeling, no real information and totally out the blue. It was a big job and I knew I was reaching high, but I had as a good as anyone to get it; and though I was prepared to be rejected it doesn’t make it any easier. It was also before the Dead Week, those dreaded few days before New Year’s. I always tell myself to make use of them because of how much time seems to be available. This year was no different from last year sadly. I was home, out of a real job and doing everything in my power not to be on my phone for hours and hours at a time. I succeeded mostly in keeping my sanity, but there were days towards the very end of December where I could feel myself sinking deep into the screens around me. It was hard to get out of bed without spending a little while on my phone. I wasn’t eating at regular times and I didn’t leave my apartment unless I absolutely had to. It didn’t take me too long to realize I was in the midst of a depressive episode.

Showering was infrequent, I wasn’t doing my morning exercises, I stopped making my bed in the morning during the weekdays. It was clear this rejection letter or email as it were, was a lot harder to take than I was initially willing to admit to myself. There was a weird sense of guilt for letting myself down I started to feel and it was becoming a problem. I knew pretty quickly I had to strike some kind of balance between feeling my feelings and getting myself back on track. It’s hard. It’s really hard but I’m glad to report all’s been well lately.

So what’s been helpful. That’s the question I suppose.

I don’t want to sit here and tell you what to do, but I can tell you a little bit about what I did and have been doing in the spirit of sharing ideas in the hope they will find you and maybe help you in some way.

The upswing hit a fever pitch if you will over Christmas. My mother was busy, my sister was busy thus leaving my dad and I to our own devices. And we did the only two things we ever do on Christmas: we ate Chinese food and went to see a movie. We had dim sum this year at Hei La Moon in Chinatown, which is my preferred dim sum spot in Boston. I’m still thinking about the pork and chive dumplings. We had tea, white and jasmine tea. It was brutally cold outside and it was the perfect way to start the day. The meal ended earlier than we anticipated, so we wandered over to a nearby hotel and sat at the bar for a little while. Going out on Christmas is an interesting thing. It seems to me that the only people who go out on Christmas are people who don’t celebrate the holiday or people who don’t like their family. Either way, we are all doing the same thing: drowning our sorrows before the Dead Week. It’s bizarre, yet oddly communal. So we had a beer and then we walked over to the movie theater.

The wind whipped at our face as we made our way through Chinatown and Downtown Crossing. The AMC 19 on the Common appeared to us as a beacon the closer we got. It’s tired, smelly exterior a constant reminder of my college years running around the neighborhood and smoking cigarettes before late night screenings of The Big Lebowski. We were there to see Nosferatu. As much as I would have loved to have spent another afternoon and evening with The Dude, Walter, Donny and the boys, we had serious business to tend to that day.

Dad’s one of the biggest movie people I know. One of the greatest traditions of Wolfe holiday dinners once-upon-a-time was sitting around the table after the meal, cackling with laughter and seeing how many lines from The Godfather you’d be able to get correct. The Godfather, The Shining, Rocky, you name it my dad and my uncle could do it all for the most part. As I got older I picked upon on my dad’s interest in scary movies. It also helped that when I started college at Emerson, I was surrounded by film students; many of whom loved watching old cult movies and b-list horror pictures from the 70s. The original Nosferatu entered my cultural lexicon around this time and has stuck around ever since. Dad to my knowledge still hasn’t seen the 1927 film, but that didn’t matter. It was Christmas, it was movie day, we had not shit else to do and we were going to see a scary movie at the cinema together for the first time. That’s a big deal.

After what like a short-film’s worth of previews, we finally got to see Robert Eggers’ masterpiece. Dare I call it a masterpiece? Feel free to disagree with that, but I could not have loved this film more, and I’m probably gonna go see it again before it finds its way onto streaming platforms. Anyway, it was the first in a short series of happenings that helped me regain my footing. The other one was finally making it to New Years’ Eve when I settled down at home with my old, gross patchwork pants and an aging Dead & Company tie-dye from a few summers ago to watch Phish on Couch Tour. It was beautiful. It’s always beautiful. I danced around at home and drank and had myself a time for the first time in what felt like a long time. I texted with friends who were there and I felt like we were together. And we were.

From then on, I have felt like I’ve been on the up and up. Finally. It felt so good to dance and be home and be alone and still feel so surrounded by love and kindness. That’s what music and art in all forms does when it’s really good. When it’s coming from an honest place, a real place it takes root inside of you, and in an instant you become a part of the thing. I felt inside of the movie, I felt inside of the music. Though it’s taken me a little while to get back to my reading (it’s happening, slowly but surely), I can feel it all leveling out. And so I guess I just wanted to drop in this afternoon and say that if the beginning of a new year is hard for you, I get it.

I want to you know there are all kinds of things waiting and ready to help you. Songs waiting for your voice to join in, characters in books and films waiting to meet you and put their arms around you. There are paintings and sculptures in art museums waiting for you to sit in their room so they can look at you and smile. I hope whatever this new year brings all of us, you do all the things that make you feel loved and held and joyful and at peace. We all deserve that and we’re getting there. One day at a time.

So cheers to 2025 I guess. I look forward to staying on this ride with you.

I’m thinking about a life completely saturated in music and study and what that does to you as a person. And so I wrote this series of sentences—or perhaps, more accurately, I’ve compiled, and decided to share with you, this collection of thoughts I’ve had over the last eight hours or so. I’ve decided to dedicate it to four people who have been not only great friends, but great teachers and have kept my ears, eyes, mind and heart open. My gratitude knows no bounds for the lessons and the joy you have so graciously shared with me and so many others. Thank you will never be enough.

****************

To be taught, is to be loved. Maybe for the first time.

Nature vs. nurture? Who’s to say. To be nurtured is to be taught is to be loved.

If we are taught well, we remain students of the things and people we love forever.

A student is always listening, always in service of the lesson.

To play is to pray to play is to love the love that loves—
music, art, writing—are acts of worship.

If you’re conscious enough, everything is a prayer.
Every melody, every note, ever syllable, everything can be an act of God.

A house of study, a house of worship is a house. A place to be at home.

The basement of a radio station, somewhere in a theater, the old classroom—I take my shoes off, feel the earth beneath me and listen to my teachers.

How do we thank them? How do we honor them? How can be make them proud? How
do we carry on the lessons we have collected over time?

I think about how to do that with my work, with my living, with my speaking, with my breathing, with my listening.

We are molded and shaped into people by the things we listen to, eat, read, and look at. If we remain vigilant and conscious, we see the Divine everywhere—hear it, taste it, feel it everywhere.

But we must be taught to seek it out. And we give thanks to those who have awakened us.

It had nothing to do with the body.
It’s a universe contained.
“If you look close, it’s your world for the moment.”
To hold a flower is to hold a world,
an ecosystem, a living breathing thing.
It has nothing to do with a body.

I didn’t want them to know.
Petals in the place of skin, stems in the place of legs.
Waves of green and pink and yellow,
color fills in the silent spaces between each part.
Abstraction, subtraction, subversion—
art is helpful like that.
I told them, it has nothing to do with the body.

It wasn’t that I cared about their assumptions,
I just didn’t feel like explaining myself.
I still don’t.
It’s no one’s business, what my flowers mean—
they are pictures and what they mean isn’t
up to them.
Or you.
I told them they had nothing to do with the body.

—

It had everything to do with a body,
and that’s my business.

***************

(I love this picture of Mr. Garcia Marquez.)

It’s the second of two big novels I’ve read this year, and it was really hard. Really hard. The sentences are really long, some of the paragraphs go on for pages and there are so many characters with the same name that I lost track of most of them by the end—well, it felt that way… kind of. I’ll explain more as we move along, but I want to say straight away I’m not getting on a soap box here. I’m not going to spend this entire article complaining about how hard it was. Instead I want to share the lessons I learned from reading a book I thought, for a long time, was way beyond my level of intelligence. It is, in fact, entirely readable! Like any other book in the world, I was able to read it and you are too if you choose to do so. And you know something? I’m encouraging you to try. Not because it’s long and you’ll get to say you did it when you’re done, but because there is serious wisdom in becoming a student of a piece of writing again.

I was never taught One Hundred Years of Solitude in school. I don’t really know why. Maybe it was the classes I was taking or maybe it was “out of fashion” among my educators for one reason or another. Whatever the case, in the pantheon of super-famous-books-everyone-reads-before-they-die, this is one I had to seek out on my own. Something I learned at the start of this adventure is when a book is THIS famous, there’s a lot you already feel like you know about it before you even start reading. It’s so firmly ingratiated in so many facets of culture, I could understand how someone wouldn’t feel obligated to pick it up at all. “I already know what it’s about.” I understand and it’s a fair point, however there is so much one doesn’t know that folks simply don’t tell you… because what you don’t know may actually scare you away.

Something they don’t tell you about? The pacing. I had no idea the sentences were going to be so long (operatic as one critic called them). I didn’t know there wasn’t much dialogue. Most of the story is told from the perspective of a third person omniscient narrator and there are long stretches of this novel without a single quote. That alone takes a lot of getting used to. For example, though Franzen’s Crossroads is super long and contains a granular amount detail, there is a shit ton of dialogue; so much talking in fact, I found myself trying to come up with voices for what each character might actually sound like. Who does a person remind me of? Do they sound like someone I know? Do they even sound like me at a certain stage of my life? Marquez’s masterpiece, doesn’t necessarily offer the reader such a luxury. Until reading this book, it didn’t even occur to me such a feeling could be considered a luxury. And, now that I think about it, it’s fitting because so much of this novel is about luxuries that are stripped away from folks or not afforded to folks due to forces outside of their control. I’m almost certain that if I hadn’t read this book, this thought never would have occurred to me; which brings me to my first point: reading something “above your pay grade” teaches you a lot about who you are and who you’re becoming as a reader.

One of the things I’ve learned over the years is it’s important to give myself the license to release books that are not for me. I’ve talked about that in this letter numerous times. It’s also really important to give yourself more credit than you think you deserve. There are can be plenty of frustrating moments over the course of reading a book, any book, but you can’t get too hung up on those moments. There have been plenty of times I’ve given up on a book simply because I didn’t want to read it anymore… or so I said to myself. Really though, I didn’t feel capable of reading whatever it was. That’s what happened with the Bach biography (if you’ve been here, you know what I’m referring to). I didn’t believe I was capable of finishing it, and I’ve gone back and looked at the piece I wrote and I can barely read it. It wasn’t that I was actually frustrated with the material, I just didn’t believe in myself enough to finish it and I do, I feel badly about that. And so when I decided to pick up One Hundred Years of Solitude, some deep instinct told me I had to stick it out.

I’m gonna be totally honest. The first sentence gave me chills. It’s one of the most famous opening lines ever written and I still got chills. I’m such a sap for stuff like that. “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” I get chills even now transcribing it for you. I get a little misty. One of the reasons why is because I’ve never had any real contact with said sentence. It’s kind of like a song you’ve heard a million times but haven’t really contextualized in any meaningful way. “Hotel California” is like that for people. They hear it in car commercials or playing in the background while deciding to purchase a dozen large or extra large brown eggs. Then the day comes when one’s weird uncle or cool stoner friends say, “Hey. You ever check out the Eagles?” You’re thrown off a little, you grimace even. “The Eagles? You mean that shit you hear all the time at Wegman’s? No, I haven’t.”

Weird uncle Frank shakes his head. He says, “You have no idea,” and he looks at you with a determination in his eyes. He is about to change your life and you know it. He brings you down to the basement after dinner. There’s wood-paneling all over the walls and you’re a little confused. He goes into the storage room and brings out a dusty old milk crate with a bunch of records in it. You’ve seen records before, you’re pretty hip in fact and you’re into the old copy of LA Woman you stole from your dad. You think you’re pretty cool, and the Eagles feel like a step below the Poetics of Jim Morrison. Uncle Frank digs around for a second, and it starts to smell like dust and mold and you’re concerned, and then he pulls out a copy of Hotel California by the Eagles. “Bought it the day it came out,” he says with as much whimsy as was possible for a guy who sat around all day chain smoking weed and watching olds clips of Cal Jam on YouTube.

He wipes the dust off the turntable. With a grace and a dignity you couldn’t fathom, he delicately took the record out of the sleeve. Placing it delicately on the turntable and wiping it down gently with an old kitchen rag, he lifted the needle and dropped it perfectly onto track one, side A and in an instant everything changed. The first sounds Glen Frye’s acoustic guitar, Don Henley’s laid back, easy going drums and the perfect first line, “On a dark desert highway…”—you were right there. You could feel the heat, the menace lurking just around the corner. You were no longer in the stuffy, poorly ventilated basement covered in wooden panels from 50 years ago likely being eaten off the wall by termites. You are at the Hotel. All of a sudden, almost instantaneously, there’s an emotional connection to this sentence, to this song, that you’ve only ever heard about. You can place in time and space, you have an understanding of what it means in the context of the story. In the case of One Hundred Years of Solitude I was able to feel the wonder of a child. The wide-eyed, rosy colored feeling of seeing something new.

And you know, if it wasn’t for weird uncle Frank, you may not have had the moment with the Eagles. The same is true for me and this novel. One night I was chatting with a friend, someone much smarter than I am. He is one of those people in my life with whom I have to keep up. He is so well read and so intelligent and so particular in his taste, and I love him for these reasons (among a myriad of others of course). And so when he tells me he loves something I know he means it. He told me he loved this book. My ears perked up. I was teetering on the edge of giving up. I was about 150 pages in or so, and I wasn’t sure whether or not I wanted to keep going. Then I had a chat with my friend and decided I owed to him, and ultimately to myself, to finish it regardless of how difficult it would be or how long it would take me.

It took me 19 days. I finished it last night at 11:57 p.m. and the last four pages brought me to tears. I felt so grateful in that moment. I knew, instantly, if I had given up hundreds of pages earlier I wouldn’t have been able to feel the hope and the elation the final moments of the novel give you. For of all of its drama and twists and turns, it’s ending (NO SPOILERS), is perhaps one of the most touching endings to a novel I’ve read in an awfully long time. And that’s why it’s worth it to power through. You’ll miss so many beautiful moments of discovery if you don’t. Even if you don’t understand the entirety of a book like this and can only really grasp parts of it, there is something in here for you. Reading in many ways is an act of trust. The reader has to trust the author on the adventure and believe wherever the story takes them will be worth while. Sometimes it’s not, but most of the time you leave the experience feeling like you achieved something, like you learned something and you will emerge changed regardless.

It’ moments like this that remind me why I love reading so much, because it makes you a better person in a million different ways. It’s also in moments like this when I’m really grateful for my friends. If my buddy hadn’t told me he loved this thing so much, I probably would have stopped, but I didn’t. So the other lesson here is to trust your people. Whether you realize it or not, they know what will help you, what will teach, what will hold you, often times more so than you do.

At any rate, here are some more tools for your toolkit. I’ve tried to link to as many things as possible, especially all the books. I hope they help.

And here’s a painting by Cezanne that’s been helpful too.

Ok! The list is below. Enjoy.

******************

Records to Listen To:
- Ted Lucas by Ted Lucas
- Parallelagrams by Linda Perhacs
- The Deep End Vol. 1 by Gov’t Mule
- My Farewell to Elvis by Merle Haggard
- Paradise Pop. 10 by Christian Lee Hutson
- Night Nurse by Gregory Isaacs
- After Hours by Sarah Vaughan
- Chelsea Girl by Nico
- The Future by Leonard Cohen
- Nell’ Ora Blu by Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats
- Blacklisted by Neko Case
- Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys
- Astral Weeks by Van Morrison
- Blackheart Man by Bunny Wailer
- Waltz For Debby by Bill Evans
- I Am The Moon by Tedeschi Trucks Band

Books to Read:
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Gold by Rumi (trans. Haleh Liza Gafori)
- Water, Water by Billy Collins
- The Complete Translations of Seamus Heaney edited by Marco Sonzogni
- The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
- The Major Works by John Milton
- The Book of Love by Rumi (trans. Coleman Barks)
- Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
- Trust by Hernan Diaz

Bars, Eateries & Other Places to Sit:
- Temple Records
- Boston Public Library
- the basement at the Boston Athenaeum
- haley.henry
- South End Buttery
- the dog park behind the bookstore
- More Than Words
- Trifecta
- the bench near the willow tree in the public garden
- Franklin Cafe

******************

In my mind I imagined the figure in the painting to be talking to a bartender, or perhaps to herself. I wanted it to feel like a confession. The only reason I used to my own name toward the end of the poem is because it was traditional for some poets to use their own name in a line as a signature of sorts. I’m happy with how this turned out. Do enjoy.

*******************************

There’s a lump in my throat.
I don’t know what it is.
I want to tell you everything. Everything.
I have so much to say and yet when I open my mouth nothing comes out. Nothing.
Speechless, gutless, the lump in my throat only grows.
Something is stuck in my throat. I don’t know what it is.
It’s going to be alright. We are going to be alright.
We will find our way. Someway, somehow. I have to believe that.
In the meantime, my hands will speak for me. Perhaps you’ll hear me better.
In fact I think you might. You speak so beautifully, so clearly through your art.
I can hear your voice through your hands when you paint, in every brush stroke.
Each color a breath, an exhale, a call, a cry, “Hannah, listen to me.”
Color drifts along the canvas the way melodies float midair.
In the silence of the gallery I whisper, “Yes! I’m right here.”
The other day it was as if a thread attached itself to us both and held us in place.
All life stood still.
I could hear, I could see. My mind went blank.
The lump in my throat. I couldn’t feel it then.
You, you, you, I think about you all the time.
When Rumi met Shams he wandered away with the dervish, his “doorway to the sun".
You. You are my doorway to the sun. Shining and golden and open just a crack.
The lump will go away. Maybe the wine will help…

*******************************

****************

The Classic: Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
I have such feelings about Hawthorne. As a novelist, he was one of the most tedious writers ever to live. I attempted to read The Scarlet Letter in middle school, and could barely stand it. I’ll never forget reading the second chapter in which he spends at least two pages describing the items on a table and the placement of those items on said table. Dreadful. He took all the suspense and intrigue out of reading the story of Hester Prynne before it even started. And then, in college I read a story of his called Young Goodman Brown. Young Goodman Brown is one of the best short stories ever written. From the day I first read it, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It’s about a guy called Goodman Brown and he’s married; his wife’s name is Faith. It opens with him and his wife having a brief discussion on the corner of a street in Salem Village. Nighttime is quickly approaching and Goodman Brown has to run some kind of errand in the forest on this particular night. The story then unfolds into one of the most striking examinations of Puritan thought and belief ever put to paper. Yes, I said it.

This is a spoiler free zone so you’ll have to read it to find out what happens after Goodman Brown gets stuck in the woods, but there are witches and cloaks and crows and fire and and creepy dudes in the woods and ceremonies and Satan, many things Puritan people would have been terrified of. What makes the story so good is how propulsive it is. One Goodman Brown enters the woods, the story doesn’t let you go until the very very end. It’s a great example of a writer who worked so much better with constraints. Not every writer can do both. The novel and the short story are two totally separate and distinct forms. Not everyone can master both of them, and Hawthorne’s genius shines in the short fiction. This is the story you read when you want to read a scary story but still want to get some sleep after. It’s just as cozy as it is creepy. One of my many favorite things about it is the horror doesn’t rely on jump scares. It’s more psychological than anything else, but not quite as terrifying as Henry James say. There is still an air of romance in Hawthorne. I’ve always liked that about his stories, the whimsy and the magic. If you are a person who is starting to dip your toe into horror or gothic fiction, this is a wonderful place to start.

The Ghost Story: The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Speaking of James, let’s discuss one of the greatest ghost stories of all time. I read The Turn of the Screw for the first time in 2022 and I’ve never been quite the same since. It is one of the scariest things I’ve ever read, without question. It’s the best of everything because it satisfies me as a writer and a reader. From a stylistic perspective, it's probably one of the more accessible books in the James cannon. It’s approachable because it’s short and sweet. It gets straight to the point and it’s objective is to scare you. Originally published in a serial format in Collier’s Weekly, The Turn of the Screw was a critical and commercial success, and was praised for its ability to thrill and shock despite its relatively simple premise. It packs a serious punch for a book shorter than 150 pages. I could only read it during the daylight hours and frankly it makes me nervous to try and read again. The scenes by the lake are some of the most chilling scenes I’ve read maybe ever. I’d had to put it down at certain points because it felt too real. For all of his linguistic acrobatics and technical pyrotechnics, James cuts right to the chase in this story. It’s frankness only aids in its ability to shock. It should have taken me a day or so to get through it, but I simply could not stand to read it before bed or else I knew I never would have fallen asleep.

If you genuinely want to be scared by something, this is the book for you. It will stick with you long after you’ve read it and it will have you looking over your shoulder when you turn out the lights. It was one of those moments in my life when after I’ve turned out the lights in the hallway, I won’t step foot into the hallway until morning. There might be ghosts in there and I don’t want to disturb them. Such incredible power is contained in these pages and it is required reading for Spooky Season every year.

The Wild Card: The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
I have never read anything like The Only Harmless Great Thing. I still don’t really understand what it’s objective was or what was happening, but it definitely got me thinking. It’s about two things: sentient elephants, one of whom is killed publicly and the radium girls, all of whom died slow and painful deaths due to radiation poisoning. I bought it because the cover looked cool. I’ve talked before about how the phrase “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” is bullshit. Publishing companies spend millions and millions of dollars on graphic design hence that cover was meant for you to look at and decide whether or not you should spend your money on it. The cover design isn’t the only determining factor in why you should pick something up, but it is a factor nonetheless.

In the case of Bolander’s book, the cover was a huge deciding factor. It’s a deeply strange little book about animal rights, women’s rights, worker’s rights, among other things… I think. I still don’t even know what it was I read and I’m pretty sure the issue is I didn’t read it in one sitting. It’s less than 100 pages and so if you’re a quick reader, you could finish that in an afternoon. Maybe two if you’re busy with life and so forth. There is violence and blood and gore and cruelty towards animals at the hands of the villains in the story and it is really uncomfortable at some points. It’s not spooky in the traditional sense, but it will leave a mark.

Mysterious Spookiness: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
One of the great gothic horror novellas ever composed The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has one of my favorite final scenes in a short novel. Even though most people know the trick of the story, you still don’t see the final moments coming. The book opens with Mr. Utterson, a local lawyer, and some of his peers. They are having dinner and they are discussing a strange series of crimes that have taken place in London. I still don’t know exactly what it was that stole my heart, but it had something to do with the cobblestone streets and the gas-powered street lamps and the pitter patter of rain on the window in the middle of the night. There is such romance in the first few sections of this story, as there is throughout his work. It’s one of the only stories I reread every year. The smell of the rain and the wood in the room and the tension as it builds to a massive crescendo at the end… it’s one of my favorite stories ever. Like many, when I picked it up for the first time in high school, I kind of knew what the twist was but I didn’t know for sure. I knew it was about this doctor and a murder and the strange crimes that started happening in his neighborhood. Utterson and Jekyll are old friends and the lawyer steps in to try and figure what’s going on. Once I got to the last chapter where the trick is revealed, my jaw nearly fell on the floor.

Originally published as a small paperback in 1886, a person could pick up a copy for a schilling. Ainsworth’s Dick Taupin and the original version of Sweeney Todd were also published as these so-called “schilling shockers”—little 8 to 16 page volumes people could buy for a penny. It was a way for the general populous to enjoy reading during a time when reading was considered a luxurious hobby. Printing books was expensive and buying them of course was also expensive, and thus reserved for folks of a certain socioeconomic class. Penny dreadfuls and other small literary journals made reading more accessible to low income individuals, and many people who would have read Jekyll and Hyde when it was originally published had never read a work of fiction before. By 1901 it sold about 250,000 copies, an astonishing number in any period of history.

This is the story you read on the rainy day in the middle of the season. It’s getting cold, the weather’s getting crummy and the only thing you want is to be cozied up under a few blankets and immerse yourself in another world. Reading is a form of time travel after all.

Facts and Figures: A Very Short Introduction to Witchcraft by Malcolm Gaskill
The Very Short Introduction series can be a real hit or miss. Some of them are great, some of them are not. The good news is there’s a million of them and pretty much a volume for everyone. Of the few I’ve read, Malcolm Gaskill’s very short introduction to Witchcraft is easily one of my favorites and one of my most recommended. Malcolm Gaskill was a professor of history at the University of East Anglia where he became one of the foremost historians of witchcraft, spiritualism, magic, and the supernatural. Despite its length, Gaskill’s insights into what actually caused people to go bananas over supposed witches is incredibly illuminating. It’s a shame how folks have commercialized and commoditized the Witch Trials, particularly the one that occurred in Salem in the winter of 1692. Real people died, communities were destroyed and families were torn apart for no good reason, and Gaskill gets at the heart of what really went wrong.

Gaskill’s style is approachable and doesn’t assume too much of you as a reader. Sometimes I find it hard to read books written by academics or so-called “experts” because I can’t always tell who they’re writing the book for. Some books are too inside baseball so to speak or they assume you’ve already done a bit of homework before arriving at their work. Gaskill isn’t like that. Reading him feels like what I imagine studying in one his classes may have been like. I walked away from A Very Short Introduction: Witchcraft feeling like the writer was talking to me or with me as opposed to at me, above me or through me. If you’re curious to do some themed studying if you will, I can think of no better jumping off point than his wonderful, informative and (frankly) really fun books.

Something New: What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher
I was hesitant about this one when I first caught wind of this Edgar Allen Poe retelling only because The Fall of The House Of Usher is one of my favorite stories of all time and I don’t want anybody touching my favorite story. Then one night I was having dinner with a beloved and trusted friend who told me it was one of her favorite books of the last few months. And so of course I bought it one day and read it in nearly record time. It was, indeed, marvelous. What Moves The Dead tells the story of Alex Easton who arrives at the House of Usher to visit his old friend Roderick and his sister Madeline. Madeline is dying and no one knows exactly what is causing her disease. Over the course of the novel our hero learns a lot about mushrooms and fungus and weird rabbits and murky water and maybe going down to a crypt at night is not the best idea one ever had. I certainly wouldn’t recommend that. It’s weird and kind of gross and sort of funny in places. It felt like a really good brain rinse. I didn’t have to think too hard, but my brain was still active.

The Fall of The House Of Usher is probably on everyone’s list of favorite Poe short stories. The manifestations of grief and longing and yearning are so powerful it’s almost painful to read sometimes, and it was nice to read a Poe-inspired story minus some of the emotional exhaustion. Though it’s interesting because I love to feel emotionally exhausted by a story sometimes. It means I’ve given something to the narrative and have allowed myself to be made to feel something. That’s important. T. Kingfisher has continued Easton’s journey into a second book, What Feasts At Night, which I have yet to read but am excited to get to at some point.

This is the least scary pick of the litter here. It’s moody and atmospheric and dark but you could read this at night and be ok. It’s the book you pick up in between heavier things. The brain rinse if you will.

****************

And there we have it! A short, thrown together list of spooky, creepy things to read this season. Did a miss something? Kindly let me in the know in the comments here. Happy reading!

It has since only gotten worse thanks to the experience of reading Franzen’s latest. I didn’t want to do it. I really didn’t. Then I read a review in Slate Magazine and it said something to the effect of “it does everything great novels should do”. I am such a sucker for lines like that; whether I like it or not, I will always fall for a whimsical line about the beauty of sentences or the generosity of spirit contained within each character and so on. It was a beautiful review and it convinced me the book was worth my time and attention and, potentially, my money. I went to the library shortly thereafter to take out the book because I figured if I didn’t like it, I could simply return it and forget this idea ever came to me. And then I started to read it and I could feel it. I read the first couple pages while I was on lunch at my old job, and I could feel it happening. I don’t quite know the perfect way to describe what I felt, other than I felt like I was inside of the sentences somehow. The cold snowy midwestern neighborhood, a disgruntled minister stewing in his office—I was right there in it, and I knew it. I was done for. The problem though is I’ve been behind on my reading goal of 52 books this year, and Crossroads is 580 pages. The type is relatively small and, it goes without saying but, this book requires brainpower. A lot of it in some instances, and I worry sometimes about reading slowly. Normally, if I’m on my a-game, I can finish a book in around five to seven days depending on its length. A doorstopper like this one is intimidating to say the very least.

And yet, I decided to do it anyway because frankly I didn’t want to let these people go. After the first 50 pages or so, I already felt like I knew them. I could recognize myself and others in all of these characters and I felt I would be doing them (and myself) a disservice if I gave up on them. Turns out, despite it feeling rather daunting, I was really able to sink into this book and I’ve moving through it at a steady pace which makes me happy. However, it occurred to me recently that pace is a dumb thing to worry about when it comes to reading, especially when you’re reading something you feel challenged by. I’ve talked before about how not every book is going to be for you and that is ok. The thing I’ve learned is giving oneself some credit when credit is due is really important. You are a lot smarter than you think you are, and you are a lot smarter than some writers think you are **cough cough, clears throat**.

The other important thing I’m thinking about is that books are meant to savored. When you rush through something in order to say you finished it, it’s likely you missed important parts of the story. If you’ve really opened yourself up to a book, you should feel like you’re somewhere inside of it, you should feel like you know the characters, you should like you are in that place. Maybe you start to hear a voice in your head when a certain character is speaking. Reading should be an immersive experience. You should feel like all time and space have stood still so as to allow you to feel totally one with the work you’re engaged with. That is what makes art so great, and for whatever reason, Franzen and the Hildebrandt family (the family at the heart of Crossroads) have given me that feeling.

I don’t want it to end, I really don’t. I know I will miss these people and I will be wondering about them until I meet them again in the next volume of the trilogy (yes, it’s going to be a trilogy and yes, I cannot wait to read all of them). So the lesson here is pretty simple. By taking your time, you allow for a piece of writing to do its work on you. By allowing yourself to be open to what the book is trying to say, you will discover all kinds of things you never knew yourself. Cornell West said, “When you listen to music, you have to be willing to cry when you have no sense of where your tears are coming from.” That is true of reading too. It’s about what does it mean to be alive, what does it mean to be human.

Great art is a mirror and Franzen, whether I like it or not, has crafted a magnificent mirror.

Cohen seemed possessed in a way by the idea of following a spiritual path. So much of the music is about God, the idea of God, the relationship to and with spiritual power, and so on. “Avalanche” is menacing and its exploration of what salvation may look like is paranoia inducing. In some ways he’s right to make “being saved” look and sound ugly because spiritual healing is often a painful and ugly process. The narrator in the song is speaking directly to the listener, and it’s interesting to call the speaking voice God as opposed to actually giving it a name. Once I started to consider what it would mean to be challenged as a listener in this way, to think about what kind of God would say things like, “Do not dress in those rags for me… It is your turn beloved, it is your flesh that I wear.” Indeed what sort of God would say something like that? Not a kind God. Cohen’s God as presented in “Avalanche” is daunting and demanding, something one might be afraid of. What would happen if one were to upset this God? The more I think about it the more I’m thinking about people like Samuel Parris and John Hale, two prominent ministers during the Witch Trails in Salem. Something about how paranoid they were, how profoundly disturbed they were by these episodes of inexplicable behavior on the part of these women. Fear, power, omniscience—the line connecting the trials and a song by Leonard Cohen isn’t stick straight, but it’s a line nonetheless.

What’s most striking about “Avalanche” is how unrelenting it is. It’s a paralyzing piece of narrative art (forgive me for being lofty for a second). When I was in college I used to work part time at a radio station as a production assistant. My shift started at five o’clock and lasted until around 10 p.m. three days week. It was brutal. The commute was about 90 minutes on public transit. I remember putting this song on one night on the train. I was the only one in the car and it was dark and cold and it smelled like dead fish. The tickling of the nylon guitar strings, the almost threatening string arrangement underneath Cohen’s nasally delivery haunted me. I really felt like someone from some unseen corner of the universe was watching me. Some Mr. Hyde adjacent creature lurking in the shadows.

It was exhilarating. To encounter a piece of art so visceral and so deceptively simple is an astonishing and unforgettable experience. I was never the same and from that night on I was hooked. He got me, or I started to get him… or both.

“Joan of Arc”
I love this song. As a listener I’m soothed by his voice and his gentleness and as a writer I am in awe of this lyric.

Tucked away on the second side of Songs of Love And Hate, “Joan of Arc” is a fascinating study in personification. It’s written as a dialogue between Joan and the flame consuming her as she burns at the stake. Sharon Robinson, who sang back up with Cohen and cowrote a couple of tunes with him, said spiritual enlightenment was his “primary occupation”, and in his exploration of Joan of Arc, the seeker and the beloved become one physically. What struck me the most about the lyric is how relaxed the tone of voice is. It’s almost as if the voice of the flame is welcoming her, it’s been waiting in some strange way. It presents her fate as inevitable. There’s something melancholy in there but it’s also tender and warm, inviting. By presenting the spectacle of her execution as a wedding between her and Christ, the listener is encouraged to exercise compassion. As opposed to feeling angry or horrified about her being arrested and killed by the state, the listener is invited to change their perspective—or at the very least consider a different perspective—and wonder whether or not she found peace.

In eight stanzas Cohen makes space for two completely separate points of view without forcing you to choose between which you think is right or wrong. Anyone who tells you Cohen wasn’t provocative or subversive doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Far too often Cohen’s music is referred to as boring or depressing, and he can be depressing sure. However, he is anything but boring. His songs, especially the earlier work, require a lot of brain power. One must actually listen to the words if one wishes to appreciate Cohen as a writer, as a poet, as an artist in his fullness. “Joan of Arc” is one of the finest examples of his fearlessness as a writer. As a writer myself I sometimes hear the words before I hear anything else going on in a piece of music. Often it takes me a while to hear little things the musicians are doing because I’m trying to hear whatever the singer is saying. Language matters and few people have had such command and power over the use of language as Cohen.

“Hallelujah”
I hesitated to put this song on the list because it’s the one almost everyone living and breathing on earth knows. I don’t think I know anyone who doesn’t know “Hallelujah” or has at least heard it somewhere at some time. It is so ubiquitous in the culture you almost forget it came from somewhere. It just exists in space and time and humans have just accepted it as a fact of nature. Something happens though when you learn the story of “Hallelujah”. It was written and rewritten over 100 times. At one point Cohen claimed to have around 150 drafts of it. It landed on an album that Columbia Records rejected after it was recorded and by the time it came out, it went largely unnoticed by the listening public. There’s something ironic about all this, a sad kind of irony. A devotional song, a song about throwing oneself in front whatever God you believe in, goes unnoticed and unheard. Whenever I hear “Hallelujah”, whether it’s the original or Jeff Buckley or Rufus Wainwright or John Cale or anybody else’s take for that matter, all I hear is a singer on their knees. It’s about as close to a hymn as ever a piece of popular music has yet to come.

It’s about surrender. Cohen once talked about how Hallelujah was a way to embrace the mess of life, the good and the bad and the ugly all at once. Hallelujah! Here it all is. Here it all is and there’s nothing any one of us can do about it. The only thing we have the power to do is surrender, throw our hands up and let go. It’s a painful song. It’s not easy to listen to and it’s not something I can listen to all the time because to fully allow God (God as in the thing we cannot explain) into your life, you have to be willing to relinquish control over your mind and your thought patterns. You have to be willing to let it all go, to release it all into the universe. It can be unimaginably difficult to do that, especially when times are hard for one reason or another. But that is exactly why songs like “Hallelujah” matter, and it is also why the idiot suits at Columbia Records who threw the album in the can can eat it.

If you need it to a song like “Hallelujah” will save your life. Business weasels will never understand, and it’s a shame. He was devastated after this, who wouldn’t be. And yet! Like all great art, it founds its way. Thank God it found its way. If I had to guess, Cohen wouldn’t have wanted to be referred to as a guru like figure. I don’t think he would want to refer to him as a Great Teacher, and yet I feel as though he would have been touched at the very least to know some listeners out there have leaned on “Hallelujah”; and allowed it to be there for them. I want to believe every artist worth their salt would be moved to know their work has been relied upon. I know I would be.

“You Want it Darker”
There is something about the later work that is inexplicable to me. There is something almost corporeal about the last few albums he made. Being trapped in a body or being aware of being inside a body, such a fascinating thing to think about. 2016’s You Want It Darker was recorded in the living room at his home just outside Los Angeles. He was beginning to feel the effects of life on the road and experienced multiple fractures in his spine among other ailments shortly before beginning work on this record. It’s the final hurrah, Pitchfork called it his “last testament, the informed conclusion of a lifetime of inquiry.” It sees Cohen looking back on his life, on his faith and, like much of his best work, it doesn’t offer easy answers to life’s biggest questions. Nor should it.

The closeness of his voice always hits me the hardest. You can hear that his mouth was almost touching the microphone, or at least it sounds as if that’s true. It’s almost as if he’s in your ear whispering each phrase through gritted teeth like he needs you to get the picture. Cohen died on November 7th of that year, just a couple months shy of the song’s release and so it was a King Lear moment if ever he had one. The last big fight. It was beautiful. His voice is frail, smokey, almost tired sounding. Every crack, every breath sounded like it took effort. It’s not easy listening, in fact it’s quite difficult to hear. There is, however, a gentleness in his delivery that I’ve always appreciated. His softspoken-ness has always endeared him to me. Despite his complexity, it always warmed my heart to hear the humility and self-deprecating humor in his voice. “You Want it Darker” is one of those rare moments in an artist’s career where they get to make one last stand, one final cry. It’s a remarkable thing and, when my time comes, I can only hope to have an awareness that I have said everything I have come here to say.

“Light as the Breeze”
I was having a conversation with some friends recently about Leonard Cohen’s poetry. One of the things we talked about were his love poems and how sensual and seductive they are, and how surprising that is to a lot of people. Cohen wrote about romantic longing in a way that made it feel holy. Now, for the unenlightened among us, Cohen was indeed one of the finest romantic poets of his generation, perhaps ever. His poetry about sex stands right up next to some of the great erotic poetry every composed. Of course I’m talking about e.e. cummings, Audre Lorde and Sharon Olds among many others. Cohen also explored sex and desire and passion in many of his songs over the course of his career. One of my personal favorites is “Light as the Breeze”. The lyrics read like a scene out of my favorite books by Henry Miller or John Updike. They make me feel the same way at the very least.

The performance of sex, the act itself, they are characters in the story in a way. Sex is a manifestation of desire, not just something that happens. It’s one of the reasons it’s sometimes difficult for me to read a romance novel. In a romance novel it’s always felt like the sex between the characters is just a thing happening between them or around them. In books like Couples (Updike) or The Tropic of Cancer (Miller), the sexuality is an extension of something happening within the character. I’m not a literary critic or theorist, but as a reader that’s always how it appeared to me, and it shook up the gum-ball machine in terms of how I thought about sex in relationships. I’m going to be blunt and say “Light as the Breeze” is written by a man who knows what he’s doing. And that is true for most of the writers I mentioned. They wrote about what they knew, what they know and they all have an acute sense of how physical intimacy informs the process of art making. This narrator understands that pleasure is something given to another person, not just received or taken, but given and shared between two people.

Until I did some reading on him and really dug into these songs, I had no idea how much a savant he was, and how much this complicated his reputation. Understanding this side of Cohen is key in understanding who he was both as a person and a musician.

But I’ll be damned… he could write a love poem… could he ever…

Music (albums and collections only)
- Ethnic Folkways Library (specifically Folk Music of Palestine, Music of Afghanistan, Folk Music of France and Folk Music of India)
- “Troubadour” by Dorothy Carter (1975)
- “A Night At The Village Vanguard” by Sonny Rollins (1998)
- “Fox Confessor Brings The Flood” by Neko Case (2006)
- “After Hours At The London House” by Sarah Vaughn (1958)
- “Harbor Song” by Communicant (2024)
- “The Soothsayer” by Wayne Shorter (1979)
- “Blackheart Man” by Bunny Wailer (1975)
- “Five Leaves Left” by Nick Drake (1969)
- “Ghana Special: Modern Highlife, Afro Sounds & Ghanaian Blues 1968-81” by Various Artists

Books (various)
- Awake by Harald Voetmann
- The Book of Love (trans. by Coleman Barks) by Rumi
- The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on The Divine edited by Kaveh Akbar
- Couplets by Maggie Millner
- The Wasteland and Other Poems by T.S. Eliot
- The Story of Layla and Majnun by Nizami
- Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates
- Stag’s Leap by Sharon Olds

Misc.
- park benches w/ hot coffee
- walks around the neighborhood
- afternoons at the library
- meditating every morning
- take yourself out for a date
- road trips
- live music always
- spending time with friends
- embracing who you are
- being all of who you are all of the time and releasing all shame around that

“Aww, that puppy is so cute.”

“What kind of dog is that?”

“Does anyone live there?”

“How much is that house going for?”

“I had no idea there was a cafe right there. Maybe I’ll try it some time?”

“That person doesn’t know where they’re going.”

“Are those two people really going to make out on the corner?”

“They’re cute though. Good for them.”

“The may not have eyes, but they certainly are not nice.”

“Running down a hill invariably means you have to run back up the hill. Fuck that.”

“Thanks for the high five!”

“White Mountain creamery has really been there since the 80s? Wow.”

“Move in season. Here they come.”

“Should I go this way or that way?”

“Does this thing have a map?”

“I’m gonna run into town and just take the train home.”

“It’s so fucking hot out goddamn it.”

“Excuse me!”

“On the right! Thank you!”

“I wish people would get off their phones.”

“That window looks nice.”

“What’s that person reading?”

“These copper compression sleeves for my knees are pretty great.”

“I really like my new sneakers.”

“Therapy would be so much cheaper.”

“Nice effort. Keep going. You’re almost there.”

“It’s ok to slow down, just keep moving.”

“I love when people walk their cats.”

“I wonder if that restaurant is any good.”

“How much longer?”

“Why do I do this to myself?”

“This shit sucks.”

“What am I doing?”

“One foot in front of the other.”

“You did it. Well done.”

“Way to work. Really really proud of you.”

“That’s what it’s about.”

“Go rest. You earned it.”