September 10 2025
Thank you to anyone who pays for this newsletter. The funds keep me going and any decent newsletter outside the fascist clouds of Substack is a strike...
June 6 2025
Is death the weather? Or just the music in Whole Foods? When I wrote about THING Magazine for the Baffler, I discovered that all three founders have died:...
Joshua Clover (1962-2025)
The poet Michael Robbins emailed me on the night of April 27 to tell me Joshua Clover had died. I could tell you that I sobbed, immediately and hard and...
February 6 2025
In 1985, Andrei Tarkovsky was sick—very sick. Still, he went ahead and made his final film, The Sacrifice. In one of his films. Chris Marker says we should...
writing about 2024
Mary Turfah: Have somewhat embarrassingly kept a diary since high school. I was flipping through this year and a lot of my entries start with some iteration...
October 18 2024
An avowedly romantic (in either sense) take on existence is Gorecki’s Third Symphony. That linked YouTube rip features soprano Dawn Upshaw, though all the...
October 2 2024
Grief on behalf of others begs a few questions. If we are trying to imagine the pain of people we don’t know, what do we think joins us? Are we imagining a...
July 23 2024
Let’s ease back into our time together with Simisea’s “Cotorra,” a rowdy green rumbler released in 2020. Or go long with the Pop Not Slop playlist, compiled...
May 29 2024
We are up to 174 encampments globally. I recommend this “Baroque World-Jazz” mix from Dan Letson and a dhrupad performance by the Dagar Brothers, Berlin...
Jen + The Freedom Flotilla
Jen is front row, dark hair, glasses, red hands Sasha Frere-Jones: Where are you right now? Where do you live? Jennifer: I’m in Astoria. SFJ: Should we say...
April 5 2024
After the cop opened the gate and gave us Raisin Bran, he stopped. He'd given us twenty-two cereal onesies and eighteen paper cups of water. (I had time to...
March 11 2024
don't know if this worked Constance Debré in Frieze, speaking about her phenomenal book, Love Me Tender. "The fact that there is nothing psychological in the...
March 7 2024
sink right in I prayed for the first time in ages. It worked, which reminded me that it almost always does. Prayer is one of the daily practices I have...
February 4 2024
at Hedi's house in LA When we meet Andre 3000, he and Heidi bond over being Geminis. "We're crazy," he says. He is sitting on a couch on the second floor of...
February 1 2024
I could not be happier to be back. There is so much to tell you and yet nothing to say. I recommend Justin Duke and Buttondown without reservation. Before I...
writing about 2023
reflections on 2023
December 25 2024
gifts gifts gifts and no thinking (the biggest gift of all)
December 23 2023
gratitude for 2023 and the preceding twenty years
December 8 2023
Deaths, despair, individuals, groups, and the four Bs: Beyoncé, Berger, Baldwin, and Basquiat
November 3 2023
music + not music