Some men can turn waiting into a full identity. They are beings-in-suspension. They are waiting for the transfer, the call, the woman, the apology, the promotion, the revelation, the clean beginning, the better self that is supposedly on its way and will, any day now, assume control of the situation. Until then, they endure. They…
Sturgill Simpson has never seemed especially interested in making things easy for anyone. Not for Nashville or country radio. Not for fans who wanted him to keep making the same record. Not even for people who wanted a clean narrative about what kind of artist he was supposed to be. That is part of what…
James Baldwin is a writer who’s hard to get a full handle on because he refused to stay in one role long enough to make the job easy. Call him a novelist and you miss the essayist who could take apart America sentence by sentence until the whole national performance started shaking. Call him an…
I started thinking about Icarus because the myth is almost suspiciously easy to summarize. A boy flies too close to the sun. The wax melts. He falls. Lesson learned: don’t get cocky. That version is memorable and probably useful if you are trying to keep somebody from doing something obviously disastrous. But like most myths…
So maybe you’ve never heard of post-punk or don’t really know exactly what it is. Great. This is going to be fun. Because post-punk is one of those genres that sounds like a door getting kicked open and then, instead of everyone running through in one loud straight line, a bunch of weird, smart, restless…
Iris Murdoch has a funny habit of making novels look lighter than they are. At first, you get the pleasures. The odd houses. The romantic confusion. The clever people making terrible emotional decisions with complete confidence. Someone is chasing the wrong person. Someone is philosophizing when they should really be apologizing. Someone is trying to…
Gorillaz are one of the few big pop projects that still sound like they should not have worked at all. A cartoon band with Damon Albarn hiding inside an animated universe. Records built out of guest verses, rap cameos, sad synths, punk energy, old soul, cheap electronics, high-concept visuals, and a permanent feeling that the…
There is a very specific kind of summer afternoon that deserves better than random shuffle. You know the one. A book open in your lap. A drink that used to be cold. A patch of sun that has slowly migrated from pleasant to mildly aggressive. Maybe a fan somewhere. Maybe an open window. Maybe the…
I am not a classical music expert. That feels important to say right away, because classical music can trigger a certain kind of tone. Suddenly everyone’s speaking in very careful paragraphs about sonata form, motivic development, historically informed performance, and whether some conductor in 1978 took a repeat you apparently now need strong feelings about….
Hungarian literature has a reputation for intensity, and honestly, it has earned it. This is a literature full of people carrying around old wounds like treasured heirlooms. Guilt. Desire. Betrayal. Private fantasy. Political dread. A memory polished so obsessively it starts cutting deeper than the original event. Even when nothing much seems to be happening…