Music and literature often circle the same ideas. Artists in different mediums explore similar themes—memory, alienation, dreams, identity—sometimes without ever meeting.
The Shared Obsessions series looks at unexpected connections between writers and musicians. A novelist and a band might share a fascination with surreal imagery. A songwriter and a poet might approach the same emotional landscape from different angles.
These essays place works from music and literature side by side to see how their ideas echo across mediums. The goal isn’t to prove direct influence but to explore the creative parallels that emerge when artists wrestle with similar questions.
Sometimes the results feel surprisingly natural, as if two distant voices were part of the same conversation all along.
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Leonard Cohen and Anna Akhmatova: Love and Loss
Capitalism and Collapse: George Saunders & Father John Misty
Modern Life Is Making Us Weird: Don DeLillo, Talking Heads, and Consumer Surrealism
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Too Young to Be This Tired: S.E. Hinton, The Replacements, and the Art of Youthful Burnout
Teenage alienation is easy to romanticize after the fact. The cigarettes look better in memory. So do the leather jackets, messy bedrooms, loud guitars, dumb fights, desperate friendships,… Continue Reading
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Cold Rooms and Severe Beauty: The Icy Worlds of Fleur Jaeggy and Nico
Some artists make the first move. They give you a melody to hold onto, a character who tells you what she wants, or an emotion that arrives with… Continue Reading
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Men Waiting Badly: Antonio di Benedetto, Bill Callahan, and the Comedy of Masculine Drift
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,… Continue Reading
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The Room You Can’t Leave: Infinite Jest, The Weeknd, and the Trap of Desire
The scariest pleasures are not the ones that get old quickly. Those are easy. They disappoint you or make you feel bad fast enough that your self-respect has… Continue Reading
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Modern Life Is Making Us Weird: Don DeLillo, Talking Heads, and Consumer Surrealism
There is a kind of modern weirdness that can look like a supermarket aisle so overstocked it starts to feel theological under the fluorescent lights. Or maybe like… Continue Reading
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Dreams and Nightmares: Franz Kafka & Radiohead
There’s a particular kind of dread that doesn’t announce itself. It’s the feeling of waking up and realizing the world is operating by rules you were never given.… Continue Reading