Fly Sweet Pelican

i've started journaling

Hi everyone,

Right now, I am sitting in the dark listening to the new album by The Cure and I’m really obsessed with how the drums sound. This past week I’ve watched a lot of Charles Bronson movies, particularly engrossed by the quality that some contemporaneous critics refer to as “underacting.” I watched one called The White Buffalo and loved seeing him have these vivid nightmares about hunting a buffalo then waking up blasting his pistols all over the room and then going about his day all stoic and haunted and nonchalant. That’s how it is sometimes.

I also want to tell you all I started keeping a journal! Although I refer to myself as a “writer” mostly unselfconsciously now, the amount of writing I’ve done by hand the past 10 years is pretty slim. I immediately noticed its effect, the different thoughts bubbling to the surface. Here’s an example of one of those thoughts, and it’s about “happiness.” For a long time I imagined happiness like an apple—a whole entire thing that you either have or don’t, that you find or lose or crave. Only recently did I start seeing it more like a salad—a big conglomerate of lots of things, none of which is integral to its nature. This realization felt profound upon journaling so I recited it to my therapist, and she responded by noting that my salad metaphor was missing an important component—the bowl!

This has been a major concern for me. In general I’m constantly looking for order (true Virgo!), and it’s probably what led me to writing criticism and also writing songs—practices that are meant to provide abstract things like feelings and responses to art with direct language and arguments and beginnings, middles, and ends. I love this type of structure, and I’ve come to really crave it. Maybe too much? Can I find a container for my happiness salad that doesn’t feel overly confining but still complete?

Here is where I think of lessons I’ve learned from my friend Winston and the tremendous record he just put out, which is called Enough. Over the past 5 years or so, there’s been nobody whose creative process I’ve observed more closely (those of you lucky enough to have podcast co-hosts will understand this type of bond…) and as he was making this very dynamic, very collaborative 16-song record, I have to admit there were times when I didn’t see where he was going with it. I think of long car rides where he’d play me new stuff and I’d hear strange samples and loops and discordant melodies and lyrics I could barely make out, songs that felt in entirely different worlds from each other.

But then when I heard the whole record, it hit me. Hard! The mood was so singular, the vision so intense, the scope so boundless. Not only did it capture the feeling of those listening sessions and long conversations with Winston, but I also heard the presence of our larger friend group and community—both because so many of us are featured on the record and because the sprawl of the record, its resistance to form, couldn’t help but become a time capsule for the rooms where it was made, the people who inhabited them. It was then that I realized that putting a clean container on things doesn’t just package all our feelings and emotions... It quarantines them from the world! When I listen to Winston’s record, I hear something akin to real life, which feels like magic to me.

I wrote a song with Winston for his record, and I’m really proud of it. I contributed some quotes about the process for this very in-depth feature for PopMatters, but I’ll reprint some of the story here. Last year, Winston asked me to write some words for his new record, and it took me a while to think of anything that felt right. I sent him a whole song I had written, and he said (accurately) it felt more like a Bird Calls song so I kept it for myself (it ended up being “Faith People” on Old Faithful). Then I was at his place one day, and he played me some instrumentals, and one stood out to me. I came home and wrote words for the first half and he dug it, so I kept writing words for the second half. Then he added all the cool stuff that makes it sound so epic and pretty. I was definitely inspired by The Blue Nile, a major presence at the center of our taste Venn Diagram, and then when we were adding final touches together, I kept thinking of Zooropa by U2. I don’t know if it sounds like these bands, but it feels special and exciting to me. I hope you enjoy it!

In the time since my last newsletter, I’ve published three pieces of music criticism that seem somewhat related: a Sunday Review of The Silver Jews’ Natural Bridge for Pitchfork, a profile of The Hard Quartet for GQ, and a review of MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks for Hearing Things. Also I just learned that some selections from a series of interviews I did with Bright Eyes this spring will be shared on the band’s social media over the coming weeks. 

Work is slowing for the year 2024, and it feels good to welcome a clean slate. Soon I’ll have some news to share about a brand new Bird Calls album arriving in early 2025 that I’m just giddy about. Consciously or not, I feel like it does a good job of incorporating all my new feelings about order and orderlessness, true narratives forming after you stop searching for them. Plus it has some sick guitar playing. In the meantime, I have one single show booked for the rest of the year, on November 13, at Heaven Can Wait in Manhattan. You can buy tickets here.  I’ll be debuting lots of new stuff and I am eager to see how it feels. Remember when I was playing all those shows all the time earlier this year? What was going on there? Will I do it again?

I don’t know,

Sammy