I am in the weeds on a writing project now. (I would like to expand on this in the future, but working with your SO on a project? Brilliant and crazy. I’m really enjoying it, though. It is rooted in comic books so his Whedon-y nerdiness balances out my desire for a buildingsroman.)

I find when I am trying to get into one particular mind-set, that’s when a certain band’s music on repeat can help. In this case, it’s Shearwater; a band who makes beautiful music fronted by a beautiful man (that beatific blonde, ex-Okkervil Riverer Jonathan Meiburg) with drumming by THOR.

I suppose Shearwater sound like Talk Talk, but I don’t listen to Talk Talk. What they do sound like to me, with their songs about birdies and the environment and a vague encroaching evil and threat, is nothing more than a boy’s guide, perhaps, to Kate Bush ethereality? Although Bush sounded like she sang about sex, kind of, and this band just doesn’t. It’s a field of noise and then you hear Meiburg trilling “it was a FUCKING distaster!” They’re a very beautiful band, melodramatic in points, and overall a little bloodless? So I always feel a little silly when I listen to them. It’s why I like punk bands better, songs about sex, short Jewish guys instead of angelic blondes (who, it should be noted, I tend to get silly crushes on even though they’re not my “type”).

A life rooted in the mundane.