Deep Cuts

A conviction that after this experience, divinity will never come from above. Not for her. Only earthly bodies, pressed so close they’re sharing heartbeats, could ever be divine.

He was a complicated shadow on her life too, a heartless waste of precious time.

It had taken a decade-old record to help us figure out what we wanted, and what we wanted was fun—real fun, which requires freedom, and belonging, and affordable housing, and peace from wartime.

I’d responded by accusing him of being “all breadth, no depth,” a view I still held: music was a collector’s habit to those guys, a sprawl of knowledge more than a well of joy.

I was erupting, like this gigantic, ridiculous volcano of emotion. I needed music that matched it.

Ska was the fun side of punk, the reverse image of grunge, and of course MTV chewed it up until it was a big shiny wad of flavorless gum on the underside of a picnic table, but let us not forget the fresh stick it once was.

People use music to get clarity on themselves.