rock the void

there are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered ones

I accidentally took the entire month off writing anything here, so let me see if I can bring you up to speed somewhat. I finished tour, flew over to Vienna from Montreal where six hours into the eight and a half hour flight (said six of which I spent fastidiously catching up on sleep that I was robbed of on my last night, spent post Montreal Jazz Festival concert nursing a solitary bloody mary on some rooftop with Fivel is Glaque after we managed to link up for a second time on our what some people have been calling an eerily conjoined tour), anyway, said six hours into this flight, stay with me now, I wake up, turn to the man to my left, who I would quickly come to find doesn’t speak a lick of English, French or German, proffered me his Nicorette gum which I willingly accepted (it was my first time eating it and yikes), therefore the remainder of the flight (two and a half hours) I was invariably wired, finally polishing off Cookie Mueller’s Walking Through Clear Water In a Pool Painted Black. My beloved English teacher, on the back of who’s motorcycle I used to ride, would have chastised me for the length of that previous sentence, and potentially also this one, but it doesn’t matter, this is my Substack and I’ll cry if I want to.

I began writing this from Paris where I was for a week and some change, where I spent a lot of time feeling very Zooey Glass, cigarette balancing precipitously on the edge of the bathtub, anything evocative I say lost on most of who is on the receiving end of whatever I am doling out, manuscript wet, fingers pruned from being submerged in the water for far too long. Mouth pallid and tragic, wrists small; insolent. Loved seeing my friends whom I always miss dearly, shot a music video, spent some time in the Palais Royal gardens, on uncharacteristically windy for July days, talking to Jay Alansky (who had reached out to me after I covered the song he wrote for Lio, Sage Comme Une Image), and we discussed the notion of being understood. The haunting conviction that I won’t be grasped, and never fully will be, has never been more prevalent, and the thought of that frightens me to an (sorry but quickly must paraphrase Alex Turner’s rumored love letter) “unfamiliar degree”.

Finally managing to finish this, however, esconced in the comfort of a rickety bamboo chair on the pavilion in the Alps, overlooking the largest freestanding mountain in the whole Alpine range, newly returned from the swimming pool in the forest, hair wet and stuck to the nape of my neck, Vogue freshly lit, cicadas relentless, the brook leading into the river Enns babbling as brooks are wont to do, sockless, one black Serafino Mancinelli deerskin loafer on, the other dangling, heel subject to being mosquito bitten. I escaped Vienna after two weeks, the prettiest city in the world yet if I stay too long I feel as though I am being entombed alive in a gilded sarcophagus— my apartment, where I seem to have lain myself to rest with all my worldly possessions. I’m knee-high in the scalding water that is my fourth album, occupied with all sorts of frivolous questions such as: do I even exist outside the pastures of the cognoscenti? I find myself raking in the charity chips like a croupier— enough to sustain my life yet forever aware that I could collapse both before and if the ordinary public were to ever read and reward me. I’m feeling sentimental, partially because of the necessary emotional accouchement required of me to finish this record, and also in part because my birthday is coming up, which, much like my age, has been rendered useless, since despite feeling so seasoned sometimes it appears I remain at heart (and to some extent physically) vulnerably young, as though youth were a chemical solution in which I find myself permanently incarcerated (it’s because I’m so pure and my disposition’s so goddamn sunny, okay?)

Stopping this drivel, because this probably isn’t what you’re here for. What has been going on professionally? For everyone not at the absolute uttermost edge of their seats about my internal battle (this whole entry was really giving honey we have Karl Ove Knausgaard/Anais Nin hellscape at home, fuck) I have had a single come out with Rebounder, “Tennis Bracelet”, and a new song called “AUTO” forthcoming on August 27th, the music video edit of which I am currently taking a break from to finish writing this.

What have I been reading? Tom Crewe’s The Fete published in the current issue of my favorite literary journal was the most devastating array of words I’ve read in a very long time (and that’s saying a lot given the book mentioned earlier that I enjoyed an inexplicable amount), I just want one person in my life that’s read both that and J.D. Salinger’s Teddy, but I suppose that is far too vast of an ask. Answered Prayers by Truman Capote (also brilliant, haunting, and you will find I have generously borrowed from if you’ve read both this entry and that book), and then on the train to the alps I just finished the French to English translation of A Woman’s Despair by Jay Alansky.

Spending more and more time around the theme of my new album realizing I do it to myself, I do, and that’s what really hurts (Thom Yorke singing “Just” by Radiohead voice), but really that’s all it’s ever boiled down to, and truthfully I fear I better very quickly come to terms with that. Sometimes I feel like I’m doing everything wrong, sometimes I feel like I’m doing everything right, but the truth is perennially more insipid and prosaic than that, fucking listless at best — some far more tepid middle ground that I too will choose to imbue with the utmost importance. For it should precisely be triviality that one should oblige to, and that I find myself consistently inspired by when seeing others do the same, like Josef Dabernig’s Rock the Void (mumok 2014), Ryan Trecartin & Lizzie Fitch Whether Line (Fondazione Prada 2019), Alex Da Corte’s Slow Graffiti (Secession 2017).

This was a mess of an entry, but to quote Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems, “if some aficionado of my mess says, ‘that’s not like you’ the better”.

PS. “Europe” tour (mostly Germany) is coming up soon, are you coming?