When Death Comes

A few recommendations & a liturgy on storytelling

For those of you who’ve been subscribed to this newsletter for a while, you may remember a brief interruption in my months-long silence this January. (For whatever reason, the New Year is a particularly prolific time for me.) Anyway, I keep revisiting that piece, not because it’s particularly mind-blowing or special, but because of the Mary Oliver poem that inspired it:

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement.”

This quote in particular changed the way I think about the media I spend my time with, and how I consume it. The essay was a sort of public New Years resolution to more mindfully engage with the art around me, and I’ve had varying levels of success implementing the intention. I’m trying not to turn “engage mindfully with media” into a to-do list item or an impossible standard I can punish myself with, but to keep it nearby as a question to ask.

At the end of the essay, I listed the books, films, and albums that had “amazed” me in the year prior. I remember being very aware of what my choices said about me, whether they solidified me as someone with good taste or lumped me in with the never-ending carousel of people with blasé, innocuous recommendations on TikTok. It was weirdly vulnerable to take ownership of the things I loved so publicly (in front of all ten of you!)— or at least it felt scary to do.

Eight months later, though, I find myself wanting to add to this digital diary, to create a record of my amazement— if not for you, then for future me. I’m not going to hold myself to a schedule or anything, but I can commit to sharing the things I’ve loved lately on a semi-regular basis.

So, here goes. I hope you give a couple of these recommendations a chance, and I would love to hear yours, too!

1. “Mom, I am trying to look for myself and keep finding you.” I feel so incredibly lucky that ari b. cofer 🌿 & I crossed paths at Baylor, and I recently finished reading their second poetry collection, Unfold. This quote is from “sunday phone call, reimagined”, which I have been sending indiscriminately around my friend group as an affectionate act of emotional terrorism. Ari’s poems are raw, honest, and so resonant. They will find the most vulnerable parts of you and hold them with kindness.

2. “You are the voice you’re waiting for.” I hadn’t heard of Pump Up the Volume until Criterion put it on their ‘90s Soundtrack Movies list. I saw Christian Slater and a teens vs. school administrators plot and was immediately in. It’s funny and ridiculous and surprisingly deep— Plus, there are a lot of fantastic songs featured here, including Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” and “Wave of Mutilation” of The Pixies fame. I highly recommend Pump Up the Volume if you’ve ever wished that Radio Rebel and Heathers had a lovechild. (And if you have, DM me, because what?)

He’s so me… talking to himself in his dark room

3. “A story is a lifeboat, sometimes thеre is land.” If you know me, you’ve probably heard me talk about Eliza McLamb’s songwriting. She’s a master of balancing profundity and simplicity— I feel like I understand her completely upon first listen and, at the same time, can come back time and time again to unravel new meanings in her poetry. “Every Year” is from her forthcoming second album.

4. A habit I’ve picked up this year is junk journaling. (Shoutout to Morgan for hosting junk journaling night and getting me addicted.) It’s a great way to keep my hands busy while I’m watching a movie or listening to a podcast, and we have a steadily-growing stack of D Magazines to cut up. Here are the pages I did following the poetry retreat I recently went on, complete with a poetry prompt about shoes, some fortunes I’ve been hoarding, a receipt for my most recent 5 star read, and a note from Jeremy:

5. “I push myself under the surface of Margery's story, holding my breath for a happy ending to my own.” I picked up Robert Glück’s Margery Kempe because rayne fisher-quann plugged it in her reading list and I was... conflicted. This fictional retelling of the real-life medieval mystic blends autobiography and fiction and absurdity and shock factor. (Spoiler alert: Margery Kempe has a sexual relationship with the Jesus Christ and things are explicit by page 15. You’ve been warned.) But every time it got a little too weird and I wanted to put it down, Glück dropped some nugget of wisdom that kept me coming back for more.

A Liturgy for Storytellers

I tell the airwaves the story of us. My version of it.

A nonexistent audience is a captive one—

there is no fact checking in this barren wasteland.

I give the empty page an impression of me. A flattering one.

This is my domain, the narrative is mine to spin,

a power-drunk monarch with life and death in her fingers.

I see us in movies, I hear us in songs, I force us into stranger’s conversations.

I twist the ending into something good:

A ritual plugging of plot holes,

an exercise in manufacturing closure.

The story I tell isn’t true or false, it just is.

Who will tell it, if not me?

Who will hear it, if not me?