Hey,
Born in the USA is on repeat.
I genuinely think it’s a perfect record. This is a biased opinion since I was raised listening to Springsteen and one of the first albums I remember knowing all the words to is Working on a Dream. But my opinion it remains. It is an album notably not about patriotism, by the way. Instead, it’s a lament about having pride in your community, in its people and their flaws, while the people at the top do their best to take advantage of all of you. Just saying.
“I’m On Fire” into “No Surrender” into “Bobby Jean” has got to be one of the most romantic, devastating lineups out there. The heavy, cloying wanting of i’ve got a bad desire and sometimes it’s like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull / and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull into an explosion of youth and a different kind of deep longing with you say you’re tired and you just want to close your eyes / and follow your dreams down and i’m ready to grow young again. And then rounding it out with i wished i would have known, i wished i could have called you and and I'm just calling one last time, not to change your mind / but just to say I miss you baby /good luck, goodbye, Bobby Jean.
I don’t know how else to say it, man. It’s a perfect album.
Anyway. I went to a record store a few weeks ago and found a pressing with this label on it.
It really does echo through the halls of my mind every goddamn day. And my apartment, I guess. And the empty night from the open windows of my car on the rare occasion I’m driving around the city. Playing a perfect album on a summer night drive is one of life’s true pleasures.
Not much has changed for me in the months since my last letter (five, if you’ve been counting). It was cold until it wasn’t. Friends came to visit and we drank and ate and laughed. I spent many mornings by the lake and read less than I wanted to and watched more TV than I care to admit. I went to baseball games and traveled (New Mexico, New York City, Boston). I turned 27. I got my first massage. I did not write.
I started Night Moves last July. Writing is something I love doing and in my wildest dreams my work is something other people love reading, but everything in between those two points is murky and difficult and I’m lost in it. My routine — if you can call it that — is jagged. While I love how it makes me feel, writing is a rare beast for me these days. I do not often have something to say all on my own. I have to read something or watch something or hear something that wakes me up. The words float around my mind like dandelion seeds, or a cloud of butterflies, or fog fresh off the lake. Or, honestly, like pollen that gets in my nose and makes me sneeze. Annoying, unpredictable, messy.
So I try. I write something, a line or two in my iPhone notes, and I give up. I try. I give up. I try, I give up again. There are moments when I’ve had good routines. The only thing they all have in common is that I eventually abandoned them. But sometimes, if I’m lucky, the dam breaks. This letter comes on the heels of such a flood — a week of being sick and confined to my apartment during which I watched ten movies and finished a wonderful novel and caught up on the substack inbox I haven’t touched since March. It always culminates in finally feeling like maybe I have something to say, that maybe someone will listen.
The only thing I’ve managed to do regularly is poetry. I’ve kept a daily poetry practice since January 1, 2021. That’s over 1,200 poems by now, almost 11 of my choice notebooks filled and lined up on my bookshelf (black moleskine cahier journal, XL, blank). Every time I finish one, I go back through the pages and pull out poems I think have legs and transpose them into yet another notebook (lined, this time). There are only 106 poems in that one. Hundreds and hundreds of rejects, words I will never read again.
I think maybe I should pay my poems more attention, show them more care and patience. There’s a metaphor here somewhere.
Essentially, I am in much the same place as you left me. Wanting to write and doing a whole lot of complaining instead. Maybe sometime soon I’ll get the hang of it and figure out how to show you all of the good things going on inside my head. The stories, the fragments, the things I know are worth saying if only I could figure out how to say them.
I realize that this whole thing — these letters I write to you — might just become apologizing for not writing more. I guess if I say sorry to you about it maybe I’ll forgive myself.
I’m still finding my footing 10 months after moving into my apartment. There are lots of moments of loneliness, of wondering if I’m cut out for the dreams I have for myself. Maybe somewhere along the way I got it wrong and thought I was someone else, someone capable of far more than I can actually handle.
But with summer comes longer days and a specific sense of my own existence that forces me out the door and into the world, forgiving or not.
On the first day of July, I went to a house show. The short version of why is that a member of one of my favorite bands, Delta Rae, is doing solo shows around the country in the living rooms of people who sign up to host. I was lucky enough to be allowed to attend the show in Chicago alongside the friends and family of the host and a few other fans of the band, thanks to the incredibly organized fan community. I drove on a Monday night to a stranger’s house with my homemade summer salad and a case of La Croix and hoped it would be a good night.
It was amazing. Eric’s performance was indescribable and the energy of the small crowd was incredibly warm and tender. I made some friends and felt that special magic that connects us if we let it. The buzzing of the person next to you loving something just as much as you do, understanding why it means what it does, and cheering you on in your passion. That’s live music, baby.
Anyway, a central theme of Eric’s show is essentially being in your twenties. Which I am! In some kind of serendipitous symmetry, I saw Delta Rae for the first time ten years ago, when I was 17. Eric and I chatted about being 27 (he’s 37 now) and how I first discovered his band when he was going through the things he sang about that night. He asked me how my twenties were going.
“Kinda shit,” I said. We laughed.
“Well, if anything, tonight is proof that you’ll get through it,” he said back.
I know that he’s right.
On the drive home, I rolled down my windows and played Born in the USA a little too loudly and thought about…all of it.
About how it’s fucking magic that we keep doing things even though we know all of this will end someday, that we keep creating and dreaming and hoping and it’s so hard to stop. About how I’ll get through it because I’ve always been too curious to see what comes next, going in and out of tunnels searching for the next beam of light. About how it’s deliriously delicious to be alive and to hold pain and hope together in the palm of my hand.
That evening made me want to write. It made me remember how it feels like magic when I’m writing, how music is magic, how all of us can make magic. The fact that I found Delta Rae when I was 17 and now I’m 27 talking to one of the members in a stranger’s kitchen a few miles away from the place I first heard their music. How the things we love are there for us for so many moments only we know about. How we mean so much to each other, as people, as strangers, and that’s just our lot in life. To make the most change in places we’ll never see.
I guess what I want to say to you is I’m trying to roll with everything I am feeling. Listening to the same song over and over in the dark and staring at the ceiling. Going for a walk and crying behind my sunglasses because sometimes it all feels so hopeless. Journaling about the same thing a hundred times because it still hurts. Eating the same thing for breakfast every day for two weeks because it tastes damn good. Thinking about writing instead of doing it because maybe one day I will. I want these letters to be something that lets you stop for a few minutes and dream.
Back in April I was on a run by Lake Michigan when I got demolished by a huge wave. Like, completely soaked on one half in icy water at 6:30 am. And, the thing is, I saw it coming. I saw the wet pavement, saw the wave hit the cement side of the pathway, and I just…stopped. I stopped running and let it wash over me. It was really damn cold but I laughed and finished my loop and ran home.
Sometimes, you just have to lean in.
Things I’ve been loving.
Blue Graffiti by Calahan Skogman. A debut novel that releases in August. It taught me a lot of things about language and storytelling and poetry. I loved it and reviewed it here.
Watching movies at home: I love going to the theater but in the interest of public health do not do so when I am sick, like I am right now. My comical streaming bill comes in handy at times like these. Here are the movies I’ve watched over the past week: Everybody Wants Some!!, Dazed and Confused, Elvis, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Twister, Jurassic Park, Dune: Part Two, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and The Dead Don’t Die. Follow me on Letterboxd, I guess.
Pens. I am a devotee of the Pilot G-2 0.7, but recently I found myself using a Muji ballpoint 0.7 and, wow! I’m in love. Sponsor me (that is a joke).
My dear friends. Thank you for getting me outside, for asking what I had for breakfast, for calling me when I’m sick. Thank you for helping me through every day.
Trying out some new sections here. Scraps is for my poetry.
Another new one for collecting small life moments that feel big.
In February, I went to the Art Institute of Chicago with some friends. I showed my membership pass and the woman around my age at the check-in smiled wide and said, “Hello, person with my name!”
I went to the Alamo Drafthouse to see Drive Away Dolls and sat down at the same time as the woman next to me. The server incorrectly assumed we had arrived together, but after the correction, we got to talking. I learned that her sister’s name is Emma.
Back when there was snow on the ground I looked out my window and watched a man try to get his dog to keep walking. She sat down and did not want to move. He simply waited for her for a few minutes, smiling, before crouching down to take some photos of her in the slush, surrounded by other people’s footprints. I imagine that it was a nice photo. He tried to get her to walk again but she refused. He swept his arms in great big arcs in their desired direction but she did not. give. a. fuck. Unbothered by everyone walking by, unbothered by his clear desire for her to move. So what did he do? What we all do, when the situation calls for it. He crouched down and picked her up, scratching her ears as she settled into his arms to see the world from a new height. When it comes down to it, I think, we will carry the ones we love. No one gets left behind.
Thank you for reading, as always. If you liked it, let me know! I am working on being a mind reader but my skills are still quite nonexistent.
You can find me in a few places, but my favorites are Spotify and Storygraph.
Till next time,
emma
the double exposure 😍 also the choice of linklater films 👌 your writing always makes me want to write more and I get so excited when I see “emma from night moves” in my inbox
As always, beautiful and reflective in a way i wish i could write but never could. Already looking forward to your first book ❤️