A couple weeks ago, a friend broke up with her boyfriend. We spoke on Sunday morning. She’d gone on a bad date the night before with a new guy, a finance guy she disliked off the bat—he was boorish, self-consumed, still she still talked to him for a couple hours, drank the wine, she wanted to see it through, in case things improved.
Things did not improve.
“Why do I do this to myself?” she said. “I really want to find someone new. I miss that energy, the way you become obsessed with somebody, where you just want to experience them, learn everything about them.”
I mentioned last week that I saw a mk.gee show recently. Mk.gee’s real name is Mike Gordon. His latest album, Two Star & the Dream Police, has become an obsession. According to Spotify, it’s my most-listened-to album since it debuted in February. I’ve probably listened to it over a hundred times. And I watch videos on social media, I participate in the subreddit. I understand the glee of fans who wait an hour after shows, hoping to get a picture—I mean, I didn’t do the same, but I appreciate the drive, I know the crush.
Obsession isn’t always beautiful. Mania, passion—wonderful. But for it to become compulsion, preoccupation, neurosis—danger, danger. I’m reading Mating again, by Norman Rush, a novel about love and intimacy, attraction and transgression. One of the more moving passages comes when the narrator visits Victoria Falls, on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe, and she describes feeling unexpectedly transfixed.
The first main sensation is about physicality. The falls said something to me like You are flesh, in no uncertain terms. This phase lasted over an hour. I have never been so intent. Several times I started to get up but couldn’t. It was injunctive. Something in me was being sated and I was paralyzed until that was done.
Falling in love with something, somebody, even a new album—doesn’t that just nail it?
I don’t have a long list of things I consider sacred, but music is one, and feeling awe, which music often provokes. It’s those moments when I feel less fragmented, when I’m so wholly pulled by something that I press myself into it before memory is activated, before the thing feels past.
The inciting thing, person—is this how significance foments?
At the mk.gee show, we couldn’t see his face. It was weird at first. I mean, we couldn’t see any of the band’s faces—they had lights behind them, shooting through fog out into the venue, so the band was backlit, smoky, mysterious—it was ego and anti-ego, anti-fame, i.e., they only gave us so much by way of appearances, but poured themselves into the music, through the music, as if to say that the music and our connection to it was the thing.
It wasn’t unrequited love, but something else.
If you’re a writer looking for help, editing, guidance, brainstorming, I highly recommend collaborating with my partner, editor-for-hire Rachel Knowles.
She has improved all of my works significantly, not to mention the works of plenty of other writers, aspiring and established—authors, screenwriters, journalists, memoirists, lawyers, you name it. Strong rec!
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My new favorite app for iPhone: an easy, up-to-date way to discover new art
An introduction to “chaos magic”
A very quick short story that I loved, plus discoveries from the week online
What the what
Meditations in an Emergency is a weekly mini-essay from Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with 3+ ideas of things to love, plus a monthly dispatch from the road, for some inbox wanderlust ⛰️
Rosecrans is the bestselling author of Everything Now, winner of the California Book Award. His most recent novel, The Last Kid Left, was one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. Titles mentioned in this newsletter are stored on a Bookshop list, which pays a small commission. For more—books, articles, bio—check out rosecransbaldwin.com