ehehehe well i can't lie i'm very very pleased to hear that, both because that was just what i was trying to capture in the story and also now you know how EYE feel whenever i listen to the velvet underground. or think about them in general. ok now everybody else read it too and let's suffer together forever.

awww well thanks very much anon, i appreciate that! funny you should ask because i've been considering working on something but there hasn't really been any particular detail or idea that's grabbed me so i've just been kicking around waiting for inspiration to strike. so if there's something you've been dying to read about...hmu...

blah well it sounds like it's been similar weather up here in MA...i still am hoping for some snow this winter but i suppose i shouldn't hold my breath 😔

anon this is so 🥹 i probably last posted about haim when i was still in high school!! i saw them on the days are gone tour back in 2014. you've been here with me for so long...in all honesty i probably wouldn't have listened to this album at all because i've gotten bad at keeping up with this year's releases. but i listened to it for you and you know what it's pretty fun! i like the opening track a lot. i think it still sounds very them, which i personally have grown past in a lot of ways, but i was pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable i found it anyway. so thanks for prompting me to listen to it. and thanks for being here all these years.......take my hand. let's discover cool bands together forever

fank yewwwww

yayyyy i'm so glad to hear, i hope you liked it! i enjoyed it a lot. i loved how quiet and slow and warm it was. immensely beautiful but also very plain. incredible quality of light. i think rebecca hall is kind of a genius...would love to get a drink with her sometime...also i always forget that moma does regular film screenings all the time so thank YOU anon for reminding me of that!!

interestingly, the week before i saw it i went to a talk with nan goldin and zoe leonard and they both made veiled reference to that movie that suggested they were less than impressed with it, but it must be very difficult and painful to see your dead friends constantly resurrected by people who never knew them. i think there's value in recognizing the importance of that kind of tribute and public historicizing and also in recognizing that these people's loved ones are still around and that their deaths are still very real and immediate to those who are still here. so i think it's a beautiful film and i'm glad it got made with such apparent care and good faith, but i can also imagine that it's very weird for people who actually knew him.

hm i suppose i mean that the band is sort of permanently suspended in a state of unfinished business and what might have been. i think john felt (feels?) this most acutely and has expressed that sentiment many times, that the work they did while he was in the band was not the full extent of what they were capable of accomplishing together. i think they all found it frustrating that they were so lauded but only as cult figures. how strange to be mythologized right to your face because even that kind of recognition doesn't really make up for the immense isolation you'd felt back when you were making the work that you're now known for.

i mean probably they got what they wanted in terms of their own lives and careers (i should hope anyway) but not really what they wanted with/from/in the band, except for maybe lou.

as much as there's this image of nonchalance or indifference toward commercial success, i do think that they all wanted it very badly and thought they deserved it as a band and that they should have gotten it back in the 60s. there's a quote from moe where she says that when they started out she really truly believed that they had the capacity to be as big as the beatles because their music was just as good if not better in her mind. and that quote from martha where she says that they wanted people to like their music and enjoy their shows, plain and simple. i don't really think moe, sterling, or doug necessarily wanted to be famous themselves but i think they wanted people to hear their music and know it was them who played it and they wanted it THEN, not in retrospect.

to that end i think sterling's death right after the failed reunion tour cemented the feeling of unfinished business. it's a tremendous shame that he didn't live long enough for the rock & roll hall of fame induction and that doug wasn't included in it at all.

and i think more broadly there is always going to be this enormous irreconcilable gap between the myth and the music. but on the other side of that are the equally enormous gaps between the music the band could record and the music they could physically play and the music they could imagine and the music that we in turn can imagine in the wake of their myth.

across all the interviews i've read the prevailing sentiment is that when it comes to the VU, what they WANTED and still want more than anything was an accurate record of what they really sounded and looked like when they played at their best in the 1960s. and it just doesn't exist and none of us will ever have it. and all the credit they might get through hindsight can't make up for that.

thank you anon....i'm always taking book recommendations so i don't see why we couldn't be in a book club together....JUST SAYING!

awwww i love that, isn't it the best feeling in the world when you finally light upon the key bit of connective tissue that brings all your ideas together! good luck on the paper (assuming that's what you meant lol), it sounds super interesting. i like the phrase 'quotidian ecstasy' a lot.

ur good lol! i don't really care that much because it's so far out of the zeitgeist at this point idk why she's even watching it... it's just that the whole premise of the show is a wacky workplace sitcom where everyone gets into antics and is bad at their job which is very difficult to find funny when they're supposed to be the NYPD. because in real life the NYPD's "antics" have actually killed people and drained the city of millions and millions of dollars to pay them overtime to do nothing but harass homeless people. the episode my roommate was watching featured andy samberg breaking into an apartment to arrest somebody by smashing in their window and when his coworkers point out that he could have just gone in through the front door he's like "but then i wouldn't have been able to use my line!" ['look who just dropped in' or something] and it's like wow haha what could be funnier than some idiot policeman committing unnecessary property destruction for the sake of his own ego. as if that doesn't happen every day and ruin people's lives in the process.

lollll can you tell i was going through a salinger phase when i made all of my social media accounts? i actually recently reread franny & zooey for the first time in years and years and i enjoyed it but it was also interesting and a little sad to revisit it as an adult and be able to clearly identify what it was that i liked so much about the book when i was 14...

and nick drake is forever. i love the way he says "slow, slow, jane..." in such a gentle tone.

U know what....i actually like it. genuinely very thrilled for charli as i know she's a huge huge VU fan, it must have been so special for her to get to work with john and i think it's exciting that she's continuing to experiment and push herself in terms of her own sound (i thought brat was kind of boring so i'm pleased to see her seemingly trying something difference). and john just loves a spoken word track doesn't he...i really DO NOT like hearing him talk about dying lol but if i ignore that it's a compelling track. yayyy happy for everyone involved including all the kids (?) who will invariably google john cale after listening to this song and be like what the freak lol...but maybe they'll be intrigued which will in turn lead them to his relationship with lou therefore furthering my velvet underground rpf agenda. it was all part of my plan this whole time...

i was! very little of lou's side of the correspondence was preserved (or at least included in the archives) so i guess there are still some mysteries. a lot of the communications from that era are actually between john and sylvia and are categorized as professional rather than personal correspondence...the poetics of the archives...ultimately i felt weird about posting them publicly cos everyone involved EXCEPT lou is still alive but if you message me privately i can send you some stuff :)

yeas...in new england candlepin bowling is a lot more common. maybe less so in connecticut but growing up in massachusetts, candlepin was the only kind of bowling i ever played or was exposed to in real life. i thought regular bowling (the kind you stick your fingers in) was made up for tv so the balls/pins showed up better onscreen cos they were bigger 😭

yes girl.........please try to keep up with my oeuvre........

i'll have you know i was at a party this weekend and there was a dog there who was perfectly lovely and i spent a good amount of time patting him. and you know why?? cos he didn't bark even once. if all dogs were like that i'd like them a hell of a lot more. dogs should be seen and not heard