The experience on the page is not for you, the writer. This is a mistake people make about memoirs – that if you have had a bad enough ass-whipping, you should make a lot of money. Now, I think we should all make a lot of money, but that’s a topic for another evening.

But in therapy, say, you pay them. In memoir, hopefully, they pay you. That suggests that you are supposed to give them something: an experience – that distilled experience. You’re supposed to create a world where things that perhaps sound strange on Jerry Springer actually begin to sound feasible or possible.

Mary Karr on Nieman Storyboard (via michelledean)

If you’re looking for a shorter quote from Karr on the same general subject (say, something to write on a Post-It note and stick on the bottom edge of your day-job computer monitor, in hopes that its continual presence in your peripheral vision will make you a better writer/person) I suggest: “bring something to the fucking party.” I think it’s helping me! Or at least I am thinking more about parties these days.

If you loved and/or love Rilo Kiley, you should definitely read this Carrie Battan tribute/essay-thing cleverly masquerading as an rkives review over at Pitchfork. I did and now I’m having a lot of feelings. Now listening to More Adventurous for the first time in years and thinking about a time in my life when I cried a lot more than I do now and wouldn’t spend more than $2.97 on a skirt at a thrift store but giddily spent upwards of $15-$20 on single skeins of hand-dyed yarn. Also wishing I didn’t delete my LiveJournal, but then again maybe that was for the best. LiveJournal! Only recently has it not seemed terrifying to speak its name aloud. Maybe it never was, maybe it still should be. I don’t know. Bless you, Jenny Lewis, either way.

Source: Spotify

jamiesoncox:

A Shot of Jamieson, Episode 2.7 - Rachael Maddux (rachaelmaddux)

The newest episode of A Shot of Jamieson features writer/editor extraordinaire (+ INDIE HUNK) Rachael Maddux. (Pitchfork, BuzzFeed, eMusic, Salon, and many more) We dove pretty deep into heavy Internet stuff— gender and music writing, “call-out culture,” online existence as performance— and then pulled back out to talk about John Jeremiah Sullivan and “work music.” I finally deemed this second round of shows a “season.” I hope I made sense.

As always, thanks for your support! I welcome your questions, comments, and concerns, however you want to send them. Happy listening!

This was fun. I’m a hunk! FINALLY!

(via jamiesoncox)

BLVR: Did you ever watch The Simpsons?
RA: No, but my son did. It’s apparently wonderful.
BLVR: Yeah, it is. I’m asking because if you watch episodes from the first few seasons, the characters look different. It’s uncanny: they almost look the characters you know, but not really.
RA: Like Peanuts. Early Peanuts. Garry Trudeau. Early Doonesbury. They changed, as people do. We followed daily for decades and didn’t notice.
The Believer | Renata Adler interviewed by Alice Gregory

This New York Times profile of Kacey Musgraves is great, or has at least made me love her more. She wrote a song about getting stoned with John Prine! I hope for her sake, and I guess his too, that The Secret is real.

Also, a PSA: If you love Kacey Musgraves but do not know Jill Andrews, or if you love Jill Andrews but do not know Kacey Musgraves, I would recommend that you rectify your situation. I see a significant venn diagram of elegant, quietly brutal lady-twang going on there.

Source: Spotify

Something about Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit just slays me. I watched the movie last night for what may well have been the fourth time, and every time this has happened, and seemingly with increasing intensity—there are scenes where I find myself on the verge of tears, total lump in the throat and everything, for no apparent reason other than that Mattie Ross, in her hands, is just such a tremendous little badass. But also, she is such a fourteen year old girl. She is a fourteen year old girl as I knew them, as perhaps I was myself—part firecracker, part prude. She knows exactly what she wants, occasionally somehow knows how to get it, but is still living in the fantasy world of late-childhood. Her conversations with Little Blackie are where you really see this, where she seems just like another little girl telling secrets to her horse—the horse she’s riding through Indian territory along with a strange drunk U.S. Marshall who she’s hired to kill the man who killed her father (and who, in fact, she will eventually kill herself). She knows just enough to be dangerous, the rest patched together with pluck and sass and dumb luck. Also, those braids.
Pop-upView Separately

Something about Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit just slays me. I watched the movie last night for what may well have been the fourth time, and every time this has happened, and seemingly with increasing intensity—there are scenes where I find myself on the verge of tears, total lump in the throat and everything, for no apparent reason other than that Mattie Ross, in her hands, is just such a tremendous little badass. But also, she is such a fourteen year old girl. She is a fourteen year old girl as I knew them, as perhaps I was myself—part firecracker, part prude. She knows exactly what she wants, occasionally somehow knows how to get it, but is still living in the fantasy world of late-childhood. Her conversations with Little Blackie are where you really see this, where she seems just like another little girl telling secrets to her horse—the horse she’s riding through Indian territory along with a strange drunk U.S. Marshall who she’s hired to kill the man who killed her father (and who, in fact, she will eventually kill herself). She knows just enough to be dangerous, the rest patched together with pluck and sass and dumb luck. Also, those braids.

Top