I’ve finished next to no books and actually added one to the list. But I don’t call this a reading slump. For me a reading slump is a break in reading due to lack of interest. It’s not that I lack interest—I’m abundant with it, I’m overflowing with interest. And so, I read 100-150 pages a day spread out across six books and it feels like I’m not making any progress.
But I am, dear reader, I am. It reminds me of an extremely unusual “class” I had in high school. Even scare quotes seem generous for what this was.
Between my sophomore and junior years, my high school switched from semesters to trimesters. I have no idea why we did this. Perhaps it was related to the mysterious “X” period at the end of the day, an additional 45 minutes that we had for sports and clubs and which, due to Ohio state regulations at the time, entitled us to several additional week of vacation.
In any event, classes now had the option of being full year, two trimesters, or just one measly little trimester. And the faculty were encouraged to develop “unique” curricula for these abbreviated learning periods. Two of my favorites of these classes were the “Republics” and “Empires” courses, jointly taught by history and Latin teachers.
The one in question though was called something like “Intro to Economics" but practically was surface level primers on supply, demand, the stock market, and it all culminated with us… playing a video game. Our teacher found some kind of simulation game where we were all capitalists building companies and competing against each other.
While all the other kids were putting virtual product after virtual product into the market I, at 17, was employing the Besos method. I sunk as much capital as possible into R&D and building virtual factories, went into tremendous virtual debt, marketed a few products to just keep the business afloat, and then, in the late game, unleashed virtual economic hell on the other students with my now vast infrastructure. I was able to undercut everyone on everything: price, marketing, you name it.
Now… why was I getting into all of this. Right! Subtle, compounding progress. I know that my 100-150 pages per day spread across far too many books may seem like standing still. But at the end of the month, all six of those books will come in for a nice landing on my monthly reading recap. Probably. We’ll see.
On Repeat
(A version of this essay previously appeared on my TikTok.)
I’m not a religious person, nor would I describe myself as particularly spiritual. But I have had a spiritual moment in my life. And it was at a Sufjan Stevens concert.1
It was 2015 and Sufjan was touring Carrie & Lowell, the album he wrote after losing his mother. I saw it at the DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.
Carrie & Lowell is a sad album, and I was prepared to be a bit blue coming out of this show. What I wasn’t prepared for was “Blue Bucket of Gold.”
“Blue Bucket of Gold” is a small, almost quiet capper to Carrie & Lowell and it has a strange, ethereal closing. The last minute is just some tones and humming. It’s simultaneously deep and also wistful. But ultimately, it’s a quiet song to a quiet album that has loud themes.
I don’t think I, or the rest of the audience there in D.C., were quite imagining that Sufjan would close the show with “Blue Bucket of Gold,” and it was a little strange when we realized that’s what was happening. What we didn’t know was that “Blue Bucket of Gold” live has a ten minute outro.
Sufjan has made the entire show available on YouTube (it’s well worth watching in it’s entirety) but here is “Blue Bucket of Gold Outro”:
It’s slow and steady and then builds. It gets weird, and loud, and discordant. Have you ever been in a space that’s so filled with sound that you can feel it, like a physical presence all around you? That’s what “Blue Bucket of Gold Outro” is like.
It’s only ten minutes but for all I know it could have been ten seconds or ten years. The passage of time stopped having any particular meaning for me while Sufjan was creating and shaping the sounds that vibrated within Constitution Hall.
By the end, it’s just pulsing sounds and that vibration moved from the air into the bodies of every person in that room. I swear, in that moment, I had never felt more connected to myself and to humanity. And then, very quietly, as if to not break the spell, Sufjan just… lets it go.
It was over. Well, not quite, he did a cover of “Hotline Bling” as an encore and then it was over. Because it wouldn’t be Sufjan Stevens without an ironic display of quality music. And I think he needed to end the show with something that winks at the audience a little bit. He wanted to give us an out after what he did with “Blue Bucket of Gold Outro.”
It’s like when you lay something really emotionally heavy on a friend or family member and then you let the air out a little bit with a joke. That’s maybe what Sufjan was doing, letting a little bit of the stored up tension within us out.
But he didn’t let too much out, because while all of us were filing out, shuffling past each other, making our ways to the D.C. Metro and on to parts unknown, you could feel that we were all still… vibrating.
And now, in those dark moments when I’m not feeling particularly great about myself or the state of the world, sometimes I rewind the tape of my life to just a few minutes (or seconds or years) before that cover of “Hotline Bling,” to relive that moment when I felt utterly connected to everything.
I also really like “Impossible Soul”.2
Finished This Week
The Thief3 by Megan Whalen Turner
My one piece of actual progress. I enjoyed this okay. A nice, quick, YA read. I’m more excited for what comes next in this series, though.
Still Reading
Witch King by Martha Wells
I was approximately one-quarter of the way through Witch King last week and I still am today. I do plan to prioritize this in the coming week so I can get a review out around the publication date.
Witch King is available for pre-order now and will be released May 30, 2023.
King by Jonathan Eig
200 pages in and I can say without a doubt that this is going to be a top 10 book for me this year. MLK Jr.’s life is complicated and messy and powerful and inspirational and in the telling of it Eig explores a life and a time. Highly, highly recommended.
Lotería by Cynthia Pelayo
I’m very nearly finished with Pelayo’s flash fiction collection; I just have the final novella to read. My opinion hasn’t changed: I think this is a somewhat weak piece of writing that nevertheless is very worth reading.
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Lucy is now a vampire and Abraham Van Helsing and the boys are gearing up to cut off her head, stuff it with garlic, and put a stake through her heart. Fun stuff.
Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe
This is another book destined for my top 10. I’m now in the early 2010s time period as we start to follow the second (or third depending on when you start counting) generation Sacklers. This is where the Gossip Girl comparisons start as all the grandkids of the three Sackler brothers lived pampered, privileged lives (many in the Upper East Side). Patrick Madden Keefe is so good at telling these stories.
I’ve also gotten a lot of mileage out of gossiping about this book on TikTok. It’s a nearly unlimited well of nutso stories.4
This is possibly the gayest thing I’ve ever uttered.
Fight me.
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They sometimes feel like a Stefon club, they have everything: prescription pain killers, Emmy-award winning documentaries, intra-familial drama, RUDY GIULIANI!