Dead Letter Department #20

(did you miss dead letter department #19? catch up here!)

weather report

First snow of the year! I have been doing my level best to get a good grip on a morning routine (the ideal: breakfast while I look at what I’m working on in the morning or re-read what I wrote the day before; the too-frequent reality: tea, news, despair, social media) so I didn’t get out into it until it was already more slush than wonderland but it was still v pretty, & I’m pleased to report it has not slowed down the various hummingbird counter-offenses happening in the backyard. Those little guys are late night bar fight aggressive, so I’ll be sitting there peacefully wondering how soft the teensy feathers are when suddenly another rapier-nosed asshole divebombs the feeder and they both start tearing around the yard screaming at the top of their lungs.

In other avian news, I saw a majestic bald eagle get totally owned by a group of shouty crows. The eagles always look around regally when the yelling and flapping starts, all “You can’t tell me what to do,” but it doesn’t take long before numbers and sheer cussedness drive them away from whatever the corvids are protecting, always with a sheepish expression on their faces.

I took a drive to the beach yesterday morning in the hopes that the steady beat of waves would do its usual charitable smoothing out of my brain, which was only partially successful, but I did get to meet an absolute champion of a corgi named Reggie who had the most adorable eyebrows I’ve ever seen. “Can he meet you?” the owner kindly asked when he saw me getting visibly over-excited. Can HE meet ME? I think we have the celebrity/fan ratio flipped around here, but I was delighted to try to distract him from all of the delicious dead sea creatures he could be smelling or eating regardless.

listen here

Like everyone else in the known universe, I’ve been listening to the Taylor Swift re-release of Red. My sympathy for the problems of multi-millionaires is naturally fairly limited but I do admire the sheer fuck you of getting back in the studio to stomp the hell out of the predatory people who acquired her master recordings. It seems, among other things, like a willful misunderstanding of Swift when even a casual observer of her public persona can see she is absolutely not going to allow power over her own work to pass into someone else’s hands even if wrenching it back is both expensive and time consuming. Also, I do appreciate how publicly she has dealt with all the attendant nonsense: tons of artists, especially those who don’t have Swiftian audiences or bank accounts, get royally screwed by contracts, especially in marginalized communities or when they’re just starting out. Shining a light on the sordid mess that can be ripped out of an unwitting artists’ work for profit obviously helps Taylor Swift’s own extremely polished public image but it also stands a chance of making it a little harder for other musicians to get taken advantage of in the same way next time.

On the recommendation of a friend of the Dead Letter Department, I’ve also been listening to Mykki by Mykki Blanco which is extremely good. I’m a sucker for albums where the individual tracks are killer but the narrative arc is even stronger, once you grasp it, & strongly suggest getting into this if you are too. Lastly, the Spirited Away soundtrack has been keeping me good company during ordinary tasks. If I do find a doorway into the spirit world or finally reunite with my childhood friend the river dragon the next letter may be delayed, but I’m sure you wouldn’t begrudge me such an excellent reason for absence.

beloved stranger of the week

I’ve been doing something I obnoxiously insist on calling the Winter Sunset Series, which is actually just a park bench, a travel mug, & whoever I can convince out into varying degrees of inclement weather. This time of year is hard, increasingly so, and a lot of the redemptive aspects of living somewhere so beautiful start to seem abstract at best when everything is constantly steeped in at least two inches of cold rain. This does not change the fact that I live within ten minutes of an outrageous number of beautiful landscapes, so on the days when it is not raining around sunset (at 4:13 today, god help me) I pack up some tea & my trusty winter weight hoodie & go to the park at the harbor. Sometimes it’s lovely:

Sometimes it’s aggressively dull.

Either way at least I’m outside.

There’s another, more dramatic ritual I occasionally cross paths with: a woman who hauls a pushcart up the path to the stone wall and starts tossing great handfuls of breadcrumbs into the wind. (Yes, I do know bread is bad for birds—I assume that she does not, & I am not about shove a ‘well, actually’ wedge of myself into this situation.) Every seagull in two zip codes is apparently part of the same group chat, because they all appear & begin what appears to be a multi-course feast of various stale baked goods. This is already something of a sight: huge clouds of wings swirling around this small figure—but then she sings to them! Last week she had sheet music with her and once the bread was exhausted (unlike seagull appetites, which I believe to be endless) she stood serenading them for quite some time as the last of the pink and purple clouds sank into the water. I wasn’t close enough to hear what the selection, unfortunately, but maybe next time I’ll be luckier.

write back

If you like the newsletter, please share it with a friend. I hope to see you back here at the Dead Letter Department again soon & in the meantime I hope you retain an unbreakable grip on your own master tapes.