BUDS DIGEST 008 / FEATURE
HAND HABITS
&
TOMBERLIN
IN THE WOODS
HAND HABITS photographed by CHANTAL ANDERSON
TOMBERLIN photographed by SHERVIN LAINEZ
Meg Duffy photographed by Chantal Anderson in Los Angeles, CA. April 2023.
Sarah Beth Tomberlin photographed by Shervin Lainez in New York City, NY. April 2023.
Prolific multi-instrumentalist and songwriter MEG DUFFY of HAND HABITS joins rising folk star SARAH BETH TOMBERLIN for a deeply distinguished and culturally cult conversation for Buds Digest.
The two progressive and poised artists talk melodic memories from tour, recent collaborations in the studio, and the albums and art inspiring their latest respective outputs. TOMBERLIN’s beautiful, catchy and mood-defining i don’t know who needs to hear this celebrates one year since being released via Saddle Creek Records, while DUFFY’S latest single, Hand Habit’s playful and ever original “Something Wrong,” illustrates their truly exciting sound ahead.
Amidst gestures of mutual adoration and industry understanding, the creatives engage in collected discourse surrounding entertainment media’s drive to commodify anything and what it really means to be professional musicians who identify as queer. Read on for more from these two real, radical and masterful music makers.
MEG DUFFY: Hey buddy.
SARAH BETH TOMBERLIN: Hey, how's it going?
MD: Nice haircut.
SBT: Thank you.
MD: Are you in your new place?
SBT: I am. My new tiny home.
MD: How does it feel?
SBT: Really good to not have roommates. I've felt my stress levels go down a good bit. I've been here a little over a week now. And Annie is pretty happy and chill. How are you?
MD: I'm doing much better. I was very sick.
SBT: That's so bad.
MD: I was in North Carolina visiting my friends, just kind of hanging and making music for fun, which is something I haven't really done that much.
SBT: Love.
MD: Not that making music to release isn't also fun, but making music with no plan to release it and put it into the machine of sharing…
SBT: Totally.
MD: It was really beautiful though. I took a trip to Asheville to visit Cherry [Iocovozzi] and Silver [Cousler]’s restaurant Neng Jr.’s. That was amazing. Then, I got home and got crazy food poisoning and was laid out for two days. It was psychedelic, but now I feel like he has risen.
SBT: Yeah. He hath risen.
MD: I was thinking maybe we could start with what's your favorite memory of us together?
SBT: I feel like our tour together was pretty special. I have really fond memories of that…You know when you're realizing that you're in an interview and you're like, there's some things that I just wanna keep to myself.
MD: Keep that one to yourself.
SBT: Yeah. I think riding in the van with the boys and it just being us out there, just the energy of that tour was very different from any tour experience I had had that far. I don't think I've had one quite similar to that. You, in general. Even when I was staying at your home when you weren't there, you just have an intention to be intentional and to feel grounded as much as possible and to feel a part of what you're doing. Even though it's a really hard thing to do, it felt less hard on that tour. It felt more like I was engaging with myself and my surroundings and not just being this dissociative blob. That was really new for me. I think it was special to share it with you and to build our friendship more. I really remember staying in that – was it Wyoming or?
MD: I think it was Oregon.
SBT: That sleepy little town with that weird Airbnb and those horses. A weird church. That's, I think, a really special memory, just walking around there. It was so dead quiet and just hearing your feet hit the asphalt and then grass and a wind.
MD: It was kind of euphoric, that place. I remember our drive out of there too. We were driving out of that canyon – eagle something. I remember I was so sleepy and I was in the back, sort of closing my eyes, and the hills were super green and you were singing along to Joni Mitchell's Blue. I remember being like, this is a good life and Sarah Beth is a really good singer. Just feeling this sense of joy. That was a special tour. That band specifically, especially Kevin and John – because I've toured so much with them, two of my old band mates – they know how to tour and they know how to stay positive and have fun and stay engaged with the environment. And stay active and not sort of let yourself fall into the dark isolation that tour can really, easily bring you to. Another favorite memory – it's hard to pick a favorite, but a fond memory – was when we played together in San Francisco, not that long ago. My band joined you for Happy Accident. There's photos of me from that night, I'm all gums, just so gummy, cheek to cheek.
“I’m just starting to question my understanding of ‘queer.’ The language has changed colloquially and I really like framing it as the ‘permission to not know’...”
SBT: It was really fun.
MD: I hadn't seen you in so long and I love that touring can create such a bond with people. We knew how to be in a venue together and share space in that way, even though Covid was kind of weird during that time. It was painted by how much time we've spent together and you had a new record out. I had a new record out since the last time we had played a show together. It was really cool to see everybody singing along to your music.
SBT: It was also the first time I had played Happy Accident live with a band. I think I had tried it solo once, a random last minute thing. I hadn't even played with my band yet. So much fun. I also remember being like, “I don't wanna see any pictures from this because I'm just gonna look like a goofy, smiley idiot, but that's fine.”
MD: I'm into smiling in pics right now, even though my most recent press pics are the meanest I've ever looked.
SBT: It's hard to know what to do with your face.
MD: Very much so.
SBT: Those are sweet ‘mems.
MD: Good ‘mems. Talking about Happy Accident, I'm curious what inspired you for that record. I know you made it with Phil [Weinrobe] and Cass McCombs and Shahzad Ismaily and other people that I don't know as well, but a heavy hitter crew of musicians. It's pretty different from the stuff you put out with Alex G, which I feel, whenever I've gotten interviewed, people are like, “Your voice sounds different on this.” And I'm like, yeah, because you can do more than one thing. You can do whatever you want. As Mike [Hadreas] from Perfume Genius always tells me: “There's no rules. You can just do whatever you want in music.” For the most part. But, I have seen you go from playing shows with an acoustic guitar and then playing with your most recent band, with keys and another guitar and clarinet and having these different instrumentations. At what point did you decide that you wanted to expand out of acoustic world?
SBT: Starting with an acoustic guitar is all I had as a teenager. I didn't have access to any other gear. I was definitely interested in other types of music, kind of more than the stuff I was making, but that was just what I had access to and that was what I was teaching myself on. I played a little bit of piano growing up, took a few lessons but was a terrible student. My mom has a piano, so I had access to that, but it was just kind of bare bones because that's what I had access to. Kind of the same with making my first record, I didn't even really realize I was making a record, then I was like, oh these are songs and they kind of go together. I think that was like a good way to start and not be so in my head about it because I really didn't know what I was doing. I kind of always am trying to get back to that place. But, with this record and with the songs that I was writing for i don't know who needs to hear this, I knew that I wanted it to be more…”textural” was the word that I kept using. When I got closer to having two weeks to record, I was getting a bit more ideas for instruments I wanted to use or highlight. Or, I don't want this song to be a guitar song. Because all of them I wrote on acoustic guitar, but I knew getting closer to recording, I wanted some to be more synthy, kind of have different elements to create a world but then have a thread throughout the record. I feel like a record that I was listening to a lot at the time was In Rainbows by Radiohead, which, from what I know about it, is a bit of a chop’t and screwed record that they thought was a mistake and then they kind of like put it together. Then released it for free because they thought it wasn't very good. But it's kind of, I think, my favorite Radiohead record. I love all these textural moments. And the same with Frank Ocean's Blonde, where I've listened to that record a bajillion times, and each time I listen to it, there's something new that I find that I feel like I haven't heard before or heard in that way, or am noticing. I really love stuff like that. Not to say that I think my record turned out anything like those two records and I didn't want to. I wasn't referencing them, but they were inspirational to me in kind of creating pockets of sound for a listener to kind of go back to and be like, “what was that thing?” I did want it to be texturally different and not just kind of one thing. I feel like the songs created that environment, they called for that. So that was what it became. It could have been a very different record. Initially Cass was gonna co-produce with me. He was still working on his record and the timelines didn't align. That would've been a totally different record. I'm really happy with how it came out and I think it was the record that I needed to make. It gave me some new building blocks to my world and comfortability. Also my first time recording in a studio.
MD: I love those little pictures in music. I feel more and more that I wanna create landscapes, sonic landscapes that are interesting and engaging in that way. That's an important part of my process in the studio too, is creating these moments or these scenes where there's something to follow and there's subplots, basically within the instrumentation or the harmony. There’s so much you can do, obviously in the studio, especially [In Rainbows and Blonde] are massive studio records. Frank took years and years to make that. And I think that following whatever is feeling engaging in the studio is such a privilege. It's like the opposite of making music just by yourself with a guitar. I feel like I've collaborated a lot in the studio. And mixing with Phil, who you worked with, on the record that I just made – I'm refusing to call it an EP because I don't think that it makes sense to belittle a collection of songs that you worked really hard on just because there's, like, not enough of them. “Full length” records are confusing enough.
SBT: It's seven songs?
MD: Six songs, yeah. I wrote them, almost all, in the studio with the exception of one which I had pretty much finished before I got there. This could have been an expensive and horrible mistake, but Luke Temple, who I started it with, and my friend Jeremy Harris, who's engineering and running the studio, I tried to cancel with. And they were like, “Just come.” I was like, I don't have any songs yet. I've been on tour. I had taught this songwriting class at the School of Song and asked them to sort of reverse engineer my songwriting process. I realized there's not just one process. Also when I took the magnifying glass to my process as I thought it was, I rebelled against it, which I think is something that I do often creatively. But there was no plan. I had a palette, but that's not the palette that we ended up using. It was terrifying in the moment and I felt out of my depth at times, but then realized, you know, we never really get to see what happens in a studio when people are writing. We also don't get to see all of the mistakes that are made. I feel like working in studios and working on deadlines and having so much riding on every record, although I'm trying not to do that as much, but emotionally riding on every record, and being like, this is the greatest thing I've ever done. Philip really helped me with this, mistakes are actually valuable.
SBT: Mm-hmm.
MD: And what I think is the best take or what I think is the best presentation of a song, sometimes I'm just too close to it. That's why I've really gotten into collaboration, not necessarily writing, but sometimes with writing. Especially with lyrics. There are lyrics that I hold onto so much where I'm like, this is so revealing. And no one knows and they're all just gonna project onto it. I did my first record similarly. I just used what I had and did it all myself with one mic and was just like, I don't know what I'm doing. Some days I would spend trying to figure out what a buzz was. I was troubleshooting all day and the mic was just not plugged in. That was in 2017, you know? Now it's exciting when you throw other people into the mix and I feel like your sound has really expanded in that way too. I'm excited to see where that building block, as you said, takes you next because there are no rules and we can just do whatever we want.
SBT: I feel like your new release, Something Wrong, that song, I feel like I was so enchanted with it when I heard it. I just kind of played it over and over again. This is so cool to see Meg kind of writhe around and try on voices. It just felt like you were trying to say, I can walk in these different lights and forms. The voice, the autotune. I don't know, it was exciting. I do view you as such an artist-artist in your writing and your lyrics, but also in your playing. I think why you're such a strong artist is because the two are so woven together. You're definitely guiding the listener and it's not just with the lyrics. Some people are really strong at just lyrics and some people are really strong at the musicality, but I feel like the two are twins in a way. It always demands you to pay attention to it. I don't view it as background, easy listening, Spotify thing. It was cool to see you use those tools to – I don't wanna say reign it in – but to just kind of throw it at the wall and not need to be so precious about it. Obviously, you can make a really rich, whatever song. Not to say that this new song isn't, but it definitely feels more free in a way. I think that's exciting and cool and a new thing to also allow yourself to step into that. Playing just to play, playing to have fun. I say that, generally, I start writing a good song when I set no intention, but to just kind of play to play.
MD: Yeah.
SBT: Playing with blocks or some shit. And that's when something comes up. If I generally set an intention: I'm gonna write a song today… It has happened, but it's kind of rare that something comes out that I don't hate the next day. I think we're both growing in our artistry and that's exciting. That's all I wanna do, you know? But I think it can show itself in different ways. It doesn't have to show itself like, “And now I'm making a big studio record!”
MD: Especially since one can do so much at home that can sound like a big studio record, to a degree. I feel like that's changing more and more, for better or worse. I mean, it's really cool that way. It's way more accessible to people to make pop songs in their bedroom. An alternative title for [my] record was Music Music.
SBT: Wow.
MD: It's music music, for fun! Also, you're right in the fact that I was trying on these different voices. I've played in Perfume Genius now for three years. Mike does that all the time. He sings in all these different voices and a lot of artists that I love do that. Bowie is such a great example. Every record sounds so different.
SBT: Totally.
MD: I think it's easy to make the same record, right? When I made Funhouse, I went to Sasami [Ashworth] and I was like, okay, I have these songs. I don't wanna make a Placeholder II. I could do that. I could probably do it in a week. I know how to do it, but what inspires, if I may say us, as artists, is what we don't understand, what's uncomfortable. For me, this record was me stepping into my transness in more of a serious way or playful way. Sometimes they feel like the same thing. My voice can do a lot of things and my first record sounds so different than Funhouse because my voice changed, because I wanted it to. Also, everybody can sing really low and weird, and sing really high. It was really fun to hear people's feedback and be like, “I didn’t even know it was you singing on this one song.” I think trans representation, queer representation, is a very loaded subject for me and I'm still figuring out how to talk about it. But, I think a place to talk about it is within the music and just letting the music speak for itself.
SBT: Totally.
MD: It can be subliminal or it can be really overt.
SBT: Yeah.
MD: My philosophical question on that topic is what does being queer mean to you?
SBT: Wow. What does being queer mean to me? I don't know. I think it's…freedom. Maybe it sounds cheesy or weird, but I think I spent so much of my life feeling so trapped and suppressed and confused and guilty. I think queerness for me is just freedom to change and explore and to allow myself not knowing; allow myself the ability to be without suppression and submission, in a way. I feel like the woods that I grew up in, the woods are pretty gay to me. I feel like when I'm in nature and communing with myself and nature, I feel more like myself and more at peace and less fearful. I feel curious and I feel engaged and calm. And excited. That's kind of maybe a vague answer, but I feel like that's such a wild question to answer eloquently. But, that's what it feels like to me. That's what it means. I feel that freedom and that connection in music as well. I do feel that communion with myself and that real meeting of whatever, whoever I am. It's hard to label oneself. I'm still exploring it, but I think it just means freedom to do that and to not feel ashamed. What about you?
MD: I love thinking about queerness and connecting it to music. Feeling permission. “Freedom” is such a complicated word, I think, but having permission to not know. I think that's really beautiful. I've been struggling with the idea of queerness and especially queerness representation in music because I've been out of the closet living my gay life since I was 14 or 15. I was outed by a family member and there were no queer people around me. And in my head, up until recently – and I'm still trying to figure it out – “queerness” meant like lesbian or gay or something that was related to the people you choose to have sex with and the people you choose to be in relationship with intimately, I think lately I've been coming to understand that there's a language problem in this conversation and in music journalism, I guess. Just representation. It really confuses and upsets me when people are on a queer pride playlist cover or something when, in their day-to-day life, they are still benefiting from heteronormative relationships and privilege. And as a white person, I think that on the spectrum of being marginalized, I'm barely on it, but I identify as trans and I've been identifying as gay or “not straight” and that's never ascended my career. It's only become cool to be queer recently, I think.
SBT: For sure.
MD: In a capitalistic sense and a corporate sense. I'm just starting to question my understanding of “queer.” The language has changed colloquially and I really like framing it as the permission to not know, because I think, I agree with you, heterosexuality is predetermined. You don't question if you know, you just are living in this binary heterosexual society.
SBT: A lot of undoing, you know?
MD: Absolutely.
SBT: This constant unraveling. It's not something that I feel like is figured out in a day or whatever. It’s a lifetime.
MD: I've been wanting to discuss it with my friends, and you’re my friend, because there's so much what I consider misrepresentation in queer press and journalism in music. Anybody can kind of say they're “queer.” Especially if they already have a following. Then all the people who are desperate for diversity or representation are like, “oh, you’re queer, you've mentioned that before.” I'm curious about how queer people, how I understand them to be, feel about that. I don't think it's talked about that often. I've been beginning to think that maybe it's just a language problem. “Queer” doesn't really mean that in your day-to-day intimate life, you're not feeling the impact of homophobia, you know what I mean? It doesn't have exclusivity with gender or sexual preference or relational intimacy in a coupling sort of way.
SBT: I definitely agree with you. Yes, I'm queer or not straight, but I never really wanted to talk about it in press because I don't really feel like I'm like the poster child. I felt like it was something that people were more interested in for clicks than asking me about my person. It's different for me. All the while, it's still something that I'm unraveling and figuring out.
MD: Totally.
SBT: There was a time when everyone was being pressured to put their pronouns on their profile and I felt really freaked out by that because I was like, this is something I'm still working through; learning about myself. I don't wanna be not helpful or whatever, but I also don't feel like that's right for me to do, right now. I don't know, it's just so complicated, but it's also not so complicated. I do think that there is a problem that we're experiencing right now where really heteronormative people are the poster children for LGBTQ-whatever world and music.
MD: I feel like you're in – not a different space in that with me – I think we're in very similar spaces with it, but I've been a little annoyed lately. I think it's important to talk about, even if it's dramatic or it’s gay, because I think you see the message more: “Be your gayest self, you can be queer!” I'm gonna be a little bold right now – and this isn't personally directed to anyone in particular, but I don't think it's fair that people have to figure it out publicly, right? People are still figuring it out and that totally should be allowed. I don't know how to talk about my feelings about it without sort of doing the opposite of what I wanna do, which is make people feel like they can figure it out, right?
SBT: Sure.
MD: The last thing that I wanna do is be gatekeep-y in that way of being like, “You're not queer because you have a boyfriend.” That's limited. That's the same limited thinking, just twisted to the other side. I'm still figuring out how to talk about what it is. I think that is frustrating to me, but I think part of it has to do with what you're saying where people are still figuring it out. Most people don't have to figure it out and then write about it in Rolling Stone.
SBT: Or be asked about it in an interview. It makes it so clinical in a way where it's something that should be – I don't know the word for it – but it should be something that blossoms organically and you don't have to feel fearful about it. That's what I wish for everyone, obviously, and myself. It's also not a way that I particularly wanna take up space because I don't feel like I'm that far down the line where I have anything very helpful to say.
MD: But you might.
SBT: I do think I have a particular experience given my extremely religious upbringing.
MD: Totally. I agree.
SBT: When I was making my first record and starting press, I was beating myself over the head after seeing something come out because you're talking to these people like they're not journalists and they're just your friend or at the coffee shop that you work at. And that's fine. It's not that I don't wanna be honest, but there is a particular thing that journalists are doing, which makes sense, it's their job, but they're getting something that's clickable and really soundbitey. Like, respect, everybody's doing their thing, but it's also something I think has been a bit frustrating to see space taken up by people that I don't really know if they're… I don’t really know how helpful it is.
MD: I agree. This isn't a personal takedown of asking about queerness. I think this is good and I think people need to talk about it. I'm not like, in cahoots of trying to sabotage talking about queerness, but I think it's an important conversation. I agree with you. I think it's the taking up space, with also at least from my perspective, people figuring it out, taking up space, in the majority, and then also still having the safety of their heterosexual, cisgender relationship in their private life and every other moment when they're not being interviewed.
SBT: Yeah.
MD: But if they post something where they're like, “I'm enjoying my gay little life,” but then they will always have this safety and security of a cisgender, heteronormative, straight passing relationship. If they go into a grocery store in the South, nobody's gonna question their identity.
SBT: For sure.
MD: I think that that is where it gets frustrating for me is because that is also a misrepresentation of, and an erasure of, a lot of black and trans people who have been so brutalized throughout their lives, not even identifying as queer. Why are the queer mainstream, indie rock representatives of queerness still at home, feeling the safety of their heterosexual privilege? But I wanna find the language and I think it's important to have conversations like this.
SBT: I agree. I feel frustrated by it and I feel it's not moving in a very particularly inspiring way.
MD: But it's both. It does give people permission to figure things out and not know.
SBT: True. I'm also not throwing darts at anyone. It's a delicate thing to talk about in a way, but I think what I don't like is that we can't have these conversations.
MD: Yeah.
SBT: We have to be so fearful around it. I think that's my frustration. I think we should just be able to talk about this stuff and not be scared of retaliation or someone thinking you're being sub-whatever. It's just kind of an all around conversation. Yes, we're talking about it in the realm of indie rock, but I feel like it's just everywhere. It's ingrained in the culture of capitalist queer identity. It's upsetting and I feel like people that have paved the way for us as artists and as gay people, would kind of be like throwing their hands up right now.
MD: As soon as capitalism starts selling you a minority, I feel like that's always a red flag.
SBT: Right.
MD: I think about Madonna, back when she was co-opting all the vogue stuff. Those are black, gay and trans people who started that whole movement and then Madonna did it, so everybody was like, “It's in.” And I feel like that's the biggest red flag is when the system that you are taken advantage of by starts telling you that they care about you or something. I wish there was a round table, right? I think people are having these conversations, at least I'm trying to more, outside of the structure of what we're doing right now, which is manipulative. Maybe people are having these conversations, but just not in such a public way.
SBT: I think people are fearful of fucking up publicly.
MD: Absolutely.
SBT: You said something that we can perceive as “cancelable.” You're done. And obviously nobody wants that. What I'm saying is there should be joy and freedom in an organic movement, like a tree growing and shedding and being. Thinking: this thing has transformed my thinking on this. That's how I've grown up in my life, how I've grown to understand myself and my own desire and my own fear of my own desire. It's so complex and beautiful and disgusting. It's exciting, it's cool, it shouldn't be so wrapped in fear and that's what makes me really bummed out about it. It feels like the opposite of what it should be right now, but I'm excited and grateful that you asked me about it. There's no, like, here's my little answer, tied in a box, right? It's messy and it's who the fuck knows? But I also think we can do much better. I feel like it kind of boils down to capitalism.
MD: And language, I think too.
SBT: Yeah. Just the English language, in general, is the worst, I think. We have such limited expression and limited emotion and limited language for these things. It's something that I'm interested in talking about and hearing others talk more about. And people, myself included, don't wanna be wrapped in fear about it. I was talking to someone the other day about SOPHIE and how she was just so inspiring and it just made me so excited to hear what she was gonna make next and that's, to me, a gay icon. Gone too soon, but really changing the game. Katie Day is also one of my favorite artists ever and I feel so underrepresented of what she's doing and creating. And people rip her off. There are so many people making music that I feel like, because they don't have a platform or because they're not the typical idea of whatever, they're not getting the time of day.
MD: Like a pretty, cisgender, white girl?
SBT: Yeah. It's upsetting to me. I'm always trying to scream about music. I don't even feel like I have that big of a platform, you know?
MD: We both do have platforms. We’re on one right now.
SBT: I feel like that constantly, where I'm like, no one gives a fuck what I'm saying. But I do have a platform so it's important to talk about these things or talk about artists I like that I think that people should listen to and should give them money to make music. It's when you start questioning; why am I so special that someone wants to give me some money to make music? I don’t know. These are obviously things that we should all be examining. I don't think there's ever gonna be a point in human history where it's like, we’re done.
MD: We figured it all out. I think that that's the importance of making art. I do feel like you do this in your work and I try to do it in mine and there are questions that can't be eloquently answered. That's the purpose of art, I think, is to express, you know, when language fails us, that's what art can do. It gives me hope in making art and it gives me hope in the other people that are making art that I will discover, whether it's from popularity or just happenstance, it gives me hope, discovering those things that express the inexpressible.
What's the last book you read that was inspiring, that expressed something that you couldn't express in language?
SBT: Hmm.
MD: Or poem. I know you're a big Mary Oliver fan.
SBT: I love Mary Oliver, but I think the last book that I read, I read it in a day. It's also not super long. Meg Remy wrote this book Begin by Telling.
MD: From U.S Girls? Cool.
SBT: It’s her life in literal chapters. It's really intense and it's really gnarly. She's also able to view things with an outsider's perspective and a lens. I don't like using the word “raw.” It is just so gnarly. It feels like you're examining some carnage in the areas, but she's able to take steps back and view it with compassion, these really wild circumstances that are just her life. She's just like, “This is just what happened.” you know? I love the title, Begin by Telling. It's about how to be an artist, how to make something, how to talk about something is just by talking about it. Transforming it into something new. She often uses characters or these vignettes of conversations. I love that so much. It's so inspiring in her work. I think she's, all around, such a legend. But that book was really inspiring. I think I try to ask questions in my work because I don't ever wanna give the impression that I have the answer, but it also was really inspiring to have someone kind of like plainly state facts. It's not someone trying to convince you of something. It's just the truth, which is actually harder to portray in a song or in writing, I feel like, than people would think.
MD: Or give the illusion of truth. You believe the narrator.
SBT: You're the one rowing the boat, you can steer it in whichever way you want. What about you?
MD: The title of your last record sort of reinforces what we were just talking about and I just wanted to name that. i don't know who needs to hear this. I think that's such a perfect title if you're self-identifying as figuring it out too. That's like part of being human. I'm still figuring it out too. There are always gonna be people who are figuring it out and that's so relatable. You don't know who needs to hear this. It's what keeps me obsessed with art too is because that happens to us, right? You don't know when you're gonna stumble upon something that you really needed to hear. The last book I read, in almost a day, was Rachel Cusk’s Second Place. Short read. I love her writing so much. I think she talks about marriage in this really interesting way. I've never been married, but she talks about intimacy in this way that seems like she's writing from the inside but somehow still separate. The book is kind of about everything. I can't really say what it's about. It's about this unreliable narrator. You have a house guest and then chaos sort of ensues, but it's more her internal experience rather than an external one. I recommend it. I can't really say much about it because it felt like it was about life and self worth and evil love, self hatred, but also validation and art in general, too. And art's purpose.
