today’s audio is a scrap of an idea from the summer of 2020. the game prompt was SOUND OF DRINKING. i put my guitar in, a rare for me, open tuning, made a little beat, then just sang whatever i wanted, in whatever shape it wanted to take in the moment. a couple days later, i took that demo and put it into the music program logic to explore some other sounds that might fit into the world of the song. to me, it came out sounding like a kind of prayer of gratitude, very mindful very demure.
like everyone else that summer, i was stuck at home, in an uncertain world, the shape of which was still coming into focus. i had spent the previous months, happily writing small songs i never expected to see the light of day. the idea of making KISS OFF KISS was just about to blossom and then very quickly ramp up. but in august of 2020, i was still blessedly just making things for my own enjoyment.
it’s a wonderful thing to make art without expectation. commercial potential, audience reaction, even practicality of execution figured nowhere in my process. i didn’t have to imagine who would enjoy this song, how i would sell it, how might i perform it for a live audience, not even how i would effectively record it. it was simply a daily devotional on its own terms, a perfect embodiment of my writing philosophy SONGS ARE NOT PRECIOUS.
to be clear, i also have no worries now about presenting it in this context. that’s the beauty of Fax of Life and the reason i created it. here, i have deliberately built a container to hold ideas, musings, and raw thoughts without hints at future work. i feel no pressure at all to build these newsletters and episodes toward some polished, coherent piece of work that i will then market and sell. sometimes though, i do feel vulnerable in the sense of how personal work is before the hard shell of presentation gets lacquered and layered on top. but to be honest, not that many people follow or listen to Fax of Life, so it feels cozy and safe in here.
i will say, this little tunelet has floated around my computer over the years. for awhile, it was living in a folder that was exclusively for songs from the game. then at some point, when i did decide to make KISS OFF KISS, i moved it over to that folder as a potential candidate for that group of songs. when i went to find it today, it was living in a folder assigned to my musical-memoir project, VIRGINIA. something about the syncretic meeting of the west african-style beat, the appalachian drone of the guitar, and the devotional form of the lyrics feels like it belongs in that project as it grows. but the best part is i don’t know. maybe this tune is a hint at a more thought-through song, maybe its texture becomes underscore for a moment, maybe it is a vestigial tail that will eventually be absorbed and be only an echo in a more finished scene.
hey yall get your tires pumped and your coolers packed. it’s time for summer roadtrips!
i am so looking forward to spending this weekend, memorial day, in my home state of virginia. i’ll be at the virginia womens music festival on sunday may 25 and then leading a hiking concert in richmond on may 26. come join us.
as you know from last episode, my dear friend jill sobule died may 1. i’m hosting and performing at a tribute to her at the iron horse in northampton may 31. the line-up includes madeleine peyroux, marshall crenshaw, wesley stace, kris delmhorst, heather maloney and many many more. tickets are here. there are also tribute shows for jill all over the country in the coming weeks. you can find a complete list here. consider attending one to celebrate our beloved friend. all money raised will go to the ACLU and a foundation jill’s family is setting up.
speaking of, i will be stepping in for jill july 19 at the women of rehoboth beach DE pride celebration. comedian karen williams is also on the bill.
please check out the rest of my summer and fall at erinmckeown.com/shows. i’ve got in-the-round shows with my game siblings and long tour with friends Welcome to Night Vale throughout the midwest US. and don’t forget in 2026 to mark your calendars for the chicago premiere of my musical OUT HERE and join me on my 10 day trip around scotland.
thanks as always for listening!
i grew up catholic. my parents are both from large immigrant families where catholicism was everything. it outlined your social life, your education, and your spiritual practice. while i didn’t have such an all consuming relationship, catholicism was still a huge part of my childhood. i give this upbringing credit for instilling in me a sense of awe and ritual, which i have since exported to my relationship with the natural world and my practice of art making.
for most of my life, there was only one pope, John Paul II. his picture was everywhere in my church, parish recreation hall, and catechism classrooms. it was in several places in my grandparents’ home. he was quite the pope, as far as popes go and my limited interrogation of the office itself.
as i grew older and more skeptical of the church, as i began to form my own ideas about spirituality, sexuality, and values, i also grew more antagonistic toward the pope and less reverent of the symbol. by the time sinead oconnor ripped up a picture of john paul on SNL in 1992, i fully supported her action. in 1992 i was well past my confirmation, and i had made a decision to leave catholicism behind. i have never taken it up again.
over the years, as more and more horrific allegations of the church’s sexual abuse scandals have come to light, my reaction has been disgust and a kind of “duh, is water wet?” attitude. of course it’s awful, it’s the church.
however, pope francis, elevated in 2013, confused my long-standing disregard for popes. i think he surprised most everyone, in and out of catholicism, with his expansive view of who could be welcome in the church. it seemed at moments like francis was proposing a way for me to hold both the mystery and reverence of my childhood relationship with the church with my current critiques of its cruelty, abuse, and exclusion.
but i never fully believed that this was possible, and frankly, i didn’t need to. my spiritual life is full without reconciling my catholic childhood. and indeed, pope francis walked back some things he said. pope’s gonna pope. he did some good things, he did some bad things. in short, a pretty good pope, but not my spiritual leader.
as everyone knows, we got a new pope last week, an american pope. and i am fascinated. an american pope has american brothers who say dumb stuff and are MAGA supporters, which everyone can relate to. an american pope eats pizza and likes baseball and has friends from high school that we hear from. i am all in on this. anything that punctures power, brings a person into every day life, is my kind of spirituality. so far this seems to be the ethos of leo too, like francis a missionary pope who devoted his works to the less resourced and to those who bear the consequences of the decisions of people in power. i think he’ll probably be a pretty good pope, but also… a pope. that is to say the leader of a global corporation with a deeply violent, misogynistic history.
but besides the resonance with the pope’s american-ness, what else is driving my fascination? the answer came to me the other night when i was catching up on some of my favorite television, the long-running british series, call the midwife.
if you aren’t familiar, call the midwife is basically a soap-opera that follows a set of midwives, some of whom are also nuns, in mid-20th century london. it is schmaltzy, lesson-oriented, nostalgic, and for me, tear-inducing. i love to watch it and weep copiously.
one of the plot threads is always the shape of the nuns’ lives. how they became nuns, the ways being a nun bumps up against the modern world, who they were before they were nuns. and their continuing choice to devote themselves to a monastic life. the seasons do a great job of showing the nuns losing then refinding their faith, doubting then reaffirming their nun-life choices. i assume this is realistic, but i don’t actually know any nuns to check on this.
but it is this seeming simplicity and daily devotion, this ebbing and flowing of faith and purpose, that i think i relate to most. and maybe also why the new pope has caught my spiritual eye. i too have devoted myself to a singular, spiritual purpose: making art, and many times i have indeed described myself as an art monk.
in this moment, i must take a very Fax of Life digression to explain that when i was growing up there was an incredible wide receiver for the washington DC NFL team named art monk. art monk is an icon. you cannot have grown up where and when i did and not immediately think of him when the words “art” and “monk” are near each other.
“big money” art monk… also known as “the quiet man”.
as a player he was graceful, elite, and consistent. as a personality, he was steady, no nonsense, even shy at times, the opposite of today’s modern, preening wide-receiver types (which to be clear, i also love). art monk was a true friar of the deep threat, an abbot of excellence, a supplicant kneeling at the foot of the route tree, and a three time super bowl champion. i love that art monk, and i love including this resonance within the conception of myself as a current art monk.
i keep my life simple, steady, and focused. i aim for consistency and excellence, with humility. i enjoy the quiet solitude of my rural living. i deeply rely on the rituals of my life in order to create space for creative thought. when left to my own devices, my mind has always contemplated rhyme schemes, music theory, the cinematic persona of bette davis, writing structures beyond the 5 paragraph essay. i care some about earthly possessions, of course, and i am not a sexual prude or celibate by any means, but every decision i make in my life is in service to my ability to continue to make things - be that music, writing, or art in any larger sense.
i was having a hard conversation with someone the other day, about the message of a piece of art we were sending out into the world. they were wondering if i would be able to get behind this message, since my life choices are not reflected in the art itself. to be specific, can i make art about marriage and children if i have, in this person’s formulation, constructed my life against or to the exclusion of them.
i think it’s a genuinely valid question, but it also gave me a chance to articulate something important about being an art monk.
i do not make choices or construct my life in opposition or against traditional practices like marriage or having children. those things are not the center of any world that i have ever orbited. i am not married or a parent because i never wanted to be and don’t resonate with those practices. it’s as if they are from another culture, not one that i ever felt described me. i grew up on another, different planet, the art monk planet. i am curious about your customs here on earth, but just because i don’t participate in them doesn’t mean i judge, hate, or reject them. they just don’t have a place in my art monk cosmology.
in the art monk universe, i make choices for independence, quiet, stability, creative space, and freedom in all forms. i find this incredibly satisfying, fulfilling, and inspiring on a daily basis. crucially, these choices allow me to be of most service to as many people as possible. not only on a daily basis as your queer uncle who can pick up the childcare slack, but also taking on the task of responding to the world in realtime, of driving the art ambulance. and lest anyone think i am missing out on something, you cannot miss out on something you do not want or think about. much like nuns or popes, i have more than enough of what i need, from a life that looks lacking to others.
this is also not to say, that i don’t have moments of doubt about being an art monk, or welcome the curiosity and questions. my faith in my art monk-ness has and will in the future waver. there are sacrifices and consequences i face because of my choices for art and making. but to this point, i have continually found myself returning to the lifestyle and worldview of singular focus and daily devotion to making things.
i have to wonder, would there ever be a possible world where we shift the paradigm so that being an art monk is more supported, or not so rare and bewildering to folks? is there a world where instead of asking, “do you have children?”, we ask, “so, do you have any albums?” or where one might make airport bar or party small talk by asking, “how long since you wrote your first play?”
i’ll leave you with this - are you an art monk? if so, what are your choices for art? what have been the consequences to your devotions? if you’re not an art monk, do you know any art monks? do they bewilder you or make sense? does the concept make you reflect on your life positively? negatively? tell me more! i’ll be in my little house, with my big dog, listening.
xo erin
carl supports a cure for NF2.
¡ME GUSTA! : SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS!
an outstanding episode of radiolab about nature, the nature of voices, and the creation of the universe
related: ORION magazine’s queer ecologies issue
i loved this spanking from the inimitable and important john cameron mitchell
how lucky are we to have access to a professionally shot version of a west-end musical?? and add to it it’s the epochal “next to normal”!! is it my favorite musical? probably not! but it is marvelous and a beautiful example of the form. bonus: *outstanding* performances from the cast. broadway figure out how to do this for shows besides HAMILTON, please!!
i think pete rose is a chump and a jerk, at best, and shouldn’t be in the baseball hall of fame. but here’s a list of 8 myths about his compatriots in ignominy, the chicago blacksox.
whoa whoa whoa this sculpture is amazing. only in the instagram era.
how usher wrote his commencement speech at emory
UPCOMING SHOWS
2025
now - June 2026 - Fredericksburg VA
Fredericksburg Area Museum
Out And About: The Walk-in Closet
VISIT
May 25, 2025 - Kents Store VA
Virginia Women’s Music Festival
TICKETS
May 26, 2025 - Richmond VA
Hike & Concert @ Bryan Park
TICKETS & INFO
May 31, 2025 - Northampton MA
Tribute to Jill Sobule
TICKETS
June 27, 2025 - Bryn Mawr PA
The Point, 20th Anniv
TICKETS
FAMILY GAME NIGHT TOUR
July 9, 2025 - Boston MA
with Matt The Electrician, Natalia Zukerman, Kris Delmhorst
TICKETS
July 10, 2025 - Exeter NH
with Matt The Electrician, Natalia Zukerman, Kris Delmhorst
TICKETS
July 11, 2025 - Beacon NY
with Matt The Electrician, Natalia Zukerman, Stephen Claire
TICKETS
July 13, 2025 - Windsor MA
Hiking Concert with Matt The Electrician, Natalia Zukerman
INFO
July 12, 2025 - Austerlitz NY
Hiking Concert at Edna St. Vincent Millay Estate
TICKETS
October 22, 2025 - Austin TX
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 23, 2025 - Dallas TX
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 24, 2025 - Oklahoma City OK
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 25, 2025 - Lawrence KS
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 27, 2025 - St Louis MA
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 28, 2025 - Indianapolis
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 30, 2025 - Toronto ON
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
October 31, 2025 - Detroit MI
As The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
2026
April 10-May 10, 2026 - Chicago IL
World Premiere of OUT HERE @ Court Theatre
TICKETS & INFO
Aug 17-27 - Scotland
10 Day Tour of the Scottish Borderlands
TICKETS & INFO
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