today’s audio is my version of “neighbor song” by the wonderful Lake Street Dive. appropriately, it was suggested by my neighbor, emily.
emily and i have known each other for 23 years and counting. we’ve had many shapes to our friendship - we were romantic partners for 3 years; she was my manager for 10 years; we didn’t speak for a long stretch of time. now we are sounding boards for our diverging careers and generous ears to listen to everyday problems. our dogs are best friends. but for the last 18 years, in hard times and easy ones too, we have been my favorite thing: neighbors.
a few weeks ago, emily cut her hand badly in the kitchen and texted me for help. we spent the afternoon driving around trying to find a place to stitch up her wound. this is surprisingly hard, even if you understand that the pandemic isn’t over. it reminded me of the day, in the summer of 2020, when i was attacked by a dog on a census call. i had dog bites on the back of both my legs, and emily and i drove around trying to find a place to get treatment.
after emily had her hand stitched up, she thanked me for dropping everything to help.
“of course,” i said, “we’re neighbors.”
some people might have used the word “family”. emily did and does to describe what we do for each other. in fact, yesterday morning, she retold this moment to her sister and brother-in-law who were visiting.
“why don’t you use the word ‘family’”? everyone asked. “isn’t ‘neighbor’ so cold?”
au contraire mes voisins! this distinction between “family” and “neighbor”, between “neighbor” and “friend”, this is something i have thought alot about.
i have a fraught relationship with both the word “family” and the actuality of it. my family of origin has not been a positive experience. in fact it is a long time, defining feature of my life. i don’t talk about it often or publicly, but you can find some of it in my song “histories”.
some folks have really gone all in on the concept of “chosen family” - a term to describe the people we assemble around us to give consistent love and support in the ways that we need most. i know that this concept is very important to many people in the LGBTQ community, of which i count myself a member, but for me, i find it hollow.
“family” for me always means “family of origin”, and it is synonymous with loss, ache, unmet needs and hurt. on all sides. however you fall on the divide of what happened in your family, no one wants to lose those relationships. it goes against everything in our evolutionary makeup and the foundations of our cultures and societies. in the primal, tribal sense, family is food, protection, and context. for these reasons, people do extraordinary things and put up with violence, crime, and microaggressions of all sorts to stay in a family.
for some people this is what “family” means. for some people, like myself, the ache for another story, another outcome, never leaves. for me, a “chosen family” is well and good, but it is only adjacent to this fundamental ache, a pale, though useful, imitation of the life we wish we could have.
i know that my experience is not everyone’s, and i am genuinely happy for people that have had better experiences with family. for those of us that haven’t, may i suggest “neighbors”.
hey yall - popping in here from the glory of a new england spring to offer something quite cool. if you’re in the chicago-land area on june 9 or 10th, i’m inviting you to come see a presentation of my new musical in progress, OUT HERE. the link is below.
meantime, please continue to tell your friends and NEIGHBORS about “fax of life”. you can rate, review, and subscribe on Apple or Spotify, or if you want to support this project financially with a contribution of any size, you can subscribe here on substack.
meantime, check for ticks! they are insane this year!
a number of weeks ago, i wrote about how much i love football along with my curiosity and open-ness to jesus, as a loving friend. i got lots of wonderful responses, which is all i want from this pod-newsletter fusion. let’s talk!
one of them came from my friend brent bailey, a pastor in chicago. what i had written reminded him of a quote from the french philosopher and poet simone weil:
"Since, shortly before his death, Christ gave this [“Love one another”] as a new commandment to be added to the two great commandments of the love of our neighbor and the love of God, [thus] we can think that pure fellowship, like the love of our neighbor, has in it something of a sacrament."
this is what i love about neighbors! the sacrament of pure fellowship. a neighbor isn’t necessarily your brother or boss or co-parent. they might be as different from you as could be imagined. happenstance has brought you together (though someday i dream of a commune of widely spaced houses with my dearest friends), but because of this happenstance, you are in a shared, everyday existence. your weather is the same! and in new england this is no small thing.
i lean on my neighbors for many things - company on dog walks, important town news, the metaphorical cup of flour or sugar, which in reality is an ethernet cable or nail clippers for the dog.
we had a lot of big storms this winter, and neighbors were great places to land for heat, internet, a chainsaw, a snow blow, or a shower. my neighbors help take care of carl when i travel.
i can tend toward isolation, my mind loves to eat itself with worry or fear. i often lose myself in creative endeavors. it would be easy for me to go days without speaking to someone. but then i run into my neighbors at the post office, the local diner, or on a trail, and a quick smile and hello from someone who knows my life interrupts that spiral.
the older i get, the more my life seems to get taken up with logistics and admin - travel here or there, call this insurance agency or that cable company, schedule and reschedule meetings. i have many jobs, each with their own set of demands. i don’t always have enough time for my friends. but my neighbors, i see all the time and share tasks with. a cup of coffee on a sunday morning. warm company on a dog walk. taking someone’s recycling to the dump. i love the dump! these small things feel holy to me in their simplicity and consistency.
listen, i know what some of you are thinking - a bad neighbor can be the worst. i know. i have been bitten by a neighbor’s dog, which was awful. and we have had truly terrible news this week about people knocking on the wrong door, driving up the wrong driveway, and losing their life. but this is not neighborly. and it is not the higher purpose i am calling forth by using the word “neighbor” as my highest praise of a relationship.
it’s been a long time since i lived in an apartment, or any place where i had to share a wall with someone else, so the scenario in the Lake Street Dive song, isn’t a fresh one for me. but what i do like about the song so much is the give and take of the relationship. sometimes i’m the one making sex noise, sometimes it’s them. but the wall we share always gives me cause to reflect, be aware of my own life, and live in a shared present moment.
which is why my neighbor emily knew i would love the song.
x erin
ps - here is carl with his best friend, and neighbor, eleven.
pps - here i am carrying a log for my neighbor. we call it “hilltown cross-fit”.
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i swear this wasn’t me. but i swear it was.
in 2015 a breaching whale landed on tom mustill. it inspired him to write this incredible book.
speaking of whale speak, check out this 2 part episode from the great podcast OLOGIES, everything you ever wanted to know about dolphins. they are so incredible.
let’s make a rad insta video about the scientific uses of red cabbage.
newsflash: parrots to LOVE facetime!!! cw: the sound in this article made carl LOSE HIS MIND.
in the department of WTF/History, white man clarence king passed as a black man, married and had a whole family in brooklyn, while still maintaining a public career as a world-famous author, geologist and explorer. you cant make this shit up!!!
UPCOMING SHOWS
June 9, 10 - Chicago IL
Workshop Presentations of OUT HERE
RSVP
August 12 - Dalton MA
Scenic Songs Hike + Concert at Notchview
Save The Date!
Oct 14 - Nov 11 - Seattle WA
Miss You Like Hell at Strawberry Theatre
MORE INFO
If you have further questions or concerns about COVID protocols, please contact the venues directly.
Reminder, Erin does not appear in productions of Miss You Like Hell
neighbors