time is meaningless, right?
what we want to forget and remember
i’m writing to you from my couch at home in western massachusetts, where i have most certainly *not* been the last month. i’m home for a minute after playing 17 shows in 21 days across 13 states. the last 3 weeks have been many things... exhausting, sweet, depressing, hilarious, tense, and… also did i mention exhausting?
i turned 44 years old during this little run, and friends, i feel every one of those years (and more) on my body. in fact, more than half of those years have been spent like i spent the last month - driving, carrying heavy things, not eating well, not sleeping enough. it takes a toll.
as i wrote last month, this is a very fraught and weird time to be out of the road. i am trying my best not to make any permanent judgements or final decisions on my future travels based on this last month. that’s a project in itself. i want to thank the many of you who responded to last month’s essay with encouragement, praise, and to share meaningful experiences with my music. thank you as well to those who have come out to shows. while the numbers have been hard to swallow, you all have been marvelous.
as a reminder, one leg of the #KISSOFFKISS tour remains, a lovely run of west coast shows with my pals The Cabin Project opening then being my band for the night. ticket links and info for those are listed here and below.
2022 is also taking shape, and i’m pleased to announce a few red letter days for the calendar. there are three productions of my musical Miss You Like Hell happening around the country: merced CA, allentown PA, and fayetteville AR. details and ticket links are listed here and below. stay tuned for more productions to be announced, and maybe some visits to them on my part.
i’ll also be reuniting with my Welcome To Night Vale family for a run of shows in the late spring. waaaaaay back in fall 2020, i was supposed to do some dates and these are them.
the other day, on a long drive home from the end of tour, i stopped in my hometown. i drove to the house i grew up in, where my family no longer lives. i parked my car and approached the little culvert and drainpipe at the top of the driveway. i squatted down, brushed some leaves away, and there it was. beneath a scrawled “79” (as in, the year 1979) was a small handprint in the concrete. my dad was handy, and one day when i was about 2, he redid the housing for the drainpipe and had his kids press their tiny hands into the concrete as it set. now here i was, 42 years later placing my hand in the same spot, the same hand with its weird bent middle finger tip and ring finger that juts out at an odd angle. was it magical? did i feel a shiver run through me? i’m not sure! i took the pic and ran before the current occupants could wonder who the elf in the blaze orange ski hat was, crouched in their front ditch.
time is meaningless, right? i constantly marvel at how elastic and strange it is. 17 shows in 21 days felt like a lifetime. 42 years of rain, snow, leaves and weather was still legible in an instant. i hope i forget a lot of what’s been happening this fall - the debt, the disappointment, the covid exposure scares. but i hope what i don’t forget is the exhilaration of playing with a band, the laughter of friends in my van, the sweet faces smizing at me behind their masks, and the feeling of my warm, confident, grown hand on that cool concrete.
one more thing! i want to update everyone on the #KISSOFFKISS micro-granting project. so far we’ve raised enough to give out two grants!! and i’ve gotten around 10 nominations. there’s a month to go with the project, so please consider Pay What You Want / Pay What You Can and nominate someone you think should receive a micro-grant. i would love it if we could get to three grants before the project wraps up at the end of the year!
x erin
¡ME GUSTA! : SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS
maybe you saw the meta-commentary, maybe it (thankfully) passed you by, but the actual story of the Bad Art Friend is mindblowingly nuts.
speaking of mindblowingly nuts, read this story from the 1953 new yorker. i have never heard anything like it.
how ted lasso, a tv show i love, creates its crowd scenes.
THE dolly parton interview to end all interviews. her creative director matches her house clothes to her home decor!!!
i'm not that invested in kumail nanjiani's body drama, but this was a wonderful profile.
after years (?) of netflix telling me to watch "sex education" i did. now my life is complete.
i am a longtime fan of the podcast "heavyweight". this might be the best episode yet.
the sweet, mundane comfort of tiny plastic japanese toys.