Please to look at friendly train ty.
I couldn't be a part of this. Staying would just affirm what I think of as a deeply corrupt practice that is also an invasion of my privacy.
I've been trying to vote based on some irrational, capricious combo of essay quality, personal song resonance, and sadness coefficient.
This take has nothing to do with essay quality: strictly songwise, I would argue you are not in fact a hater but objectively correct.
Fintan O’Toole (@fotoole.bsky.social) on Trump’s meaningless war, all violence and no pretext, all means and no ends https://go.nybooks.com/4rrbXOP
It is in fact indisputably and undeniably beautiful, and I am immensely thankful it exists.
After putting the phone down I had so many more thoughts about what to say, but that's the thing right, with grief, complex grief especially, you can never say it all. Always another essay in there.
I appreciate you being able and willing to learn it openly and to share it with us, even while it's painful. The closure piece is fraught for sure, and I think we all probably have to come to terms in our own unique ways, but for everything else you sought, your essay did it all, for this reader. :)
Not that you need it from me, but if it helps at all to affirm—whatever you choose is 100% valid. For me, I feel like my ability to even enter a contest with such raw emotional material is a sign that I want to keep living with this, no matter how excruciating, and that's invaluable.
The reasons I even want to publicly share my grief experience are still so many and so mysterious. But you know what, I think the reasons people like what they like and vote for what they vote for are even more mysterious!
Having a grief essay in the contest is a bizarre experience for me. There's something I get out of writing the essay and sharing the essay that's totally separate from wanting recognition for it... I do want recognition too, I like trying to win things, but it's different needs.
Short interview I did with StoryStudio about their upcoming StoryBoard conference. If you haven’t applied yet, I highly encourage you to do so. I had a blast when I did it last year.
www.storystudiochicago.org/invaluable-f...
But 9 out of 10 B&S songs are desperately sad in one way or another so you can't go wrong.
OK sorry I can't resist. My personal choice would have been "Seymour Stein," which is about B&S turning down a big-money record deal because it would've forced them to compromise their artistic ideals.
I admit I was pretty damn surprised at that song being the choice for B&S when the draft went down, but @aesb.bsky.social makes a great case for it. Really gets to the question of how much it matters whether the music itself sounds sad. Like with most things, I'd say it depends.
@marchxness.bsky.social Life-imitating-art alert!
Spoiled getting two @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social essays back-to-back--yesterday's Patty (not)Loveless @marchxness.bsky.social essay and today's on sincere, meaningful, Carnegie-energy critique: "As I tell my students, art is the transmission of the human spirit. Literature is made by human beings."
That's exactly what I was thinking... don't know what's gonna happen, but just like Round 1 was way too early for y'all to match up, the same is true for us!
TBF infinitesimally is a very big word for a very small thing!
Gotta add to that mental highlight reel! I still semi-regularly replay big pickup 3s from *years* ago.
How about this one on "The Clown Prince of Baseball?"
"When he did finally make it to the big leagues, he hurt his arm and his playing days were over. But Schacht had something more than pitching ability. He had the talent to make people laugh."
sabr.org/bioproj/pers...
That's no joke!!
Thanks to @camelliagrass.bsky.social for introducing me to Sammy Kershaw, who was just a bit before my time, in her wonderful essay on "the way memory attaches to stuff." I honestly had no idea there was such a feminist male country singer at work in the early 90s!
marchxness.com#/1stround-gn...
Check out @erinkeane.bsky.social on "November Rain" and Axl Rose as Hamlet—an essay as epic as the song it covers! The sadness of faded glory, and of glory that really never should have been...
marchxness.com#/1stround-gn...
Hey y'all, my spouse-person @kathleenmrooney.bsky.social's essay on "You Don't Even Know Who I Am" by Patty Loveless is up today at @marchxness.bsky.social! Read & vote! (Read the other 7 essays that are up today too, OF COURSE)
This @emilylauracosta.bsky.social essay on "Runaway Train" is harrowing in so many ways; the astute meditations on sadness and fear struck me most:
"Does sadness, if not given room, if its origins are not explained and accepted, turn into this sort of fear?"
marchxness.com#/1stround-so...
"It’s a moving double portrait of a lose-lose situation, and I adore it for its irreducibility."
Sometimes things end and it's not clear why. Either there's no evident reason, or there's too many evident reasons to sort out.
And you can maybe only show it thru art.
marchxness.com#/1stround-so...
"Three mutually reinforcing processes that platform capitalism entangles in the publishing industry: the marked feminization of book work; the rise of a bibliotherapeutic vocabulary that grounds reading and writing as self-care work; and the growth of platform-based processes that cheapen content"
Two words—well, a word and a number—Elephant 6.
My essay about the summer of '97, Cat Power, and my metal heart is up on marchxness.com. Vote!
