A Less Lonesome Border 🍊 🏔️ 🥕

Still rambling!

Hello everyone,

Happy Spring! I’ve just returned from a brief trip to Los Angeles with backyard-picked kumquats in my tow. I spent some time in the studio, and saw friends old and new (see playlist below) along the way.

While I write my next album, I’ve been playing intimate shows in my favorite places: a house show in LA, the sweetest record store in Paris, the Giorno Poetry Systems in NYC, and soon I’ll be in Montreal to play with an all-star bill & string quartet [🎟️ tickets here 🎟️]. It’s felt markedly different from touring, which takes us, breathless, to a different city every day. I’ve been appreciating the chance to immerse myself in one place for a few days & I feel so lucky that, no matter where I go, music is my landing place.

That brings me to a piece of writing I’m excited to share. Tom, the creator of one of my favorite music publications, Gold Flake Paint, asked me if I could contribute to his latest playlist with a song & my thoughts about it. I’ve wanted an excuse to write about one of my favorite songs for a long time and for whatever reason, I finally mustered the courage. Dear Nora has a residency in NYC this month, and I can’t attend any of the shows, but if you can, do snag a spot asap.

Here’s what I wrote about “Lonesome Border Pt.1” for today’s playlist:

While much of modern life, especially in America, is concerned with political lines, and how they’re controlled, Dear Nora’s “The Lonesome Border Pt. 1” turns a border into a simile for mapping frontiers of the psyche. There is something inevitable, and daunting, about personal growth: the passage is rarely sure-footed, surfacing grief, shame, frustration, and the vulnerability that transformation asks of us. It’s a time-honored cross borne by the songwriter, as in Leonard Cohen’s “In My Secret Life,” which speaks to the journey’s endless nature: “I’ll be marching through the morning / Marching through the night / Moving ’cross the borders of my secret life.” In Dear Nora’s portrayal, borders are “as unmoveable” as mountains, and their crossing is not so much a calling as a “curse,” rendering the passage all the more alienating.

Metamorphosis often materializes before we have fully grasped it, appearing like a distant mountain ahead of us as we begin the work of navigating it. Before we can orient ourselves in our new form, we’re faced with leaving behind the self we’ve outgrown. Perhaps my reading of “Lonesome Border” is partly due to a mondegreen—I’ve always misheard the word “loom” as “bloom” in the lyric “I sense the change in me / It loomed like a curse,” which evoked an image of constantly flowering plains—the fragile efflorescence mirroring, even mocking, ours. My biggest life-changing events, especially those I longed for, have asked me to open myself to change while simultaneously mourning the pain it took to get there. This song, and its companionship, have made the trek less lonesome.

I wonder if it’s human nature to draw hard lines, and to what extent it’s wired into the limbic system like fight-or-flight. If imperial borders are built from fear, explicitly to prevent movement, then it is our responsibility as humans to slowly dismantle them—culturally, politically, and emotionally—in search of a more expansive way of living alongside one another. That collective pursuit begins on the smallest scale with the individual, and our enduring willingness to be changed by the world around us. As Dear Nora suggests, there’s no better, or stranger, time than the present.

Here’s some of what I’ve been reading, watching, & shipping lately:

My 🥕SUSPENDED🥕 shirt took on a life of its own in Brooklyn. For those of you outside of NYC, we have a legendary food coop that suspends members who don’t do their shifts & I get a kick out of this subculture of badboyism. There are still a few left. :)

One of my favorite artists, Dynasty Handbag, just came out with a memoire and I went full fangirl & caught her reading while I was in LA.

Hailey Gates’ feature film, Atropia, is now streaming on Apple TV! I’m a fan, obviously. It’s so so good!

AND

If you’re ready for another playlist, I started one full of friends’ songs that I’ve listened to recently— most are recent releases, and some are just new to me. You can listen to it on Apple Music & (FINE!) spotify too.

Thanks for tuning in! And as always,

🖖 Keep reading 🖖,

Cassandra