Welcome to Take It or Leave It. Every month, sometimes a few times a month, Paid subscribers will receive a quick hit of things I’m loving. But this installment is free for everyone.
If you’d like to receive these content recommendations in your inbox, please consider becoming a Paid subscriber.
If not, all good. Take it or leave it ✌️
Ohio State football is back, which means it’s time for me to become even more unbearable. Natty champs. Ohio against the world. Horns down. You know the deal. I went to the home opener last weekend, and let’s just say: all Mannings aren’t created equal. I’ll leave it at that. But the Buckeyes’ defense looked phenomenal, Carnell Tate’s hands are better than ever, and the gridiron is still intrinsically linked with violence as the branding for US defense contractor Anduril, known for its AI-controlled drone weapons, is plastered all over Ohio Stadium.
In August, we celebrated my brother’s 21st birthday. One sister just started her first post-grad job, and another is getting ready to head into her senior year of high school. Elizabeth and I are celebrating four years of marriage in a few weeks, and Cheech is still convinced we’re taking him on our trip. I submitted my essay, “Native Tongue,” to a local arts publication, and it got selected to be featured in their upcoming issue. Also, I’ve had a few exciting writing projects published over the past month, so I’ll drop a list below just in case you missed them:
My latest newsletter essay explores the four years that Dijon took between his albums, Absolutely and Baby. Along the way, I examine my own relationship to time, what it affords me, and the fears that creep in. Music writer
called the essay an “all timer.”
For
’s newsletter, I wrote an essay about the “performative male” discourse. Also, got me out of poetry retirement to write a new poem for his newsletter. So much gratitude to Daisy & Tanner for opening up their kitchens and letting me cook. Subscribe to their newsletters.For the HubSpot blog, I wrote a guest post about my Substack journey and how I grew Feels Like Home to nearly 4,000 subscribers in less than three years without burning out. Couldn’t have done it without you, so thanks for making this possible.
I love you all. Keep keeping on & tidying up your corner of the world. We’re going to make it.
If you’re new to my newsletter and would like to get my essays and content recommendations sent directly to your email inbox, tap below to sign up for a Free or Paid subscription to Feels Like Home:
If you can’t commit to a Paid subscription but still want to support me and my work, here’s my Buy Me a Coffee page.
Something I watched
Elizabeth and I have been begrudgingly watching The Summer I Turned Pretty. We both read the books and love-hate the show just as much. Without spoiling too much, Season 3 has entered into uncharted territory. We’ve gone off book, and this road less traveled includes Belly, the show’s main character, bringing her mint green Away suitcase to the club. I thought I’d seen everything when Kevin Durant was scaring the h*es practicing his jumper during bottle service, but pulling up to the function with your luggage is peak absurdity. Wild work. Just when I thought Jenny Han couldn’t stoop any lower, she does this. Honestly impressive. Unrelated, but lately, committing to TV series has felt like being held at gunpoint. TSITP. Love Island USA. Big Brother. I’m doing it to myself and still can’t find a way to escape.
Songs I played
I’m actually mad at y’all because why didn’t you tell me “Folded” is the best song of the year? I heard it when we were hanging out with family, and my sister knew every word. Singing it like she wrote it. Had me thinking I did something wrong. I immediately went and saved it. Also, “Yamaha” is crazy. That man Dijon. Good lord. Justin Bieber surprise dropped his follow-up to SWAG yesterday, and it’s confirmed Dijon touched several songs on the album, including “BETTER MAN.” He’s exactly what people mean when they talk about a “generational run.” This may even transcend that. Dijon has had a hand in at least four of my favorite albums this year—three of which will likely be in my top five at the end of the year.
A podcast I listened to
Speaking of Dijon, I listened to this interview Dijon did with The FADER’s Alex Robert Ross. It’s an older interview from after Dijon released Absolutely. There’s a written version of the interview here. But it’s funny listening to the interview because it’s clear that he doesn’t just mind “happy accidents” in his music; he welcomes them in his life. Ahead of the conversation, they note that, in the background, you'll hear “some noise, birds chirping, a helicopter overhead, the artist's dog scratching at his front door.” These are the imperfections that Dijon not only invites into his creative process but craves. That’s what many fans of his Absolutely short film are drawn toward. The beer bottles littered everywhere. Knots of wires scattered on the table. Instruments lying in strange places. There was no “let’s clean this up for the camera.” That’s the experience Dijon wanted to recreate. A mirror of his mess where beauty lies in the imperfection. The beauty is the imperfection.
Something I read
In this essay for Hearing Things, writer Dylan Green does the thing I love doing. Weaving a web between artists and making connections that speak to something deeper in all of us. This kind of writing makes the world smaller. Within the artists’ stories, we see ourselves and the human truths that bond us. I hadn’t thought about Chance the Rapper and Earl Sweatshirt both getting their starts at the end of the Blog Era although I know it to be true. I was in high school listening to Earl’s debut mixtape, and the homies put me onto Chance in college. I was listening to tales about them growing up as I was growing up. Their aging is a reminder that I’m aging. Earl and I are the same age while Chance is a year older. We reckon with so many parts of ourselves before we hit 30, and we get to witness Chance and Earl unpacking these learnings on their newest records. I’ve especially loved Earl’s new album, Live Laugh Love. The title is a reminder of how simple it all can really be. At this point, my motivation is concise: I want to be good, and I want my people to be good. Those themes are evident on both Chance and Earl’s new albums.
Something that made me laugh
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Don’t ever tell me Columbus doesn’t have culture. How can you say that when this exists??
Something I keep thinking about
There’s this scene in Lady Bird where Lady Bird sits across from a nun, Sister Sarah Joan, who works at her school. The nun speaks shiningly of Lady Bird’s college essay where she talks about growing up in Sacramento. Throughout the movie, Lady Bird dreams of escaping Sacramento. But much to Lady Bird’s surprise, the nun tells her that she “clearly loves” Sacramento. Sister Sarah Joan notes how Lady Bird describes their city “so affectionately and with such care” in her essay. What Lady Bird calls “paying attention,” the nun calls “love.” She leaves Lady Bird with a question, “Don’t you think maybe they are the same thing: love and attention?” I find this moment so profound, especially after reading Kelefa Sanneh’s New Yorker piece on how music criticism lost its edge. “When I was growing up, a critic was a jerk, a crank, a spoilsport,” noted Sanneh. “I figured that was the whole idea.” That’s also how I misinterpreted criticism, which is why I felt so averse to it growing up. But much like Sister Sarah Joan, Hanif Abdurraqib taught me that criticism can be akin to love. In a conversation with The Nation’s Nawal Arjini, Abdurraqib asserts himself as a critic. “I’m here to be critical even, or especially, of the things I love—because if I’m not, I’m not doing my job,” he says. “But I think the fairest way to critique someone is out of love, or out of the feeling that you were let down in some way.” Later, he adds, “Critique, for me, has to be an act of love—or else it’s a waste of time.” Critique can also be love disguised as hate. To love anyone or anything is to open yourself up to the possibility of disappointment. Embedded within bearing witness and being present is the possibility of love. And even as our adoration and availability turn to dismay, love remains. Sometimes without us even realizing. I pay attention to the things I can’t stop paying attention to because I know there’s love in there somewhere. Even if that love points to something greater I hope for us all. As Sanneh remarked, there are “pleasures” in vinegar. The pleasures of paying attention.