HELLO FROM THE ADAM GNADE SUBSTACK

Chainsaw your garbage

Hey everybody,

These are stray lines I cut from the book I’m working on. (September 1st deadline’s looming like a muhfucker.)

• The three of us suffer through silent hours. The foundations have cracked and now the walls shiver under the weight of the roof. Is collapse inevitable when the weight above overpowers what supports it?

• In Bristol I tell Andrei Merce my get-rich-quick scheme is to write a new version of The Great Gatsby and call it The Greatest Gatsby.

• Jeremy Willis and I take the train to Coney Island and walk the desolate, rundown amusement park—the sky gray and the air warm, the smell of the sea with a hint of rot below the salt and kelp (and then the scent of vanilla cigars and waffles cones drifting past). He lights a cigarette and says, “Yeah. Well. This is kind of depressing.” I nod and tell him it’s fine because it’s also sad in a pretty way and he says, “My friend, sad in a pretty way is my bread and butter” and we laugh.

• I am not what I think I am.

• Listening to On Avery Island, I write the words “don’t take those pills your boyfriend gave you/you’re too wonderful to die” in Sharpie on the dusty beige shade of my bedside lamp. It’s a pep-talk, and I’m earnest about it, but looking at the lamp at night I beat myself up over the “wonderful” part of Jeff Mangum’s lyrics because my mind screams inside itself, “But you are NOT wonderful.” I take the lamp out to the curb one morning after staying awake for two days and leave it in the neighbors’ free-box next to a butternut squash, a Postal Service CD with a cracked case, a few dubious AAA batteries, and a paperback from the Left Behind series.

• Florida beaches after a hurricane blows through and tears the place to shit. Alison flies out to meet us and we spend a few days at Frankie’s dad’s timeshare on Amelia Island. We swim in the sea. Drink rum. Play cards. Listen to music. Read on the veranda.

• “You’re a better astronaut than me,” I say. “No, I’m the most un-astronaut person on Earth,” she says.

• I told Alison I felt my hopes guiding me like an arrow with a dotted line on a map. There were new plans to stick to, direction as dictated by faith in potential, in what I believed I could do, or do one day if not now, and only if I worked hard and was honest and merciless with myself.

• So you bury it. Smile. Stay nice. Try your best to be helpful. It’s okay, you can edit yourself and give people what they won’t be bored with or scared of or made uncomfortable in the witnessing.

• After Byron died I thought of the time we argued at J’s house about which Bright Eyes record was the newest. Was it the Insound Tour Support Series split with Ambulance or the Motion Sickness 7” Blood of the Young put out? This was our first conversation. I hated him that night and the next day we were friends.

• I am unimportant after building myself up like some great statue.

• A list describing Ben Frank—a tangled shock of black hair and thick-frame glasses, and because of that children out in public ask if he’s Harry Potter, and if he’s in a good mood he says, “Yes. I am. But don’t tell anyone.”

• The only thing I’m certain of is that I am coming unglued. That’s the word that sticks with me—unglued. I’m not entirely confident what it means to come unglued but it’s happening and the choices I make are the choices of someone in the process of coming unglued. I write my last will and testament and bury all my valuables in the yard.

• I will kick the severed heads of your enemies like a soccer ball to the moon.

• To be kind and gentle in a world that is anything but is a way to be of service. To be of service is to heal the world in small ways with your own small actions.

• I am the world’s greatest pile of dog shit.

News

-There’s a new Lora Mathis book coming September 23rd. The Snakes Came Back. It’s excellent. Keep an eye out for pre-order.

-All my books, tapes, shirts, and merch are very much on sale. Please buy some today and get ‘em cheap.

-There’s another excerpt from the book I’m finishing right here.

-Vertical Diner in Portland is really good. Did I say this already? (I don’t fucking know.)

-Here’s something to chill out to. (I heard this one in Matty’s car on tour.) “Alma, Corzaon, y Vida” by Frankie Reyes. It’s a nice little song from the album Boleros Valses y Mas.

-I’ll have more news next week. I think. If not, who cares! None of this really matters. Life is hard enough. Go have fun, believe in your ideas, eat fresh food, stay away from social media if you can, turn off your TV, tell your friends you love them, and sleep in. (Most things we’ve been told we must do are horseshit.)