music clip of the day

only rock ‘n’ roll

Couldn’t make it to Paris? (Me neither.)

St. Vincent, live, Paris, 10/31/14

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lagniappe

reading table

Most of the time I think of the self as a snare, and I don’t like being trapped in it. I try to reach out beyond my pittance of experience and connect to the world, but it turns out one way to do that is to be honest and accurate about my own life. I’m not convinced the personal is all that unique, anyway. It sometimes seems immoderate to claim really exceptional personal experiences, even though some of those experiences, particularly the painful ones, leave you with the worst feelings of isolation, feelings that have all the character of an absolutely individual, completely unprecedented experience—but you always find out that you aren’t alone. There are others, lots of others.

—Charles D’Ambrosio, email interview, New Yorker blog, 11/26/14