Dear Letters,
I think I may have mentioned this book before; may have entreated you to read it already. I know I gave one of you a copy of it. I still hope you will take a look at the conceptually fascinating Alphabetical Diaries.
It's not just that it doesn't fit into our expectations of narrative; it defies all this continual page turning. I was startled mightily by it, because when I am tearing up and painting over and gluing down the shreds and fragments of my own journals, I think that my silly words are a narrow little existence; I think that no one felt like this, no one one filled 100, 500, 1000 pages with their aching self doubt and their limitless self loathing. But that would not be true, it seems, from reading Sheila Heti's Alphabetical Diaries.
It felt so good to me to know that someone else wanted to try to contain themselves, to try to improve, to reform, to rehabilitate.
Here, for today, an ABC song about singers, When Smokey Sings. The thing I like best about this song, is the little musical reference to ABC's really big song, Be Near Me. Of, course, I also love that 'she threw back the ring.'
