A Wedding Playlist
A wedding playlist, new music from King Princess, interviews with Lindsay Hunter & Claire Dederer & Anna Badkhen, and more
I went to a wedding yesterday, a rare haven of love and joy and potential.
The wedding band played wedding band songs, pop hits from the ‘70s through today.
I don’t listen to much pop music intentionally, and even more rarely oldies, so I put together a playlist of indie music for a hypothetical wedding.
What song or songs would (or did) you play at your wedding?
This Week’s Wedding Playlist:
Largehearted Likes
Lehigh Valley Hoagies baseball cap
One of my favorite things about minor league baseball is the fun approach to the games. The teams’ alternate caps express this well, especially in the Copa de la Diversión, Hometown, Legacy, Theme Night, and Pride collections. Given my love for sandwiches and the Phillies (Lehigh Valley is their farm team), this will surely be my new everyday hat.
Ursula’s new restaurant
The best breakfast burritos in NYC now have a sit-down home in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.This photo of workers assembling the Beatles’ Rubber Soul album:
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. King Princess’s cover of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun”
Dolly Parton is amazing at everything she does, even side dishes!
Our neighborhood (Greenpoint, Brooklyn) vegan spot for sandwiches and coffee.
Largehearted Links
A fascinating documentary about cartoonist Jim Woodring
An excerpt from Geoff MacCormack’s photographic memoir David Bowie: Rock ‘n’ Roll with Me
Lindsay Hunter interviewed by CrimeReads about her stunning new novel
My writing has often been about lending empathy to less-than-desirable characters. I say empathy, not sympathy. Empathy in terms of giving them authentic emotions, actions, agency, and letting the consequences of those actions have real effects. It’s something I fight to this day–letting my characters get into trouble without already having a way out for them. I’m learning to back my characters–and myself–into a corner, and to let the urgency of finding a way out guide my writing.Anna Badkhen discussed her book, Bright Unbearable Reality (one of my favorite books last year) with The Nation
I think more than anything, it is a book about connectedness, because that’s how I see the world. I have this degree of apophenia that makes me connect things that may not necessarily be obvious to people—or that may not necessarily be connected, even. But in my mind, and in my world, everything and everyone is connected. It’s not a design of some kind—it’s not a writing tool; it’s not a shtick. This is the world that I see.
Lucinda Williams on writing her memoir, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You
“I wanted to keep that respect in there. That’s the hard part, writing a book. You want to be honest and open, but you have to hold back a little bit at the same time. You can hide things in a song, but with a book you have to say the whole thing or not say it at all. I want to be honest and open, but I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
Claire Dederer discussed her brilliant new book with Leslie Jamieson at BOMB
As a teacher, and a reader, I have often reached for a concept of personal writing as something with a moral charge—that there is this specific morality to personal writing that no other form specifically has, which is: I'm going to state my pain and it's going to be nonfictional pain, and therefore the identification the reader feels. They're going to know that what you went through is true.
Suede bassist Mat Osman discussed his new novel with the Guardian
Suede broke up in 2003 and re-formed in 2010. But the intermission was tough; it was his Icarus crash. Every band falls apart. Every time it’s a shock. Osman ran out of funds in six months and had to take whatever work was on offer (shifts at Amazon; stints at an internet travel company). It was a grim period, he says, but it also got him writing. “I always thought that music – being in a band – seemed the pinnacle of human existence. But as I get older, books become more important.”
Madeline Cash discussed her short story collection with NYLON
“What I've been thinking about a lot lately is what you're supposed to write about and why, and taboos and why they're taboos, and if I’m allowed to cross lines a little bit and see how it goes,”…“Anything that you learn about creative writing, I want to see if I can simplify it a little bit: Tell you everything that everyone is thinking or have people think things you're not supposed to think.”
Everything Is Interpolated: Inside Music’s Nostalgia-Industrial Complex
In nearly every respect, Primary Wave treats their catalogs the way powerful record labels treat their star artists—except all of the publishing company’s talent is either dead, a legend, or both. And when you own the rights to some of the most important American popular music ever recorded, opportunities have a way of presenting themselves in perpetuity.
Last Week’s LHB Feature Posts
Eirinie Carson’s playlist for her memoir The Dead are Gods
Jeremy C. Shipp’s playlist for their novel The Merry Dredgers
Jessica Bell’s playlist for her poetry collection A Tide Should Be Able to Rise Despite Its Moon
Marcus Amaker’s playlist for his poetry collection Hold What Makes You Whole
Matthew Vollmer’s playlist for his memoir All of Us Together in the End
Tyriek White’s playlist for his novel We Are a Haunting
Our wedding song was "Have a Little Faith in Me," by John Hiatt. Not an indie song by any means, but I stand by it.
Thank you so much for the lovely shout-out!