Who Are You? (And how are you doing?)

I’d like to know more about my readers.

By its nature, Substack invites its columnists to present their own personalities front and center of their posts and articles. Which means that, if you’ve been following my page for a while, chances are you know more about me than you probably care to, and if you’re new to my page, well, you soon will know more about me than you probably care to.

But with few exceptions, I know very little about my subscribers. You number in the four figures, and even if only 40% of you open any given e-mail in the first 24 hours (a number that rises to about 50% in time), that’s still a lot of readers.

• Who are you?

• Where are you?

• What’s your story?

And maybe most importantly, how are you? We live in a frenetic world where we are encouraged to absorb everything everywhere all at once, as a certain hit movie rightly called itself, and trying to do so can be unproductive and unhealthy. For this reason, I took a little break from my FB friends last week during their post election vicious cycle meltdown, and got back to reading the thought-out pieces here on Substack. It was good for the soul, and in a further attempt to stay positive, active, and not sink into negative emotions, like the anger and hate that is clearly a default for too many in society, I felt I would be better served by engaging with readers who have themselves chosen to be engaged by subscribing in the first place.

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Only a single-digit percentage of subscribers here are on the paid plan; Wordsmith is mostly a labor of love. If you would like bonus features/transcripts, access to the archives, the Crossed Channels podcast - or would just like to pay it forward for others - this is your handy dandy subscribe button. Monthly subs are just $5/£4. Annual gets 20% discount. With thanks.

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I invite you to use the comments section and introduce yourself. Share whatever you want. For example, where do you live and how did you get there? If you have a piece of culture to recommend, please do. If there is something you especially like about my columns, or just certain columns, please let me know. But ditto if there are aspects you don’t like. While any writer of any merit, as per all the creative  arts, must be true to themselves first and foremost, and I don’t see Substack as a popularity contest, few among us don’t also try and meet our audiences along the way.

This is the moment to jump to the comments.

But if you promise to leave one anyway, I’ll offer up a few quick pop culture moments myself. Please don’t feel the need to follow suit;  this is not a FB meme/trend, just a few of my own off-the-cuff suggestions.

Most recent concert: David Gilmour at Madison Square Gardens, Sunday November 10^th , thanks to a last-minute gift of guest tickets from my life-long friend Guy Pratt, and a wonderful surprise for Paula, who woke up Sunday morning with no idea she’d be going too NYC and staying overnight. I am not a big one for arenas, but this was an incredible show by my favourite lead guitarist, living or deceased. I may yet pen a review but for now, here is David with daughter Romany taking lead vocal on this new album highlight “Between two Points.” Further proof that there is no longer a generation gap in popular music.

Something I did recently I’ve never done before: I attended the Metropolitan Opera in NYC, also as someone’s guest, and saw Verdi’s Rigoletto on the big stage. I had resisted the formal opera all my life, but I  am glad to have finally made its acquaintance. (And now, back to Tommy and Quadrophenia.)

Musician I never knew about until this week and it will now take all my damn life to catch up on their output: Leyland Kirby, a.k.a. the Caretaker, V/Vm, and presumably more. Read this interview from The Quietus from 2011 and listen to one of his/their 15 albums of reworked 1930s “ballroom pop” released mostly since then – just a small fragment of his overly prolific output - and you too will find your memory dissipating in front of you.

What I’m reading: Because of my degree courses, I have assigned reading. A lot of it. So here’s just one item, something you could read too, if you’re not squeamish and feel the need to know your history (so that we don’t repeat it?): Human Acts by Han Kang, a 2014 novel about the 1980 Gwangju Uprising and subsuquent massacre, by the author who just became  the first Korean writer and the first female Asian writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

What else I’m listening to: the new Underworld album Strawberry Hotel. We’ve been together over 30 years, and we’re not breaking up now.

What else I’m reading: Now You’re One Of Us: The Incredible Story of Redd Kross, by

Dan Epstein

with the McDonald brothers (Crossed Channels podcast here), and Just Backdated: Melody Maker, Seven Years In The Seventies by Chris Charlesworth (excerpts here and here). If it helps that I know both authors, it helps even more that they are both great music books.

Last film I watched: The Holdovers. There was substantially more to it than I expected. And I loved lead actor Paul Giamatti and director Alexander Payne’s mutual parting nod to their former hit film Sideways’ own concluding scene.

What I do for fun: Run. And drink good beer. Preferably with friends. On the subject not of which, here are some balloons:

Last good meal out: Patiala in NYC, the best Indian food I have had in a very very long time. We did the sit-down experience on 35^th Street, but I will bookmark the café around the corner on 34^th and 8^th for future trips down, especially prior to nearby shows.

Some thing you may not know about me: I’ve had my down periods just like everyone else. On at least two lengthy occasions in my life, maybe three, I sunk into a depressed funk and couldn’t produce anything of merit. Some days I struggled to get out of bed, and when I did, I wouldn’t achieve anything creative, though I would often use my running as an excuse to get away from work entirely. During these periods, I longed for a proper job with a steady income, so that I could be like everyone else who has one, and “phone it in” and still bank a paycheck until my funk cleared – or get help from HR, find a therapist, get put on Prozac or something similar… because when us self-employed don’t work, we also don’t earn, which increases a sense of self-worthlessness and depression. Somehow, on each occasion, I was eventually able to lift myself out of the funk, without medication, and right now, in a new chapter and phase of life, what you may possibly perceive as over-productivity is a combination of catching up on lost time while counting down the remaining years. In short: If you’ve been there, I feel you. Share what you will.

As a final suggestion, I know some Substackers occasionally invite their readers to “Ask me anything.” I have hesitated to do so as I figure I will be met with crickets. But if you DO want to ask me anything, stick that in the comments as well and maybe it will form the basis of another post.

And should, by chance, you want to know more about my early life, I would recommend my memoir Boy About Town. But a) it is increasingly hard to find, especially in the  yellow mass-market paperback edition I prefer, and b) I will be cross-posting an interview conducted with me by

Seth Lorinczi

recently on that very subject. But for now, the tables are turned. Who are you?