On Penny and Sparrow and Being a Creature for Their Love

It's been a month since I started this newsletter, so what better time than now to write about the number 1 band of my heart?

I am not a music critic. I barely understand how music works, honestly, on a technical level. I just listen and feel, because what I do understand is how to feel things. That's most of what I do, with writing, with reading, with living, with people, and with music. It feels like magic, the ability to come up with lyrics that somehow fit a particular melody, to know what melody would fit your words, to play instruments, to put it all together into something that can make a heart burst with joy or break with despair. And to do this again and again even when surely all the words and melodies have been exhausted by now. How do you keep finding new ways to make songs? My brain cannot comprehend.