“‘Visions of Johanna’ is the clearest artistic account of how desire distorts perception. Louise is present. Johanna is absent. Yet Johanna dominates. The song is not narrative so much as accumulation: images piling up without resolution, because, once again, obsession doesn’t resolve.”
“Neon Steel is a speculative collection of fiction set in Pittsburgh in the late ’90s and early 2000s. I wanted this playlist to reflect the flavor of the post-industrial city and project a certain energy, futurism, and joy.”
“I have to confess that I am not a music person. Paradoxically, I am very much a mix CD person.”
“Cleaner is told in one paragraph with no chapter breaks: this song is how I wanted and how I imagine the reader’s experience to be. Pure uncut momentum and insanity.”
“When you get to interview two dozen incredible women filmmakers, you get to watch at least 5 times that many incredible movies that offer up music , scoring a few memorable moments.”
“As I compose this piece on a long train journey, it occurs to me that the rhythmic, occasionally juddering, song of the rail below me is in spirit a musical companion to my novel.”
“Teen Queen Training is a book steeped in the lessons I took from Seventeen magazine during the late ‘90s.”
“I had a song or a soundtrack in mind for each of the nine essays in the book.”
“In public and in private, whenever I was writing something for On Sundays, songs would come to me—bits of jazz, a hymn I grew up hearing in church, a blues song, something moody by Hozier or Nina Simone. Sometimes the songs snuck their way onto the page as with “Don’t Let Me Misunderstood” and “There’s a Leak in This Old Building”, but most stayed in my head, happy to be hummed while I wrote out some horrible, stomach-churning scene of horror.”
“Finding a song that aligns with the emotion or experience I’m trying to communicate helps me go deeper and stay in the moment.”