In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Jeremy Atherton Lin’s Deep House seamlessly melds personal and queer history into one of the most powerful memoirs I have ever read.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“Stylish, sexy, and deeply moving, this blends beautiful prose and incisive social history to stunning effect.“
In his own words, here is Jeremy Atherton Lin’s Book Notes music playlist for his memoir Deep House:
Deep House is my account of falling in love across borders in an era before same-sex marriage and its attendant immigration pathway. For the first few years, my British boyfriend and I were long-distance, and got to know each other through letters (on actual paper) and mixtapes (on actual cassettes). Eventually, he went undocumented in San Francisco in order to stay with me. Years passed, and we found ourselves laying down roots on a fault line. We were constantly afraid we’d be pulled apart in an immigration raid, yet settled into domestic bliss. Through a string of rented apartments, we played records for each other and friends. Deep House is not merely a protest of inequality, but a fond remembrance of those unauthorized years.
The full soundtrack is here. Below, notes on a few select tracks.
“Ride into the Sun (Session Outtake)” — The Velvet Underground
One of the first things we bonded over is having the same Velvet Underground poster on our bedroom walls. We continued to listen to the band over years, feeling seen by numerous lyrics. This track sounds to me like a road trip: setting off into the remote, away from everyone else, until we no longer discerned a starting point or destination — in other words, we were at home in the moment.
“Come Back From San Francisco” — The Magnetic Fields
I think when my lover dreamed of me, the glistening city by the bay also came to mind; person and place were inextricable in his aspiration to find somewhere he could belong. The album 69 Love Songs, of which this is one, was a companion to both of us through the long distance period and into the era of living together unlawfully. As a lyricist, Stephen Merritt is among many who helped me become a better writer: specifically, to be precise with details and to understand irony and earnestness as intertwined.
“Haunted When The Minutes Drag” — Love and Rockets
Our mixtapes were made with passion and desperation — as if in the labor of compiling, we were somehow doing something about finding a way to be together. His tracks were unexpected (Spice Girls), sometimes hokey (“Wichita Lineman”), sometimes jumpy (stuff like the Stranglers). I included fuzzy guitar (Unrest, Unwound, “Unwind” by Sonic Youth) and new wave/post-punk like this track, which became one of “our” songs. I’ve never looked up what the lyrics are actually about, but it spoke viscerally to our longing and the pain of being apart for extended periods.
“Les and Ray” — Le Tigre
Among many songs that soundtracked our first apartment together — a musty basement with a scruffy little backyard — this was played over and over. I love its narrative, which I believe to be about a young girl finding hope through the sound of piano emitted from the gay couple living next door. It’s so perfectly depicted, I feel that I, too, have my ear against the wall.
“How to Disappear Completely” — Radiohead
The album Kid A was playing the first time we drove into the Mojave desert. It was night, and we glided away from the lights of houses and stores into the darkness. It was a euphoric moment, a kind of surrender, a part of a larger letting go that can only occur with someone you thoroughly trust. In such ways, every landscape had become a portrait of my lover.
“Colors and the Kids” — Cat Power
The music of Chan Marshall was regularly present in our own little world, and a huge inspiration to me in how raw, authentic, even wild she has been in music as well as interviews. And as literal as this is, I’ve long associated the music with our two cats. Sometimes it felt like we didn’t exactly have a discussion of whether we would continue living together illicitly, and for how long. When my sweetheart suggested adopting a cat, he made clear his commitment — one of the hugest ways he ever professed his love.
“Peacocks” — The Mountain Goats
Another road trip song, and this one specifically evoking to us how my lover dreamed he would one day spot peacocks in the desert. And there they were, near Death Valley, hanging out in front of an opera house in the middle of nowhere.
“Down to Zero” — Joan Armatrading
In our last apartment in the city, a converted shopfront, we’d lounge with friends listening to old Atlantic soul and bands like Television, Television Personalities, Thirteenth Floor Elevators, and Tindersticks. We shared meals and massages with other gay boys as the cats calmly roamed the room. Joan Armatrading especially captured a dusky mood, that experience of slowing down, learning to let oneself unwind. Here, she sings about welcoming someone to her door. Writing the book, I was deeply moved by poets and lyricists who describe forging intimate connections in terms of the home.
“Canto Do Povo De Um Lugar” — Caetano Veloso
This was our wedding processional, and though it is not a song about romantic love, as a way of describing a sense of community and connection to the earth, it captures something of the way we’d like to nurture our love: to be expansive and inclusive, not merely about stealing away from the world but being a part of it.
“We’ve Only Just Begun” — The Carpenters
In Deep House, I weave in the border crossings of older generations of gay men, and also explore emigration within my family line. As a young boy, dad moved to Taiwan from China with his parents. Mom met dad after he came to the States; their interracial marriage took place not long after the 1967 Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia, which struck down remaining miscegenation bans in the United States. The Carpenters provided a soundtrack to my family’s movement across different locations and into middle age. Even though this song is all about beginnings, there’s a sadness in it. To me, seeing a happy couple always puts in mind how nothing lasts forever. A melancholy thought, but we can truly cherish love when we accept the inevitability of loss.
Jeremy Atherton Lin is the author of the National Book Critics Circle Award winner Gay Bar. His essays appear in numerous places including the Paris Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Yale Review, for which he was a finalist for the National Magazine Award. His sound programs have been broadcast on NTS Radio. He is based in Los Angeles and East Sussex, England.