Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment

brother,

I haven’t been an email person for a long time, so when I had the space in my life to read everything that has gone unread, I figured I could try.

Predictably, I tossed nearly all of it without reading.

But I listened to every heretofore unopened weekly song.  I devoured the poems.  I loved the videos.  Highlights for me were your inexhaustible humility, the squirrel at Mom’s cottage, the white shirts on the clothesline and you take one at the end, the sunset at the beach (of course), every single foggy video, and Sophie’s yawn with Arlo before “You’re the Farthest I Go”, which I think just popped up automatically after a weekly song.

I know you are an amazing artist.  I trust your music to be great, and it delivers to a part of my heart that only our family–including its additions–can touch.  Sometimes I get weary because your compositions can make me feel the absence of our family so acutely, but most of the time it’s like getting a hug from Mom.  And so I depend on it.

Reading these old emails though it was the poems, the other songs, that really got me.  I miss you, my brother, and when I miss you I wonder what nuggets of wisdom you would quietly, passionately share in whatever circumstance I find myself.

Thank goodness for these posts.  I spent all morning yesterday listening to that old Chance the Rapper song about being ready for the blessings.  I have gone down rabbit holes full of Yeats and Rilke and a ton of people I’ve never heard of.

I have been learning about reading being fuel.  Not for art or writing or any particular avenue.  Simply fuel for life, like food.  I think a lot of the qualities I admire in you and Sophie and other friends stem from the reading you all do.  I have come to agree with you that Netflix is the devil in this way.  Books have made me feel less alone in Germany, where I can count all of my friends on one hand and still have fingers left, than I ever felt in D.C.

I thought you might like to know these things about your sister.  I don’t need a response now or ever, but I wanted to tell you a little bit about why I admire you, and how sometimes your teachings take time to sink in.

I love you brother.