Alphabetical Order: My Life in Records, from A to Z
Introducing a new series.
When I was writing the book SELLOUT in 2020, I was very determined to shut the fuck up. It was intended to be a work of objective historical nonfiction and I didn’t want myself or my opinions present at all. I decided very early on that I would keep myself off the page at all costs. No “I,” no “me,” no “the author” (bleh!), etc. Sure, I had my own thoughts, and maybe those peek through in the narrative, but otherwise I wanted my big fat mouth shut for this one. So every day for 8 to 10 hours or so, I sat at my desk and wrote exclusively about the lives of other people.
After several months of this, I found myself missing personal writing. It is, after all, all about ME. I did my daily journaling of course but most of those entries read something like “Day 98 of the pandemic: Have not had a single human interaction in a fortnight. Boy I sure hope there is still a planet left by the time my book comes out. This morning I saw a cool squirrel. We are friends now.” So around 9 PM, after I wrapped up SELLOUT writing for the day, I’d hop over to a different document where I started writing about my life through the albums that meant something to me at different periods. I wrote about Sigur Rós and grief, I wrote about Reversal of Man and 9/11, I wrote about the Bouncing Souls and cool jackets.
I had to really force myself to release these personal essays. I am not always comfortable with putting myself out there in a sincere way and instead prefer to hide behind my little jokes and goofs. But ultimately I did in the summer of 2021, and I called it WHERE IT ALL WENT WRONG, a 100-page mini-memoir about my life through music. To my complete surprise, the response was immediate and incredibly personal. It took me a full week just to ship all the orders. I still receive very kind messages from people about it. Sometimes, when a new order comes in, the customer will leave a note saying that they liked it so much they’re buying another copy for a friend, and that is the greatest kind of reward (second of course to the $13 they paid me for it).
I’ve been itching to do more personal writing again but couldn’t figure out how to frame it. So I figured I’d just go alphabetically. Every other week, I’m going to pull a record off the shelf and write about how it affected my life in some way. Not my favorite records necessarily, or ones I even love for that matter, but albums that are tied to memories or important life moments. I’m calling it ALPHABETICAL ORDER and the first edition will be out soon.
First I’ll start with something from the A section, then B, then C—you know how the alphabet works. Some will be longer essays, some will be short stories. Maybe even just some freestyle ramblings or fiction who knows. On some of the weird letters like X I will probably be pulling something out of my ass if I’m being honest.
But if I write something every other week and there are 26 letters in the alphabet, this will be, uhh… [furiously mashing my thumbs into a calculator] a year-long project. Is there a chance I could pull a Sufjan Stevens/Illinoise and shamefully quit at some point? Absolutely. But I’m going to really try, dammit. All the other ZERO CRED features and interviews will continue to run as usual.
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Very neat idea and makes ya go dig up and appreciate older records I own!