Earaches

Issue No. 11 | Naima | End-of-Year Advice | Thank you

I had no feelings about the accordion until a few weeks ago, when a busker carrying one walked into my subway car. He was an old guy, hunched over, a piece of cardboard advertising his Venmo hanging around his neck. I consider most subway buskers to be mild irritants and don’t pay much attention to them, but every once in a while somebody moves me with their performance. Such was the case with this guy, who walked slowly through the car, wincing, and played a gorgeous and sad jazz standard. He took his time with it, dramatically pumping beauty and anguish out of his instrument, but when we got to 96th street he abruptly stopped and walked out, shaking his head (ostensibly because he left empty-handed). I didn’t have time to get his Venmo. If I had, I would have tipped him. I also would have asked him what song he was playing. I knew it, but couldn’t place it. I was pretty sure it was Coltrane. 

When I got home I searched for the song. I flipped through My Favorite Things, but it was not there. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t find it on A Love Supreme, but I put it on anyway and listened all the way through. On Giant Steps I found what I was looking for: track 6, "Naima." I have listened to that song probably a hundred times since. 

"Naima" is a love song, but not necessarily a happy one. It aches. The melody tries repeatedly to move up the register, but almost always gets knocked down. This is apt for a song written (and named) for Coltrane’s first wife; as John Vettese explained for WXPN, things between them were complicated. But what marriage isn’t complicated? Love is an ache because love is an ambition. 

I keep listening to "Naima" because it's a good soundtrack for this time of year, the grey, deflated days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I love this week, as achy as it is. The ache is why I love it. Happiness without sadness is like a virgin Bloody Mary—it’s fine, but it doesn’t induce euphoria. If I care about something there’s going to be an ache, and this week I’m thinking about 2024. The things I cared about. The people I loved and who loved me back. The optimism. The cynicism. The defeats. Every good moment of 2024 is over now, and I ache for them. I want them back. I worry that there will be fewer in 2025. 

So much of "Naima" sounds like resignation. The song ends with an incantation: Coltrane plays the last bar of the melody four times. You think he’ll slow down on the fourth one and end the song there, but instead, at the last minute, he changes direction and ascends up the scale, note by note, landing on a melodic and clearly hopeful E flat. This is how I know Naima is a love song, and why I’m hanging on it as we move into another year. I have my doubts about 2025. I also want to love it. What is love if not an ache of hope?  

End-of-Year Advice

• Listen to Norah Jones. I’ve never written or even thought those words before, but the album she released this year, Visions, is great. I came to it after digging into a different singer, Clairo, whose song "Juna" is on heavy rotation right now on WFUV. Both Clairo and Norah’s albums are produced by Leon Michels (and yes, that’s correct, Norah Jones and I are on a first-name basis). Leon is from the Dap-Tone family. I wonder if he was on stage many New Year’s Eves ago when my friend Sonya and I saw Sharon Jones perform in Chicago. She had lost her brother a few days before and had a hard time that night; at one point she walked off stage and it was unclear whether she would come back. The Dap-Tones filled the void seamlessly, which of course they did—is any band tighter? Anyway, neither Visions nor Clairo’s album, Charm, are soul records, but there are little touches here and there, and they’re both great cooking soundtracks.

• Give money to a park. I like to say that Riverside Park, which runs along the western edge of Manhattan, is my park, but that’s antithetical to what parks are—Riverside is everybody’s park, which is the thing I love about it. It’s what I love about all parks. I am in this park constantly (from my house to the famous Little Red Lighthouse and back is a perfect 5K), and sometimes on my runs I get a little weepy about how thankful I am for it. It’s just a gorgeous place, especially in the fall, when the trees across the Hudson in the Palisades are changing. It’s also one of the only places left in New York that hasn’t been ruined by billionaires, and a crucial piece of social infrastructure. So this year I finally gave money to the conservancy that runs the park. Specifically I gave to the North Park Initiative, which, per the website, addresses “the way that systemic lack of investment in non-white and low-income neighborhoods has impacted our public parks.” In this next administration I expect that it will increasingly fall to citizens to maintain and fund city parks. As irritating as that may be, it’s the fact. If you care about your local park, step up, baby! 

• Bake from the Big Book of Bread. My last newsletter came out in September, so I haven’t yet crowed about the King Arthur book that came out on October 22nd. It is a beast of a bread book that we—especially the three authors, Jessica Battilana, Martin Philip, and Melanie Wanders—put a lot of sweat and muscle into. If you or somebody you know wants to get into bread in 2025, I really don’t think you can do better. 
• Make a Wednesday 8am bakery run. I will never wait in line for a cookie, but increasingly that is what you have to do if you want to hit up any bakery of note. This is true in New York but other places, too—I tried to skip the line at Brown Bear in Cincinnati by showing up at 1pm on a Saturday, but the joke was on me, because all they had left was a lonely piece of focaccia. So lately I’ve been setting my alarm and hitting a bakery before work on a random weekday. There are no lines, no drama, and you get to start your Wednesday with a pastry. My mom and I did this in Cincinnati at Two Seven Two (worth it for the delicata squash Danish), and I’ve done it multiple times for Elbow Bread, the extremely special bakery by Zoe Kannan. (If you go to Elbow, get everything, but get extra of the knish and the laminated challah honey buns.) 
• Listen to Vibe Check. Thinking about the media I consumed this year is hard because I didn’t consume very much, unless the old episodes of Abbott Elementary I watch when my partner is out of town count. But there's a podcast I consistently listen to, and that’s Vibe Check, hosted by Saeed Jones, Zach Stafford, and Sam Sanders. Three media gays (though I guess Saeed is a literature gay now), three gay men of color, three very smart guys who think deeply about what’s going on in the world. They helped me think some things through this year, and also tipped me off to trends that I really should have known about already (still don’t quite understand Brat Summer). Also, Saeed reads a poem at the end of every episode and it can often be kind of cathartic. 
• Read Howard’s End. I know you’ve seen the movie, but the book is just wildly good. Best book I read all year by far. My runner up: Against Joie de Vivre, a collection of essays that Phillip Lopate published in 2008, though many of the essays are from the 80s and 90s. I had never read Lopate and wanted to understand why he's considered so influential for the American essay. I was entirely unprepared for how bitchy he is. Obviously I love him for that.  
• Get married. On a Sunday in late October I was in an Uber in Cincinnati. “Do anything fun last night?” the driver asked. “Yes,” I said. “I got married.” Without missing a beat, the driver asked how she could ensure that one day she would get married. “What’s the secret to finding true love?” she asked. I would normally run away—screaming—from a question like this, but I was captive, wasn’t I? Plus, when Uber drivers want to talk (and in Cincinnati they usually do) I feel obliged to comply. So I said the first thing that came to mind: “Umm, wait until you’re 46?” The driver nodded her head and clicked her tongue. “Got it,” she said, and she really did seem satisfied with this answer. I hope I steered her right. Marriage—and the wedding to go along with it—was never on my to-do list. For me it made sense to wait until half my life was over, when I knew myself at least a little bit and had made it out of several other relationships a little mangled but still alive. And even then I resisted it, especially the wedding part; you (and my husband) might even say I was a brat about it, right up until a week beforehand (Brat Summer?). My friends told me that being in a room with every single person I love is a powerful thing, that a wedding is a life- and love-affirming event, but whatever, I just didn’t believe them. I was wrong. A wedding is a powerful force. A marriage, even more so. I am pleased to give both my highest recommendation. 

Thank you.

That's a wrap on another year of The Occasional Tamarkin! In 2024 I wrote about my calorie quest, cooking in Provincetown, and a disappointing Alice Waters salad. Behind the scenes I had an existential crisis about whether I should continue to host the newsletter on Ghost or switch over to Substack, where newsletters simply see more growth. So far I haven’t been able to stomach making the switch. There’s something so cultish about Substack, and the owners seem like sleazeballs—did they really send me an email touting their partnership with Bari Weiss? (They did.) So here we are, still on Ghost. The growth is slow, but then again this newsletter is quarterly at best, so I can’t really blame the platform, can I? And anyway, I like this group of readers. And I appreciate you more than you know. Thank you for reading for another year. If you like this newsletter, the best thing you can do is forward it to other people you think will like it, or post the link on your social accounts (I’ve made this post available to anybody, whether they subscribe or not). Give people the hard facts: The Occasional Tamarkin will always be free, and the cadence is highly unlikely to feel annoying. What other newsletter can you say that about?