"Grief is deranging. It is nonlinear, like modern warfare. Both have been front of mind lately, privately and indeed the world over. I gave up this column in December 2022 because I was losing my mother and felt like I was losing my mind. My mom studied Kabbalah, an esoteric Jewish tradition with a flair for numerology where counting, or keeping track, is imbued with divine power. I found some solace in the instructional tenor of religious ritual following her death. Praying for her nightly felt like executing a score for rules-based Conceptual art – a strange, durational performance that nobody signs up for, but is conscripted into, and carries out dutifully all the same.

I’ve been living in my hometown, which has transformed since I left a decade ago, maturing into a haven for tech startups and psychedelic therapy. Denver, Colorado is the skinniest city in America, and the gorpcore capital of the world. On the eve of my twenty-seventh birthday – Saturn return commencing? – I read my Spike piece on the death-defying tech-bro Bryan Johnson for a literary night at a local bar which is named after a neighborhood in Brooklyn despite being stuck in the middle of the country. Small talk has started to feel like a minor, unavoidable violence in view of all this ambiently circulating grief – mine, yours, overlapping and accreting. So many people, I have realized, dread answering to “How are you?” So instead, I’ve taken to asking, “What’s new?”"