Featured in this blog: The Double (Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1846) “This Masquerade” (Leon Russell, 1972, The Carney)  “This Masquerade” (George Benson, 1976, Breezin’)  Pluribus (Vince Gilligan, 2025, Apple TV) “Stranger in a Strange Land” (Leon Russell, 1971, Leon Russell and the Shelter People) “Nature Boy” (eden ahbez, 1947) Loneliness in modern

(from an interview with Tom Casciato, PBS Newshour, September 24, 2024) Johnny Cash once said to me (incredibly disappointingly, I thought at the time): “Nick, what you have got to do is figure out how to be yourself.” I didn’t really know what he meant. (I thought, “Is that the

Song featured in this blog:Hejira (live performance by Joni Mitchell, Shadows and Light, 1979) Coping with this crazy life—and feeling sane—comes partly from accepting how impossible it all is. This is the kind of paradox that makes ‘achieving’ mental health so difficult. As Rumi put it, “Who makes these changes?

Songs featured in this blog: She Used to be Mine (by Sara Bareilles, What’s Inside: Songs from Waitress, 2015) right where you left me (by Taylor Swift and Aaron Dessner, evermore, 2020) Song to the Self (by Shawn Mullins, Eggshells, 1996) Outside my office door, there is a small quilt