John Paul Brammer

Your paid support makes my writing possible. Thank you. Inspiration strikes non-consensually. It’s possible to make the case that, by courting it, we offer it pre-consent. Coffee. Reading. Visiting museums. Heady conversations. But inspiration has no obligation to obey us. If it did, if a contract could be drawn up, we’d work with it more often than we do. Inspiration is more bully than business partner. It wants to use us like a pack of crayons. I’m bored on a flight.

My pretentious-ass desk right now LOL whatever I ain’t scared Thank you for your paid support. Forgive my use of “stuff.” The word “stuff” called to me, and I answered. I don’t consider these books to be reducible to such a frivolous word. But the way their contents sit in my brain is undeniably stuff-like. While reading a book and being shepherded word-to-word by what is usually a master of the craft, sentences are sharp and voice is distinct.

Your paid support also supports Thriftbooks in a roundabout way. Thank you. I used to read a few books a year. Now I read about one a week. If you’d have seen my habits only a year ago, you’d understand how unlikely this is. It’s a little embarrassing. I look back and feel as though I spent several years of my life without showering. How was I getting by at all? Why didn’t anyone say something?

Thank you for your paid support. No, really, thank you so much. I listened to myself on a podcast today. The episode was recorded over a year ago. Culture, politics, the usual. I don’t typically listen to my podcast appearances. I avoid myself when possible. But there comes a time when it stops making sense to ignore certain things, when you dare to lock eyes with yourself and ask, “What do you want?” I sat, listened, and found what I was afraid to find. Mmhmm. Haha. Yes! Hehe. Gooey pleasantness.

Precise and richly evocative and timely as well Your paid subscription contributes directly to the Brammer Prize for Excellence in Landlocked Literature. Thank you. From Judge Khan: Brammer’s short story, Regionally-Specific Award-Winning Short Story, throbs with a quiet power and secretes a cultural authenticity we are reluctant to question. He casts a much needed light on a region of our country no one thinks about, the diaspora of which, we were shocked to discover, could read and write.

Your paid support makes creative endeavors like these possible. Thank you. For decades I have been receiving encrypted messages from Anne Hathaway instructing me on how to live my life. It’s not a perfect system but it’s brought wonderful things. I’ve met amazing people I now consider lifelong friends. I’ve become quite beautiful. I’ve worked at Condé Nast, where I wore nice shoes. I’ve traveled the world, delivered keynote speeches, and appeared on the occasional list of influential individuals.

All I wanna do is [BANG][BANG][BANG][BANG] and uh [CASH REGISTER NOISE] and please become a paid subscriberit helps me out a lot thank you so much. Some people want to be right and some people want to tell the truth. Rightness is social. It emerges from a matrix of relationships to people and to institutions. Truth’s only relationship is to itself. Truth is dangerous precisely because it’s uninterested in rightness; indifferent to law and order.

Your paid support brings me closer to Heaven. Thank you so much! Hell charges a cover, and we pay it. I was standing in line for the gay club. It was my birthday. Thirty minutes passed in the February cold until my friends and I caught sight of the front door around the corner. A woman asked if she could cut in behind us. In an attempt at rapport, she noted my silver hairs and said we both probably remembered when this club was a restaurant. “I changed my mind,” I said.

Support my burgeoning career as a restaurant critic by upgrading to paid! Feargal and I walked into an Irish-Mexican cantina. There was sawdust on the floor. Feargal, who is from Dublin, told me this was an Irish thing. I had no choice but to believe him. Seeking ethnic credibility of my own, I searched for some visibly Mexican element of the place to demystify.

And other thoughts This is me writing more regularly to my paid subscribers. I have a lot of thoughts that don’t make sense for full essays that I’d love to share. Ostensibly, many of you are here for my thoughts. My big, juicy thoughts. Here they are. ON BEING CLAVICULAR My recent essay in Playboy about Clavicular is popping off. If you don’t know who that is, the essay explains. He’s the shiny new toy internet anthropologists are playing with at the moment.