Here’s a list of everything I’ve written about here so far - or, you can just scroll down and see for yourself.
To Luke, on illness, restlessness and boredom. (01/03/2025)
Hey, Luke. I'm struggling to work out how long it's been since I've last done one of these - I mean, I could work out the number of days and weeks, look and my calendar and all but I'm struggling to place it in time, to know emotionally how long it's been, whether I last talked to you like this recently or a million years ago.
That's been a part of all this for me. This - the lost February, I guess, the losing time, losing days and nights and then not remembering how to be functional human being. This letter is going to be so reflective and poetic as to border on pretentiousness, I think - I hope you don't mind. It's a symptom, I guess, or a consequence. I keep having to remind myself that it's okay that I'm not feeling normal, that I've forgotten how all this (gesturing at my day-to-day life) is meant to go. Time is so fucked up for me now. I don't know what to do with myself.
It's weird, because when I wasn't sleeping, the nights were so long and I was so exhausted and it was so tiring, I wished I could return back to sleeping, and I felt so shattered during the day that I couldn't do anything, and that was horrific too. Now I'm sleeping normally again and I don't know what to do with myself: I miss the early morning hours I spent alone in the dark listening to whatever would stop my heart and thoughts from racing somehow, and I have so much time in the day and so many things I could be doing and I don't really want to do any of them. I just feel so restless and aimless. That's why I started writing this - because when there's something on my mind, this is my way of pulling it apart into something I can understand. Even if you can't make sense of it, I've at least done something, writing this, rather than checking Instagram for the millionth time or listening to the same songs I made in December and January over and over again.
Ugh. I want inspiration, motivation, creation. I've started a few visual art projects and I just find them boring. I have books to read, albums to listen to, things to write and plan and plot and work out. I could be doing anything, and I'm not. I don't know how I make sense of that, I guess.
I'm thinking of going for a walk alone. Well the urge really is to drink, but I do at least have the self discipline to not do that, so I'm thinking maybe I download an album and walk, or maybe I'll just put an album on and listen through it. Music is the most constant of my hobbies, I've found - everything else still feels a bit like a lie to me. Yeah, sometimes I do this and that. Mostly I don't. I was talking to you about this in the first letter - well since then I've made a point of trying to do things, as best I can while I've been on death's door, and mostly, I just don't want to, and I'm wondering how I try and change that or if I do at all. I want to be the kind of person who writes and reads and paints. I can occassionally be that person. I am mostly not that person. But music I can do, music I'm doing at the moment specifically more than anything else. I should write something on Charli xcx's Crash at some point, and I should write about my current feelings about gender because they're definitely worth trying to unpack at some point, and I've completely forgotten what my point was. Music and my listening to it. Yeah. I should get back on that Talking Heads tonight maybe, or at least some time. Maybe I'll have a look for something atmospheric to wander to, but wandering just feeling like a physical version of what I've been mentally doing. I don't want to wander anymore, that's the point of this. Wandering on purpose, maybe. I don't know.
At what point does this go beyond me talking to you and just become me talking to myself? That begs the question of the line between me and you I guess. I think it's worth bearing in mind though: the different between talking to an audience, or talking with the intention of being listened to, and talking just as a way to express thoughts. Talking being use of language here I guess. I don't know. I'm trying to think what you would do, Luke, and it's difficult because you're not one person, and it's also unhelpful because my rewatching of Gilmore Girls is a bad habit I've picked up from you that I'm trying to avoid right now. That leads me back to the music though, like it led you to Ash (and what an album that is), and like it led you to Manic Street Preachers and PJ Harvey and a lot of other music I really love. I want to create, I want to make this boredom into something, and not just this entry, even though that's something and that's why I'm doing this. Look at me, getting nowhere. Look at you, blank lines between paragraphs, just resting. You're never bored, Luke. Or at least bored it's on purpose, or in a digital detox kind of way. Boredom being healthy because then you're not scrolling or something. I can be equally bored scrolling or not.
A few weeks ago I got angry and put The Idler Wheel on speaker and just laid in bed and listened to it, and then I paced and listened to it again, and that was something. I'm gonna find an album I think, from the 90s or the 2000s, and do something like that. One of these days I'll go to the train station and do that, just sit and watch the trains and listen to music and hope no one notices. Not tonight though. I'll leave that until a night no one I know is travelling by train, I think I'd die of embarassment if they thought I was at the station for them. So I'll make something of this, and tomorrow I'll wrangle a day out of the next 24 hours, and I'll continue until I've listened to every album in existence, I guess. I kind of want to listen to some hyperpop or something weird and electronic. I'll have a look.
I think this is me. If I leave it any longer there won't be an evening, and I hate to go to sleep bored. Nos da.
L.
To Luke, on secularism, implicit theism and changing faith practices. (19/02/2025 & 16/02/2025)
Hey, Luke, nice to talk to you again. And so soon, as well! I’m anticipating this being a slow write, maybe over the next few hours, maybe over the next few days, but I wanted to start it now while it’s fresh in my head. So hi, and I hope you don’t mind me taking me time to work this one out.
2025 has so far been surprising in a lot of ways. I have changed so much in the past two months that I barely recognise my old self; I feel like I’ve been fully reconceptualised, like someone reverted me to my September self and said fuck all that, let’s try this in the other direction, shall we? One of the big consequences has been my faith: by the end of last year, I was considering myself a Christian, albeit a probably very heretical one. Nowadays, I’m finding myself more where you were, in a kind of vague secular monotheism that comes in and out of focus day by day.
For a month or so, I just didn’t care about God, and now I’m starting to a little, but I’m still very content to leave theologising and prayer to the side. I’m noticing him when I see him, and I’ll offhandedly chat to him occasionally, but largely my faith feels a lot more like self care, I suppose. Like doing the laundry last night, and shaving this morning, and I’m going to clean my bathroom after lunch. That feels like a spiritual practice somehow, like a prayer, even though God is only really implicated in it so much as he is implicated in everything. But isn’t that sort of the point, that spiritual practices draw our attention to his constant presence? Maybe.
I’d just thought that I’d love to talk to you about it in conversation, and then it occured to me that that’s what this is. I should approach this whole letter writing practice like I approach prayers, maybe - your responses are the lines between my paragraphs, and the ways my mind goes next. Letters to Luke, letters to God - I’m sure there’s blasphemy in there somewhere, but I don’t think it matters. When I am the person looking after myself, am I not then enacting God’s love? I think so. (This is a lot of rambling, isn’t it. Oh, well. That’s what this is for.)
I’ve taken a few days but I’m back to continue this one. I’ve just been for a walk to the botanic gardens and it got me thinking in the way only a good silent solitary walk will. It was really lovely getting out - I always love walking down to the botanic gardens, and it was sunny and breezy and fresh and beautiful, and I’ve not been out for a proper walk in a few weeks because I’ve been ill, and that kind of magnified how glorious it all was. In the time I’ve been recovering, the world has too, and it definitely felt like spring for the first time this year. Coming back to life, resurrection, healing, renewal - these are all ideas that are integral to my faith, spirituality and God, and naturally I started trying to link them in my mind. I suppose I’ve been looking for ways to let God back into my life, curtains to open to let his light stream through, etc, and it felt like maybe this was one, until I realised just how much effort it felt to direct my thoughts towards God or to make my experience one that felt specifically religious or theistic rather than just generally spiritual. It just wasn’t coming naturally.
I listened to Relative Fiction by Julien Baker sat on a bench by the water and felt, for the first time, that it really resonated with me in a way it hasn’t before. I love Little Oblivions and especially its theme of religion, but the lyrics of that song have never really clicked with me until now. But listening to, “I guess I don’t mind losing my convictions if it’s all a relative fiction anyway,” and “I don’t need a saviour, I need you to take me home,” and “I’ve got no business praying, I’m finished being good, now I can finally be okay in not the way I thought I should,” made me feel like Baker was narrating my life for me.
I trust I’ll make my way back to more explicit faith and organised religion eventually. Christianity specifically and Christian narratives I know have a lot of peace to offer me, and I’m sure I’ll find that peace in them one day. But I think for the moment I am done praying and looking for God. If I stumble upon him by accident, I’ll try and embrace him with all the fervour you did, Luke, but for the moment, I think distance from faith can be compatible with peace of mind, and I think that’s where I’m at. I think I need to let go and finally be okay, in not the way I thought I should. I hope you don’t mind.
I had a lot more I wanted to talk about. Lent, for one. I don’t know what my Lent practice is going to look like if I have one at all. I imagine I’ll listen to Seven Swans once or twice. Going to services on Sundays, which I’ve started and intend to continue doing again. How you used to pray. All of that, I think, can wait. This isn’t half as long as I’d expected it to end up being, but I think I’m finished with all this for now. I think I’d like to think about something else.
Love from hell, (this is maybe a slightly jarring inside joke to end on but I think it’s funny so it’s staying in,)
L.
(PS: The first half of this letter I wrote using reverential capitalisation for God’s pronouns. The second half I didn’t. I’ve gone back through and taken the capitalisation out for continuity and because it feels weird, but I thought it was worth noting down.)
To Luke, on Luke and the self. (15/02/2025)
Hey, Luke. I hope you don’t mind me going incredibly meta on us right away. It feels like a good way to start everything off, though, doesn’t it?
The idea of these letters and this being a kind of manifestation of my relationship with you kind of initially formed the backbone of this website - that I’m kind of trying to represent you in some ways, or my idealised internal ideas about male teenagerhood, and all that. Don’t get me wrong, it’s much evolved since then, and I’m viewing it more as a general kind of blog thing now, somewhere to just see my thoughts in text rather than have them nebulously floating around in my head.
But anyway, the question kind of arose to me, who are you? It’s not something I really drill down into much beyond you being a mirror of me that I can look into to see things from an outside perspective, a devil’s advocate, the part of me that loves me and cares for me and looks out for me and encourages me to do stupid things and tries to stop me doing stupid things and makes sure I survive the stupid things I do end up doing. I can’t pin you down easily, obviously, because you’re the version of me that I can interact with - you’re the me that’s not me, and so who you are depends on who I am and who I need you to be.
I suppose I usually think about you as the Luke in my head - my inner voice and all that - but I think separate to that you’re also my idea of myself, or maybe specifically my ideal self, the self I would like to be. The pinterest boards and playlists I used to make. Nowadays, it might be more my outfits and schedules, how I organise my room and how I choose to spend my time. Because I was so obsessed with you when I was younger, I associate you with my mid-teens most of all, I think, around 15 when my archetyping was at its wildest and you were properly actualised into the online persona I’m kind of still using now. But because I was also obsessed with the future at that time, you’re still that potential future me, the possibility of change, too.
I think probably my distance from you now is a healthy thing - congruence between the ideal and perceived self, and all that. But I also think that when I’m not actively examining myself from outside like I used to I can get so lost in my everyday life and lose track of the ways in which, on the grander scale of things, I’m not living a life I want to, and I need to reevaluate what I’m spending my energy doing.
I’m thinking about my hobbies specifically, I suppose. Embarrassing that it took a hot guy in a pub asking me about them for me to realise that I really needed to start actually doing things again. I’d realised that everything I’d enjoyed doing for fun had kind of been swallowed up by my studying, but I never really cared until then. Well, that’s part of what this website is, and that brings me back to 16, 17 year old me, listening to pop punk on my mp3 player, which is another thing I need to get back into. And that’s kind of where the painting came from as well.
I feel weird painting. And I realised it’s because it feels like you, like it’s yours, and not mine. I’ve not considered painting important to me until I was like 15 or 16, which is when you were most important to me, so painting has felt like performing as you a bit. I want to carry on doing it - I did enjoy it, it was meditative and I like creating things that look pretty (just another expression of vanity, I suppose,) - but I’m just going to have to hope that eventually it feels like me again, feels like something I would do.
Doesn’t it feel right, this all happening in February? Spring awaits, and with it change, hope, Eurovision, etc. I’m trying to get back to myself anyway, and I hadn’t considered that as maybe linked with me getting back to you until now, but I think it is. I think both with inform the other.
I wasn’t expecting to write for this long. I’ve been sat in bed all this time. I want to get started with this website, but I have work to catch up on that I really need to do today, and I’m not sure when I’ll end up doing it if not this morning.
Oh, well. It’ll get done eventually, I may as well take advantage of this streak of inspiration.
Love from the imperfect, ugly present,
L.