qtb mixtape #12: clear.
A sonic dispatch from the frozen Midwest.
Queering the Burbs is a distillation of pop culture, politics and queerness published twice weekly by Joe Erbentraut. This is the qtb mixtape, this newsletter’s monthly custom mix of music I’ve been vibing with for paid Queering the Burbs subscribers. Sample the flavor below and subscribe or upgrade if you’d like to check out the mixtape for yourself.
As I write this, the temperature outside my home is -9, and the 14 mph winds are making it feel like -24. It’s the kind of cold that seeps in through the cracks of our 170-year-old home, reminding us of her age but also her stubbornness to remain standing all these decades later.
As I sip my coffee and report the weather to you, I feel a bit like I’m honoring the spirit of the late filmmaker David Lynch, who in his later career during the height of the pandemic took to sharing one-minute weather reports from his home in Los Angeles, always while wearing shades, always extra exuberant on Fridays.
The videos brought comfort in their mundanity, in the way that only talking about the weather can truly deliver—especially now that Lynch is no longer on the earthly plane with us. His birthday was Tuesday and he died one year ago last week.
As I went about putting together this latest mixtape for all of you reading this, my incredibly generous, attractive and intelligent paying subscribers, I was thinking about Lynch’s artistic legacy. I was thinking about how the seemingly opaque themes and images of his large body of work somehow always managed to cut through the clutter of consciousness to reflect with perfect clarity the core of our humanity. I just don’t think there’s anyone else out there doing it like him—now or before. I miss him.
