The streets behave so much differently in the absence of traffic. They possess their stillness fully. You can cross the road anywhere you like, not just at the corners. I didn’t see anyone else. No joggers. No dogs on leashes, sniffing at the wet ground. The rain left a thin flesh of mud on the sidewalks, and since I didn’t come across even little cat prints or bike tire marks—I knew I was the first creature to emerge into the day. The first surveyor of the storm. The loneliness of it all soothed me.

If you like hunting, you take your kids hunting. If they don’t like it, whatever. But you showed them who you are, and you led them to a new experience. Let the chips fall where they may.In my case, I like music. I like playing it, studying it, listening to it, talking about it. I can’t be myself without showing my love for music. Thankfully, my family loves music, too. (Kinda hard not too.)We don’t always like the same albums or songs, or maybe we just aren’t in the mood for the same type of jams. But there’s always music playing at my house, and Nola, my 13 months-old child is my biggest enthusiast-in-crime.

I’m not writing about music in this one per se. I’m writing about the recent suicide of my good friend Nathan, who just so happened to be a preternaturally talented musician.

To be fair, most of my close relationships with people have something to do with music. But Nate and I shared the experience of being drummers in our respective high school bands. (Spoiler alert: I was good and he was WAY better than me.)

I will inevitably get to an age where I won’t understand the appeal of something new—from a stylistic or cultural standpoint. Because I’ll be too “old”. I don’t suspect, however, I’ll have too much trouble bonding with my daughters over music. Just because two people don’t have identical tastes does not mean that they can’t enjoy anything together. And that’s what makes music, film, literature and hobbies fun. They are all better shared.

For many in gym culture, this is the point where things can get very toxic. “If you wanna get big, you gotta eat big!”, “Train hard to get hard!”, and so on. Next thing you know, you’re eating until you’re uncomfortable, ever chasing the “pump”, all while trying to cover over a deep, amorphous something-nothingness. It’s not all bad, and I’m not trying to be dramatic, but as I was in the thick of becoming a competitive powerlifter, I started to see how this hobby can quickly become an unhealthy culture.

Tirzah’s Devotion has a strange ability (much like Frank Ocean’s whole discography) to tackle all of the messiness that comes with romance in a groovy but insightful and emotional way.