first round game
(8) Blink-182, “Adam’s Song”
OUTMOURNED
(9) Nick Cave, “Nobody’s Baby Now”
107-104
AND WILL PLAY IN THE SECOND ROUND
Read the essays, listen to the songs, and vote. Winner is the song/essay with the most votes at the end of the game. If there is a tie, we will play a one-hour overtime (and repeat until we have a winner). Polls close @ 9am Arizona time on 3/11/26.
The Depression Playlist: Emma Allmann on “Adam’s Song”
I never thought I’d die alone, although to be fair, my suicidal ideations never made it to a planning phase. The fantasy of a long peaceful rest was always disrupted by the mess I’d leave behind. My room was covered in clothes, dirty mugs, and hadn’t been vacuumed since I’d moved in. Someone would have to deal with that. The guilt would surely follow me into death. My ghost would be haunted. That was no way to rest. This was back when I didn’t cry. When I was in my twenties and doing everything, including depression, for the first time. There’s an angst I identify with the horror of self-determination and the soundtrack to that angst, the depression playlist, always includes “Adam’s Song” by Blink-182. Because yes, I was laughing the loudest and surely no one knew the truth of how I was feeling (people knew). I was a good time (my friend Elise asked me outright if I had depression). No one else had been through this before (I teach college Freshman now; they are all going through this). It was a confusing mix of unbridled, joyful freedom and an incapacitating weight of responsibility and potential consequences. It took me a long time to realize I was depressed because I mostly just felt frozen.
This still hits from time to time. I notice it most when I get invited to two or more events in one evening. About 65% of the time I choose to pour myself some cran-apple juice in a wineglass, put on my long black satin robe, and swan about my house shout-singing Hadestown, Meek, or my depression playlist, depending on what type of isolation I feel like having. Eventually I’ll collapse in front of my tv, turn on Bob’s Burgers or Midsomer Murders, and sooth my brain into silence with the familiar cadence of shows I know by heart. I don’t think this is bad. I firmly believe that one of the benefits of being 34 is that frequently when I say I don’t want to be social, I am correct about that and so I stay home.
In my twenties this freeze applied to my entire life, and I’d never really experienced saying no to anyone. For any reason. It was less FOMO and more compulsion. I wasn’t going with the flow, although I got a little thrill whenever people said that’s how they saw me, I was caught in a river at the bottom of a canyon. Climbing out felt pretty impossible.
I never conquered, rarely came and in reading the lyrics written down I realize this is a play on Vini Vidi Vici, I came, I saw, I conquered. But I respect Blink-182’s propensity for sexual inuendo too much to ignore this one. I’ve long had a fraught relationship with even the idea of dating. As a kid, after I took a class on how to be a babysitter, I got to watch our neighbor’s newborn. Mark and Alysha were not married and were pretty open about the fact that their baby was an accident. They fought all the time and loudly. We would hear them fight, look out the kitchen window and see Mark slam his front door shut, run to his truck, and skid out of their driveway. My mom would say, “You know it is ok to just be friends with someone. It’s good to make a lot of friends.”
And I did. I made so many friends. Friends who I loved dearly and suddenly started acting different around their boyfriend and treating me different because their boyfriend didn’t like me. I never got angry about it. I was confused, sad, and convinced that relationships would likely change a person for the worse. Sure I could date someone, but who would I have to give up? Who would I have to become? Why would I ever let someone else impact me in that way? In high school it always looked like my friends were giving more than they were getting, that’s sometimes still true in adulthood. Even in moments wherein I felt a bit of jealous, wherein I wondered if maybe I was missing out on some sort of connection or fun, I always reminded myself that goal number one was to get the hell out of that small town. The fantasy of my future big city life was enough to sustain me. If I could just leave, then maybe I could start to see myself in a relationship. I could conquer. I could come.
I never thought I’d die alone except for that brief period of time beginning in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic had me working from home full time with no options to go see people after work. Between this period of depression and my cute little breakdown in undergrad, I’ve discovered that I can track my own mental health based upon how messy my space is. I’ve begun to see it as Catholic guilt finally working for me. If I’m too messy to die, then I have to clean, and if I’ve got it in me to clean, I don’t want to die anymore. If I think about it for too long I start to feel like a Roomba who sometimes sits at the charging deck for an inappropriate amount of time.
The first two years of the pandemic is a rare black hole of time, space, and memories that nostalgia just can’t seem to tap into. The media I took in is the only thing that touches on sepia toned for me. I got pretty obsessed with the idea that I could turn Dua Lipa’s album Future Nostalgia into a jukebox musical about the pandemic. I got really high while watching Marriage or Mortgage and I still think fondly of losing my absolute mind about how long the camera lingered on a dog shitting in a yard that wasn’t even his. His owners were just touring the house. I remember adding Ashe’s “Moral of the Story” and “Save Myself” to my depression playlist, only to play them over and over on repeat. My upstairs neighbor stomped on my ceiling while I spun in a circle and sang them at the top of my lungs. He was trying to get me to shut up but he was on the beat, so I kept going. The pandemic black hole is also filled with media that belongs further back, but I pulled it through to the future with me. The Goo Goo Dolls, Shania Twain, Alanis Morrisette, 4 Non-Blondes, and, of course, Blink-182 all kept me company. It was a relief, I think, to put myself in the mindset of a college version of me who was so depressed she dropped out but then went back and graduated. Or a high school version of me who was flirting with depression and writing angry screeds about my mom in my journal only to turn the page and write, “If anyone reads this in the future, I want you to know I do not hate my mom. She is just so frustrating sometimes. But I don’t really hate her. For the record.”
I never conquered, rarely came, but then I’ve always been the sort of hippy that felt conquering was for insecure fools who are trying to compensate for some lack or other. Which is how I justified almost never having any confrontation at all. Much of my twenties was spent running away from where I was meant to be, or said I would be, or thought I should be. I committed to the bit for so long I ended up living out of my Chevy Traverse while traveling around the Pacific Northwest. You want to have a conversation with me? Too bad suckers I’m driving to an area that doesn’t even have cell service.
I spent some time in Glacier National Park and headed to Missoula Montana in theory to send off some articles I would get paid pennies for, but really because I was craving a burger. I had largely been sustaining myself on peanut butter and crackers. To this day eating those manically dry little sandwiches makes me feel like I should be in my car with the windows down. I didn’t just want a burger. I needed a burger. For the whole drive I was salivating at the thought of juicy meat patties with the sluttiest cheese you could imagine melted over the top, pickle slices with the subtlest crunch, and classic, low key, perfect buns. I had about $12 in my bank account and I was willing to spend it all. I’m a good Wisconsin girl so when I want a burger I look up nearby breweries.
Turns out, there are different laws about beer and food in different states. I didn’t realize until after I ordered my beer I would not be able to order food at this particular brewery. The bartender took pity on me and poured me some Chex Mix on a napkin. Those cruel dry pretzels could never woo me. I must have looked particularly sad because the bar tender and a regular sat with me and chatted while I tried both to drink my beer fast and not accidentally get very drunk. I got quite drunk. They told me of a food truck that has the best burgers in town and would be parked next to a coffee shop. Not quite walking distance but if I had a bike I could probably make it there. I thanked them for their time and hauled my bike out of the back of my Chevy.
When I arrived at the coffee shop the food truck was not open yet and I sat on the curb and genuinely fought off tears. Some girls who were leaving the coffee shop and waiting for a ride asked me if I was ok. I was not ok. So I just nodded my head silently to keep them a polite distance away from my inevitable nutrient deprived, slightly tipsy, breakdown.
They sat down next to me and assured me that the food truck would be open in 20 minutes. They also told me I had arrived at the perfect time because that evening the town of Missoula was going to be doing their First Friday Art Walk, and on Saturday I could go experience any of their three farmers markets. We got to chatting for so long I fully missed the opening of the food truck. After they left I stood in line and felt better than I had since before Glacier National Park. Not full. I needed that burger. She was sexy. She was perfect, but when she was gone, I was alone again.
I never conquered, rarely came, and honestly that’s fine. I don’t think I’d be as good at getting what I want if I hadn’t run away for a little while. These days while grading, reading, doomscrolling, whenever I’m sitting on my couch, whenever I’m doing what needs to be done or I want to do, I will surprise myself by bursting into to tears. I will be laden with a sadness that I can sometimes pinpoint to loneliness, frustration, or overwhelm. Sometimes I sort of gesture wildly at the world and assume that it’s all seeping into me, worrying and itching at my sadness. Frequently it’s within three days before my period starts, but not exclusively. Sometimes it’s because someone on a Hulu commercial cared deeply about their dog. Whatever it is, the trigger can’t begin to describe the ocean of tears that I fear will spill if I let them, if I don’t stop it up. My face scrunches and I pretend someone else is in the room. I lean my back to reverse the tears.
“Sorry” I say to no one. “Fuck.”
It’s habit to try and stop crying, maybe not healthy but on the scale of unhealthy habits I’m actually ok with that. I used to not cry at all. In my frozen twenties I sat in my disgusting room numb and angsty watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer hoping for sad scenes that pulled the tears out of me. In the early pandemic I listened to Adam’s Song and thought about all the people who wronged poor little high school me. I was aching to feel more human, more normal. Now I cry a little bit, stop myself, and then feel a little silly for stopping myself. So I tell my friends about it.
It was a relief to talk to my friend Liv, who is also in their thirties, and realize that we both have had the same experience. Maybe it’s how hormones work in our thirties, maybe it’s how feelings work in 2026. We take in so much of the world, we do what we can and know for a fact that it’s probably not enough, but it is something and that’s not nothing. We rest, we cry, we repeat. If you don’t make time to cry, it seems the tears will find you.
When I listen to the depression playlist and think about Adam’s Song, I think about loneliness. I think about not understanding my friends in high school, about not knowing the difference between friends, acquaintances, and random people on the street in undergrad, about the bartender and girls in Missoula, and about the clinking pipes in my basement apartment in Chicago. It’s sort of annoying that every story I tell is just about someone, often me, who was alone and then it turns out I need people, actually. I need people a lot. They make me feel more human. They make me feel full. They make me feel so much that it’s exhausting, and it gets to the point where I can’t wait till I get home to pass the time in my room alone.
Emma Allmann studied creative writing UW-Madison and is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama - Tuscaloosa. She has had pieces published with Ellipsis, Ink In Thirds, and EcoTheo Review, shortlisted with Smokelong, and has had a play produced for the Marcia Légère Student Play Festival at UW-Madison.
Nobody’s Nora Now: philip james shaw on nick cave’s “nobody’s baby now”
When Nora Ephron said, will you watch me while I nap? I’d responded, that’d be a good song lyric. But I don’t remember agreeing to watching her nap. I know I never said anything like, sure, Nora, I’ll watch you nap. I did say, I can be right out in the hall if you need me and I’d moved toward the door, and I’d said, the important people are coming soon to take you to the reception. She’d said, no, don’t leave, it’ll be okay.
It was 2010, part of her contract was staying in the grand suite of a stately Seattle hotel known for being haunted by the ghost of Alice B. Toklas. Is that true? she asked me. About Toklas ghost? and I’d told her what my smart writer friends had told me, and then I told her about a campy Halloween party I’d attended in 1998 where an entire floor of the hotel had been turned into a spooky haunted walk-through experience and I told her that there’d been many celebrity ghosts attached to the hotel, all cast to perform that night. Which ones? she’d asked and I’d told her I couldn’t remember other than Alice. I told her that I’d been drunk, my fiancé and her fancy friends had bought tickets, and we’d queued up in the hotel’s tufted and oak paneled lounge, drinking expensive drinks. What did you come as? Nora asked, and I’d told her I never dress up for Halloween, and she’d asked why and I’d said, Childhood trauma. Oh, she’d said and she’d said, how were the expensive drinks?
The elevator in the hotel is very slow, very small, very cramped with the two of us and all her shopping from the day. We stood only inches from one another trying not to look at ourselves in the fun house mirror brass doors. I pointed down to the rug with the word Wednesday stitched into it and said, I like how they have a rug for every day of the week. Nora said, today barely fits. I hadn’t been a fan of any of Nora Ephron’s work at that point in my life. As for Nora, she’d be dead some nineteen months later.
In the hired car that day, as we got stuck in traffic we’d listened to music from my iPod. What’s that song, she’d said. I know that song, she’d said. It’s The Bad Plus, I’d said. Bad Plus, she’d said and I’d corrected her, The Bad Plus. Oh, she’d said, I guess that matters. And I’d said, matters to them. She’d asked me, where would I have heard that, and I was about to go on about that band, how I do, how I’d never missed a show of theirs in Seattle, but instead, I’d said, I hear NPR use their music for transitions all the time. Nora said, that’s where I’ve heard it.
That day in traffic, we listened to songs and talked about songs, and about my drinking. I’d told her I was more, bourbon over a cube. Cheap beer. Wine other people know more about than me. But I’m a good drinker. I’d added, I like good champagne and Nora’d said, but who doesn’t. I’d told her I was lucky I had friends with the means to teach me the difference. We’d talked about music that was good to listen to when you are sad, or sad and drunk. Nora wasn’t much of a drinker, childhood trauma, but at lunch she had something tiny to drink. I honestly can’t remember what it was. It was just the two of us, me and Nora Ephron, and it’d rained hard on us between the curb and the front door of the restaurant, and before we sat, I’d helped dry her leather outfit off with cloth napkins she’d nicked off another table as the maître d. showed us to the one by the window, under the monorail, as she had requested. She wore black leather everything. As I blotted the rain off her shoulders and back, it felt like little remained underneath. I did not have a drink. I had a Coca-Cola and an espresso. Maybe at the reception, I told her. Not like we’re driving she’d said. Nora was nostalgic about everything that day. All day, Seattle was like this and Seattle was like that. She liked that I didn’t have any specific questions for her about her work or the movies she’d been known for. She liked I’d worked around the production industry enough that when she talked about her experiences in Seattle, I knew what and where and who, she was talking about. I had seen Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally, but that day, I couldn’t have told you the difference. And she’d liked my iPod.
When we got back to the hotel that afternoon, after listening to sad songs in traffic, she’d been telling me another story about her version of 90s Seattle, but then she stopped as we slowed to navigate the lobby together. As she had all day, she reached for my arm, and I’d put my other hand atop of her hand squeezing my arm hard just below my elbow, and I moved us toward the tiny elevators, walking slow across the marble floor as not to slip from the rain still on our shoes. She liked how little someone could know about her. She pointed to the lobby bar and asked if I’d spent much time drinking in there and I’d admitted I had. Then she said, I prefer Vinnie’s, slowly turning her torso to point past where the doorman was standing, toward the hospitals, the massive church across the street. I’d corrected her, Vito’s. I’d said, that’s what it’s called. Now, at least. It’s down a block and across the street. Nora said, yeah, that one. She’d said, there was a bartender there, who looked like Hugh Jackman and I’d said, yeah, his name is Bobby. Then I said, Bobby was my ex-wife’s ex. Nora said, you’re a little melodramatic aren’t you, Philip. And I’d said, I’ve heard that said before, yes, ma’am. Nora said, I need to get some rest before we have to do the next thing. After the door to her suite closed behind us and I’d put down her shopping is when she’d said, Will you watch me while I nap?
Nora requested this hotel and the grand suite as part of her contract to come speak about her life and books, and I had been her media escort. Next up on her agenda was what had been billed as an intimate reception with Nora. It was in the ballroom of the hotel, just down the hall from her room, and she’d plenty of time to freshen up, take a rest, ninety minutes, I’d said. And then it’s right down the hall. After the reception, we’d have to sit in the car for a half hour to travel the less than two city blocks to where Nora would be speaking to a much larger audience. She wasn’t walking so well, by then. But she still hadn’t told anyone she was dying. And it was windy. So, more sitting in the car was the plan. That morning, after visiting the local NPR affiliate’s morning show, there were things she’d wanted to do, and I had spent the day doing them with her. My personal car, I’d used for most authors and speakers visiting, wasn’t going to be sufficient. A black car service was arranged for our disposal. It was a very windy day. November 18th, 2010. I’d spend most of it playing songs for her and then offering her my arm as she struggled out of the low slung limousine, and help her as we navigated the cobbles of Post Alley so she could buy antique dominos from a curio store she loved and I always have to visit, and then she had to have the grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup at her favorite celebrity chef’s restaurant.
At that point, I’d lived in Seattle for twenty years. I knew about Nora’s Seattle, and what she was known for. If only from the periphery. Nora liked that I knew people but didn’t know people and that I was conversant in Seattle lore, and after she asked me to watch her nap, she pointed past the parlor of the suite to some French doors, and said, I’ll just be in there, sleeping. She’d said, you can sit over there by the piano and pick out more songs for our ride to the hall. I sat down and put on my headphones. She trusted me. She probably trusted everyone, everywhere she went. She was lovely and we’d laughed most of the day stuck in traffic, listening to my iPod over the car’s stereo system. This was all before the ubiquity of streaming music services.
I’d explained to her how I had been collecting music all my life and after getting married to my second wife, I’d spent almost two years digitizing my music collection so we would have more room in our apartment. Stacks of compact discs every morning on my desk, I could burn through five or six before heading to work. There were thousands to get through. And when I did, I was proud of my pocket library of music. Music, I had spent my own money on, collected my whole life, its physical forms now dispensed of into the wind out of need for space. My wife and I agreed that living together, I could have books or records, but not both. The tradeoff was how I could have all of it, just bytes in my pocket. I’d had to buy the largest iPod at the time, eighty gigabytes. I was a nerd about the fact that I could have all my music in my pocket. For my entire life up until then, I had never even owned a multi-disc player or anything that would have mixed my music up for me. I’d make and receive mix tapes and then came mix c.d.s but it wasn’t the same, the randomness, or the ability to hear any song I wanted, when I wanted.
As we sat in traffic all day, together in the back seat of the limousine, me across from her, what song is that?, Nora would ask? And I’d tell her. Then she’d say, how about something else and I’d change it to something else, but always music easy to listen to. I was enjoying our conversations, her stories, too much, I didn’t want my louder music to get in the way. My son, Max, she said, he plays in Kesha’s band. Do you know Ke$ha? And I said, the one with the dollar signs and Nora said, yeah, that one and she said, but there’s only one dollar sign. And I’d said, that probably matters. Then I said, I don’t have her on my iPod. She said, he only plays with her on tour. As I searched for what to play next, I asked, do you like Jimmy Giuffre, and she responded, the clarinet player? and I said, yeah, and she said, does that qualify as sad music? And I said, anything where you can hear the artist breathe is sad. Like Glenn Gould, I said. Nora said, Glenn was a mumbler, not a breather. And I said, we can listen to the radio, instead, if you’d prefer. But she’d said, no, seems like you’re pretty proud of that thing, pointing at my iPod glowing in my hand. Then Nora Ephron asked, so what’s the saddest song, you got? I took another moment to scroll and I said, this one. Nora waited for it to start and asked, what’s this one about, and I said, about a woman who didn’t want to be loved any longer.
Philip James Shaw, b.1970—is the recipient of the 2022 Fugue Prose Prize and The Los Angeles Review's 2013 Wild Light Award. Recent writing has been published in AGNI, The Forge, and Pithead Chapel, among others. He is currently an MFA candidate at Bennington College Writing Seminars and his debut lyric collection, prepositions for elijah, was published in 2025 by Maison Chaungeaux. More of his work can be found at: philipjamesshaw.com