Growing up in poverty in 1990s East Boston, self-absorption wasn’t some narcissistic luxury—it was armor. A necessary inwardness. The city around me was loud, fast, and often indifferent, and so I learned to become indifferent too—not in the nihilistic sense, but in the streetborn way that makes you scan quick, care less, survive more. Reading came first, a strange escape hatch into other minds. Then writing—mimicking, wrestling, inventing. Music followed: first the listening, then the playing. Each step was a form of possession, of claiming something nobody could take. But I was never intellectual in the traditional sense. I was book-drunk but anti-theory. I didn’t seek truth; I needed relief. What some call intellectual curiosity, I’d call intellectual indifference—I didn’t have time to ponder, I needed to feel. In a city like that, thinking too much gets you hurt. So you tune your soul like a busted guitar, play loud, and move forward.
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