Ralph Ellison once suggested that “living with music” provides us with “an orientation in time.” Music, in other words, helps us locate and anchor ourselves within a history that exceeds us. Living ...

Robert Cashin Ryan
Robert Cashin Ryan is founding editor of hyped on melancholy, a publication devoted to sad sounds and why we cleave to them. He has written about Christmas, drone music, “Born in the USA” and other things people hate for Avidly, Sounding Out!, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He also writes about the ocean, imperial-late style, and Henry James’s sentences, for more ornate academic outposts. He sometimes lives and teaches in Chicago.