This is The Grey Album.
The inspiration for the name is three-fold.
First, it echoes the title of Joan Didion’s seminal collection of essays. The White Album changed how I viewed writing and Didion’s approach will be the guiding ethos for this project.
Second, it shares its name with the 2004 Danger Mouse album The Grey Album that mashes-up Jay-Z’s The Black Album and the Beatles’ self-titled record known as ‘The White Album’. An experimental combination of disparate elements, it symbolises some of the things that I want to do with my own The Grey Album.
Finally, this Substack is an album like a record or a photo album – it’s a collection of parts that can be viewed individually or as a whole. Its subject, broadly speaking, is greyness, in its full meaning. From the monotony of modernity and the ambiguity of politics to the stagnation of culture and the growing uncertainty about the future, greyness describes a lot of what we are living through. Grey is in between black and white – in between the two extremes or in a sense, outside of them. It’s neutral and apathetic, but also slightly frightening. Grey is almost no one’s favourite colour, but when you look deeply it has an overlooked beauty.
The Grey Album is an album of greyness. Drawing from my various influences I will explore numerous grey zones. I hope to challenge, provoke and please.