The Day After: Post-Book Launch High

After the blowout of last night, I'm slowly returning to earth as my book makes its way into the world. Here's a small taste of what it felt like...along with a story that I think will touch you.

Paul Levy and I in conversation at Up Up Books in Portland, 5.23.24; photo by Andy Laken

Today’s newsletter isn’t a post or a story. It’s just an email from me to you.

It’s nice to drop the facade of “writerliness” for a moment, and to be honest I’m a little blown out anyway from last night’s book launch. And seeing as Substack is a platform for the written word, I wanted to share a little snippet about writing. It’s from the Q & A at the end of last night’s presentation, when an audience member asked me about what it meant to finally step into this role.

As these questions do, it opened up an unexpected portal in me. I skipped—I hope!—any tendency towards grandiosity, and talked instead about the vulnerability of accepting what actually is, rather than what I thought should be:

One more thing.

As “Death Trip” makes its way into the world, it’s been sparking some very deep and personal conversations with readers—both ones I know personally and ones I don’t. And what I’m seeing are the synchronicities, that a LOT of us are having the same experiences the book touches on—engaging with the intergenerational trauma that haunts a great many of us. We’re coming at it from different angles—some through psychedelics, some through meditation, some through therapy or group work or other modalities. But we’re all struggling to come to grips with it.

And it’s working.

For everything that’s truly awful and terrifying in the world right now—and I don’t need to remind you of this fact—a LOT of people are doing the hard work of digging down beneath the surface to learn why we keep repeating the same unconscious and destructive patterns—and then changing the story.

In the past few months, I’ve been in conversation with someone you’re going to be hearing a lot more about. His name is Michael Galinsky, an absolutely brilliant photographer, filmmaker, and writer. Though we came up in the same world—the indie and punk scene of the ‘80s and ‘90s—neither of us are sure we’ve ever actually met. Not that that’s important.

Anyway, Michael recently shared a story with me that floored me, not only for its beauty and its craft, but for the ways it illuminates how ancestral memory—perhaps even the souls of other peoples’ ancestors—is expressing itself, right here and right now.

The story was published in the Washington Post—which is usually paywalled—but this version is free for you to read. I hope you enjoy it and find it as thought-provoking as I did: The Children Who Remember their Past Lives.

Oh! One final thing. It’s important to me to keep up my regular posting schedule here, but I head off on book tour next week. I’d very much like to share some new work with you, but as someone once sang: “Plans can fall through as so often they do.”

Love always,

Seth

P.S. - Okay, one FINAL FINAL thing. I’m allergic to self-promotion, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that “Death Trip” is officially on sale! You can:

Buy it at a Very Large Retailer that figuratively (and possibly literally) dominates the world

Request it at your local bookseller through this handy link and then selecting “Choose a Bookstore” in the top right

Buy it direct from the publisher, which earns both them and the author (me) a higher rate of return

Again, you have my love and thanks. Onwards!