But there's more to the storm than the storyteller's tellin'
On the morning of September 7th, 2025, I awoke with the song “Sudden Storm” melodically replacing the dream residuals that my brain clings to for the first few moments of being plugged back into my reality. The taunting of Ezra singing, “Have you ever been to where I’m going, have you ever been out here?” is not to be mistaken as a question but rather an invitation to join her. Sudden Storm presented itself as a part of an album called Good-Bye Small Head that Ezra released in May of 2025. This is the story of how I released my own small head.
It had been eight months since the music video for the first single, “Grand Mal”, planted a seed in me. On the fifth play of the video I declared, to myself, that I must write a book of letters to Ezra Furman. Ezra had recently been promoted to being my favorite musician of all time and now she got herself bumped up to playing the role of my muse.
This particular morning in September was different from any other in my life because I had been up until dawn having what I think is called a “divine spiritual intervention”. There have been plenty of characters declaring moments similar to the other world initiation that I had just experienced but this was something I never saw coming for me. Coincidentally this was the same day I had planned to see Ezra perform at the Evanston Folkfestival.
Trying to piece the events of the night together whilst quickly doing my hair and make up, I knew one thing for certain. I was not going to this show playing the part of a fan as I typically had done in the past. This day was special because I was going on official business as a writer. Sometimes when you allow it to happen you get recruited by the powers that be to fulfill a purpose without entirely knowing the exact details of what it entails or the outcome. Regardless, if you just had the night I had, you’d probably want to get your shit together and do as told.
Notepad and pens packed and wrapped around me in a tote bag, I found myself at Dawes Park Lakefront in the Chicago Suburb of Evanston. The sun was bright, the sky blue, the lake glistening and the humans around me created the perfect backdrop for my first day as a messenger on earth. That’s how I have come to terms with my pursuit of writing, simply relaying messages and deciphering words to act as a bridge between earth and the spiritual world, through communication. It doesn’t have to be perfect, there doesn’t need to be formal training, and it doesn’t have to equate to conventional standards of success. The recipe for my craft is ownership of my apprentice level writing, commitment to a vision, eagerness to learn, and the acceptance of my purpose to create and share as my contribution to the expansion of our consciousness.
I was given clear instructions to obtain documentation so when it was time for Miss Ezra Furman to take the stage, I planted myself in the front row ready to write notes, ready to record video and ready to receive further enlightenment. Confirmation of my new found alignment was cemented when she performed “The Queen of Hearts” and announced that the beach we were at IS the very beach she sang about in her song. This has huge significance because I often visualised this as a real beach and imagined her young self in Evanston creating the song. "The Queen of Hearts" was the first song I learned to fully play on guitar. It is also one I played to myself frequently during the 2020 pandemic. It got me through the lockdown while in Phoenix and when I quarantined for a month by myself during the first month of living in Chicago.
I’ll be frank, the real reason I ever relocated to Chicago is because it came to me in a dream. Not many people know this about me, but my entire life since my earliest memories has always been led by dreams, visions, and premonitions. There was a large chunk of my life where I did everything possible to avoid them because I would get some wildly disturbing stuff brought to me. I eventually gave way when I learned to allow them to work for me and a lot of this is in part to my practice of Kabbalah and my devotion to Judaism.
So – in "The Queen of Hearts", Ezra appoints the lakefront as “The ocean of the known that ends at the beach just up the street”. This alone is mega for a fan of my caliber, it felt like fulfilling a pilgrimage, but more so it semi spooked me with how haunting the events of the weekend were unfolding. I was being faced with more synchronicities than I can write about. I remember using the word synchronicities during my initial meeting with my Rabbi to discuss my conversion into Judaism. When asked why the interest, my mouth deemed it appropriate to state a quick and vague sentence, something along the lines of “I’ve experienced enough synchronicities in my life to lead me here”.
At the end of her set, I sat on the grass, humming a song that I wrote about twenty years ago when I was living in Brooklyn called On The Grass. It’s a song that frequently pops into my head probably about every other year or so.
Part of the song lyrics go: I will lie on the grass. I will lie on the grass. I will wait for an answer. I will wait on the grass. So give me something or give me nothing at all. And I’ll lie on the grass.
There's no context for that song, it just came out of me one night and I like to sing it to myself. As I gathered my belongings and sat up, a voice whispered – “That’s your book. You are done”. Like, wtf? Just like that? We just started! My small head could not comprehend how after only 45 minutes my book was over? My first unpublished and unshared book took years for the story to evolve and is still being worked on. Now what? It took me a minute but eventually I found why my visit to “the beach just up the street" became the book's final chapter. The story along with its purpose is complete and in the process of being birthed.
The last few weeks I’ve been writing endlessly as I teetered between deciding how much of this to share publicly. The events that followed this picturesque day only pushed me further into “The Great Unknown” where it became painfully obvious that there is simply no way of keeping my true self contained any longer.
For readers that know me personally, this is probably a lot to take in, and that’s ok. These topics have been lightly touched on or expressed during conversations but for the most part there’s only three in my friend group that makes me feel safe to expand on when something of this nature needs to be talked about. Maybe safe isn’t the best word to use but they let me talk and they listen freely without any sign of judgement. That is neither a praise nor a dis but an awareness that much of how I live has been compartmentalized until now.
You're not expected to understand or accept my perspective but there is no wiggle room for judgement. It’s been a long time coming for even myself to accept this as a reality of my life.
If you haven’t picked up on this yet from being friends or reading my writing, then let me tell you straight up now – who I am. I am a jewish woman. I’m a writer and a storyteller. I am a trans and queer ally. I, myself, am half queer.
I believe strongly that trans people are the bravest humans in our history and are currently fighting humanity's biggest battle for us.
Most importantly I’m not going to hide who I am to please other people. If you don’t like longform writing, don’t read it. If you don’t like engaging in authentic conversations, don’t ask me to hang out. If you think being a jew means being a zionist or anti-palestine then ask me or do extensive research for yourself before assuming. If you think I’ve lost my mind – I have – and I hope one day you do too!
And most importantly – I do not believe in the degradation of ANYONE in any form or manner!
I no longer fear losing what little friends I have, although it is my hope that nothing changes, I’m prepared for some people to make remarks or have negative opinions and if that is the case then we truly have no bonds – if you feel this might be you – then all I ask is that you quietly see yourself to the nearest exit and go fuck yourself once you’ve arrived safely to your home.
Sudden Storm
Have you ever been to where I'm goin'?
Have you ever been out here?
Sudden storm in my brain and there is no story anymore
In my brain, there is only the fire of the Lord
In the way that the channels all are flooded and the static overflows
And the vein is overblooded, and it's warm in the brain
And it's hot, and now it's burnin' with the cords cut away
And I'm free and I'm fallin'
And the Lord keeps callin' and my body's not respondin'
And the call's not for me
And there is no story anymore in the storm
The computer's overloaded at the core in the storm
And I'm fallin', but I'm folded on the floor of the warm red apartment
In my body and my body is a city now invaded by the army of the Lord
In the form of electrical dispatches that were born on the shore
Of a chemical imbalance, and I'm sure like before
There's a story to explain it
And the doctors and my family will find a way to paint it
But there's more to the storm than the storyteller's tellin'
There's a core to the storm and the core has got no endin'
And the EMT is yellin' and the story's just a story
And the city's overflowin' with the Lord's warm glory
Glory
Have you ever been out here?
Have you ever been to where I'm goin'?
- Ezra Furman