The Hobbyist #4: Sasha Frere-Jones on Photography and Running

The writer also discusses Body Meπa, sobriety, and deadlines

Photo by Heidi DeRuiter; graphic design by Thomas Euyang

Sasha Frere-Jones was the first person I interviewed for The Hobbyist. This was back before Halloween 2024, just to offer a bit of context on how long it took me to go from recording interviews to actually publishing the damn thing. It quickly became clear during our conversation that the things he did were not, in his mind, hobbies. This was okay with me. It helped clarify the mission of this project, which is essentially to get very cool people to talk about free time.

Sasha is known for a lot of things. I first became familiar with his work because he was the Pop Critic at The New Yorker when I first discovered that writing about music was the coolest thing on Earth. I began as a fan of his criticism, but have grown to love all of his work, like his tremendous 2023 book Earlier, which is a portrait of his life told through fragments. I found it particularly resonant because the book mirrors the way memory works; it’s not linear, but rhizomatic and always shifting.

The impetus for this conversation in particular, or why I could get someone of SFJ’s stature to agree to be interviewed for this project before it had even one subscriber, was his latest album with the band Body Meπa. When I first began thinking about The Hobbyist, I reached out to the great folks at the tremendous Hausu Mountain label about doing a series with Body Meπa. That didn’t really happen, or at least not in the way I expected it would, but I wanted to support the group because their album from last year, Prayer in Dub is absolutely breathtaking. I don’t really wanna do criticism here, but I will say that if you like anything in the realm of CAN, Oren Ambarchi, Tortoise, even The Necks, these dudes may become your favorite band. Anywho…buy Earlier, buy Prayer in Dub, subscribe to The Hobbyist or tell a friend that they must do so, and enjoy my conversation with the great Sasha Frere-Jones below.

You balance so many different forms of writing. You write longform pieces, a newsletter, books, reviews, and more. Before I hit record, we were talking about editing Body Meta recordings. I’m wondering if the process of self-editing writing is more challenging because there are less voices involved?

Sasha Frere-Jones: It depends on what the gig is. The thing that’s different about Earlier was that I did it for Deborah [Holmes, the mother of Frere-Jones’ children] while she was sick. Before she died she asked me to write that. That was for someone. The poems that I’m writing right now are, in some ways, the first thing in a very, very long time that nobody has wanted, which has made it really a beautiful process; but Earlier was almost entirely for myself. Once Deborah passed and we edited the book—the version she read is different from the one that got published.

I’ll answer your question by saying doing books, just the amount of time involved, is so pleasurable to me. I’m hoping to stay more in that realm. I have to do pieces to pay the rent, so I’m not out of that game. I say that and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I just handed in a piece this morning and I’m glad there was a deadline.’ That's a thing that I’m really, really, really, really used to. It helps.

Do you work better when on deadline?

SFJ:I get mad about magazine writing for a whole bunch of reasons that are valid, but a thing that I have come to depend on is that the deadline itself gives a jolt of positive anxiety. This morning I was trying to figure out what to say about High Tide by Able Noise, which is a fucking incredible record I’ve been obsessed with. Sometimes you sit down and you put it on, you’re like, “Oh, I just love it,” and nothing else is happening. Well, I got to say more than that. I was talking to the drummer and he gave me a bunch of empirical insights into what they did in the studio. You can always do reporting. You can always give people the facts of what’s going on. That’s going to be valuable when we’re all dead. Hopefully those facts then make me think about what I’m hearing, and I can write about it.

You want to get beyond the adjective stage and be like, what’s going on? Although Able Noise is drums and guitar, there are very few backbeats. There aren’t any drum beats on the record. Very little of it is in strict time. Most people think the drum set is for one thing, and that’s not what Alex [Andropoulos] does with the drums. That’s an idea. Then I had the extra 300 words that I needed. A lot of it comes from that jolt. You think you don’t want to be anxious, but of course anxiety is something that we use. There’s excitement, there’s pleasurable anxiety.

When you’re not making music or writing or doing things that have earned you income and continue to earn you income, what is your favorite thing to do? I know you mentioned photography.

SFJ: I do that sort of seriously, but I guess I don’t get paid for it.

Well, I think a hobby can also be something that you do professionally from time to time, but it’s just not your day job. The focus of doing it isn’t to make money.

SFJ: The photos have been published. In some ways, I want to choose something I really do badly. That’s more interesting. I mean, in some ways there’s nothing to say about the photos. I have taken them for 21 years. That’s about it. I'm a fairly obsessive person, so I don't do more than three or four things. I don’t listen to podcasts because I listen to music. At night I watch movies or read. I don’t have time for podcasts, not because I don’t like them—often I hear ones that are especially helpful with things I’m working on—but I have very repetitive habits and I like those habits. The only habit I really added was running and working out when I got sober. The photographs started when I was still married to Deborah. I had no interest in photography, none.

She had a point and shoot camera that we would use on vacations and for pictures of the kids. I didn’t think about any of it ever. It took up no space in my brain. Then the camera died and she said, “Will you take care of going and getting a new digital camera?,” which at the time were somewhat new. I went to Times Square and I got a Canon, not very fancy, and I was just standing in Times Square and I was like, “How do you use it?” I pointed it up at the sky. I took this photo and I got the craziest purple-bluish image. It was literally the first photo I took.

I thought, “Fuck, that looks amazing.” I just started looking around and pointing at stuff and being like, “Holy shit, this is crazy.” That’s it. Right around the same time, I started at the very first blog, which first was on a Blogspot, and then this guy named Abe moved it to Abstract Dynamics. He had also tapped Mark Fisher and a few other people, Julianne Shepherd, Philip Sherburne, like six or seven of us. I just started using the photos in each blog post.

You use your photos for your newsletter now, right?

SFJ: Yeah, the photos sort of anchor the text, but they’re sometimes more important than the text, frankly. Every day for 21 years I’ve been taking a photo. Some people have made fun of my style. They’re always straight on, completely OCD. They’re never at an angle, I just face the thing. The way I frame it tends to be an abstract relationship of parts, and there’s definitely stuff that I’m interested in and I see things that look like photos I would take. The only people I ever take photos of are my kids and my friends, mostly just my kids, but not so much my kids anymore. They get testy about it. I dunno if I could call taking pictures a hobby because I’m not sure I know what a hobby is, to be perfectly frank.

I’m counting it.

SFJ: I put my life together in a way which was not about making money. Unfortunately. There are things that I find really satisfying and necessary. I would take photos no matter what. I write no matter what, I play music no matter what. I would probably keep cooking no matter what. They’re all necessary to me. Same thing with the running, but I understand. I like the idea you’re after. I definitely don’t get paid for the photographs, although I have occasionally. I did the cover for Earlier, I did the cover for a book of poems I’m working on. I’m working on a book about Bob Dylan for Yale Press, but I don’t think they will let me take the cover for that. They don’t want a photograph of dirt or decaying foam or whatever the fuck I take photos of.

Do you bring your camera with you everywhere you go?

SFJ: Well, it’s just been my phone for ages. I had a Leica, and then I stopped using a separate camera at some point. I sometimes wish I actually got a whole camera. I got a Nikon or something about five, six years ago. I thought it would lead to something different and cool, and it took beautiful photos, but it was a huge pain in the ass to lug around and it didn’t make things that much better. Of course, the camera has become an obsession for Apple. They have made the camera good enough that there really isn’t any point in me lugging around a whole ‘nother camera.

Let’s talk a bit about running.

SFJ: I don’t know if running is interesting. I mean, I love it. I have never gone for a run and had a bad day. Even bad runs. Afterwards, it feels so good. If I push my way to the end of the run or even most of the way to the end of the run, what my body releases—these drugs that God gave me are so good. I want everyone to have that. I want everyone to find that. Especially as you get older, drinks and drugs hurt your body and your body eventually and it doesn’t have enough in the bank account to deal with that shit. I don’t know how anyone drinks and drugs to the end of their lives, but again, I don't give a shit what people do. Life is incredibly punishing and hard and confusing and painful. So everyone should do whatever they need to. I think cigarettes and cocaine can definitely kill you pretty quick, but some people managed to navigate that until the age of 97, so God bless them. But for the purposes of our talk, I don’t know what I could say other than I run really slowly. It’s embarrassing, but I get some pride when I go to the track over here at the East River. I like it because it’s easy on my knees. I’m lucky that running doesn’t hurt my body. I don't know why, because I’m a little old to be running.

I see people, everyone’s basically better or say faster at running than I am, but I am always proud that I’m out there for a whole hour. Everyone else comes and goes, and I’m still chugging along when I’m done with my brutal hour, actually usually a little tiny bit longer than that. When I've gotten to my four miles, I just feel like a fucking champion. It’s so good. There was a day when it was raining and I didn’t stop and everyone else stopped. And I felt like Rocky.

Do you listen to music when you run?

SFJ: I don’t have my phone with me. I just have my little Fitbit that tells me what goes on. I love not having my phone. I love not having any noise in my ears. I don’t have to worry about anything falling out of my ears, which happened a few times when I did it. Now, part of the point is, I let my thoughts in. Sometimes I can’t stop the excessive anxiety and the soundtrack of misery, but there are beautiful trees and I can let as much of it drain out as I can and end up being as present as I can. Again, it’s a losing battle. I can’t get to pure silence, not yet. But I like that time. It is kind of hard for me to tell what’s going on.

It’s so peaceful to run and not feel the pull of your phone begging you to look at it.

SFJ: I just love that I don’t have any devices with me. When I get back, the texts and emails start up again. But for that hour or so, it’s really a sustaining thing. As I get older, I’m going to have to make it be more every day. I have a lot of my life practice in place. All of it came after sobriety, which was 2019. Everything that I do feels like an extension of sobriety.

Have things that you were doing long before your sobriety been recontextualized?

SFJ: Not the photographs. The playing, yes. I get along with people in a band. Now that I’m sober, it’s very different. Everything is pretty different now in sobriety, but what’s interesting is that the photos are not. Well, I’m not out at night as much, so I don’t have any night photographs. But I don’t like being out at night because other people are drunk. With biking and stuff, it’s just gotten so fucking dangerous. Everyone thinks the road belongs to them, especially pedestrians. It’s too loud. I don’t want to be out at night, so I don’t have a lot of night photographs. I used to because I’d be out drinking. That changes things. You will find very few night photographs from the last few years. Actually, it would be interesting to go down the list and see what changed. I did not exercise when I was drinking, so that’s definitely different. I don’t think that I would have all these projects going if I was still drinking. I would be straining to complete one set of things and failing. I did get things done when I was drinking, but towards the end, not so much.

Drinking is so much about retreating from others. We get a lot of good sayings in the sober community, but a counselor told me early on that the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. Addiction is so much about isolation. The thing about being sober is that you have to start dealing with other people and realize that nothing is really their fault and everybody’s human. You really just have to learn to get along with people, which is terrifying for everyone. When you’re fucking high and drunk, you aren’t really ever dealing with anyone. You can’t perceive them in a tank full of booze and whatever else you use. When you’re sober, you see yourself and others and you got to figure out a way to get along. Once you start doing that, you can do productive work with others, whether it’s putting out a record or blocking a bridge or a tunnel. Not that I would ever do that. Federal authorities, I wouldn't do that.