New Book :: Essentially

Essentially
Essays by Richard Terrill
Holy Cow! Press, October 2022

From Minnesotan author and jazz musician, Richard Terrill’s Essentially is an essay collection that explores what is most essential to him, from the difficult lives of jazz musicians, to trout fishing, to the shifting population and mores of suburbia. “Here’s the thing,” Terrill writes. “There’s always the thing, isn’t there, and most often, not just one?” Terrill asks through this series of wide-ranging, funny, and sometimes gut-punchingly vulnerable essays, What is essential? Maybe trout fishing, the music of Bill Evans, or the whys of dog ownership. Maybe Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story, WeChat messaging app, a musician’s early hearing loss, and spying on the neighbors. Or maybe the coming apocalypse, almost getting lost in the woods, trespassing, town clean-up days, and the reason Miles Davis never listened to his own recordings. At times self-effacing and funny, at times outspoken and provocative, Terrill fixes a clear eye on the contradictions in our present moment. “We’re at that point in a journey where you know where you’re going, but you don’t know where you are,” he writes. “The destination should come anytime now.”