Gavin Rossdale reads a passage from Paul Auster's Moon Palace about a man found dead in a chair with two packed bags by the door. The vivid detail of those bags, the stillness, the failed communication left him emotionally wounded. He describes how precise writing creates a visceral feeling that stays with you and shapes how you see the world.
'Come give me your hand. Yes, that's right. A good firm grip like so. And now shake. That's right. A shake of farewell. A shake to last us to the end of time.' And like, when I read that, when I read it this morning, when I read it, when I first read it, I was like, 'No, don't leave him. Don't leave him.' And then there's this sort of drawn-out process where the communication dwindles, and then it ends with he's coming back. The band breaks up, so he wires him some money and he says, "I'm coming back. I'll come back." So he surmised to be back by Wednesday, Tuesday, Wednesday, then he wasn't back. So he got the police to look for him and they went to his lodgings and found that he'd passed away in a chair, fully dressed to go with his bags. And this is so Austen, because look at me, I just read it this morning, but I'm full of the detail. The two bags, packed bags by the door and he's asleep in the chair. I mean, that kills me. That's just— there's no one that does that to me. Who can write like that and just create that feeling. I'm like, I'm wounded. I feel wounded because of those words. And I know those wounds. And so that's why he's just staggering.
