In 2002 I met a bunch of really tough guys. Not guys that were going around beating people up, they were more like ultra-crusties that ate garbage food and slept in boxes outside. They moved into an abandoned house near my house and all of their power came from an external outlet from a house next door. Nobody ever removed the orange cord stretching across the yard. Their house was full of extension cords and they burned newspaper logs in barrels for warmth and grilled pots of vegetables to eat. The pots were just full of vegetable slop that they kept adding garbage produce into, with hot sauce. I don't think they ever emptied it, they just ate out of it and kept mixing more in.

• Nobody puts Kate Bush in a romper.

There were 6 dudes living in this house, they were hard to get to know but really nice once you broke through the exterior. That's pretty common for the Midwest, actually. One guy was called VV because he was from West Virginia. I think his real name was Alan, but people started calling him WV and then Double V and then just VV. He and I were the closest, we talked a lot about life and music because we both had similar childhoods and both worked in record stores. He tried so hard to get me into Kate Bush, but for some reason I just never really liked her music. He'd play me records and tell me about her life and how she wrote her songs, he was totally obsessed with her. For some reason I never got it. Eventually the people from the city of Chicago came and knocked the house down and all of those dudes had to move away. Three of them, including VV, moved to Oaxaca, Mexico.

Last night we cooked pork chops and had Dan Paulus over for dinner. Since I had been awake for 42 hours at that point, I was totally out of my gourd. The food was really good and we drank wine and played the dice game Pig. At one point I declared that I was leaving to throw a brick through a bank window, with my finger in the air and everything. Then I fell onto the floor and went to sleep for 20 minutes. I had to be told about all of this because I don't remember it. THEN, I woke back up and talked to Dan for another hour before going to sleep around 1am.

• Not throwing a brick through a bank window. Photo by Lacey Swain.

I slept until 3:54 pm, nearly 15 hours. I was shocked because it was so late and I have so much to do. There was a text message on my phone that said "VV is gone" from Todd, one of the guys that moved to Mexico. I wrote back asking what he meant and he replied that they had been on the beach last night talking about people and problems and life and futility and eventually VV got up to go into the water and never came back. They'd talked about that before, swimming really far out into the water as far as they could go and then going even farther and farther and farther and then going under and trying to breathe. They referred to it as "the deep end", as in, "Oh, I'm running out of money, I guess I'll just go off of the deep end." I asked what time it happened, Todd said 1:30am, and I'd like to think it was the same time I fell onto the floor and slept.

I've been listening to Kate Bush all day, mostly just "Wuthering Heights" on repeat. I really love to listen to songs on repeat, it makes them seem really close.

(Above text originally a message to Emily Nokes.)

Do you like Kate Bush? Here are comments from some people that I know.

Erin Paige Armstrong: I love her, never afraid to be eccentric, but in a completely beautiful and sincere fashion.

Michael Fox: Too scratchy.

Hugh Elliott: I was indifferent until I heard Kiki and Herb sing "Running Up That Hill" and their version was a game changer. So I'm glad she wrote that song.

Jermaine Blair: "Running Up That Hill" is the jam.

Audi Martel: When I was six, I used to put the elastic waistband of my slip around my head and pretend I was a nun and listen to "Wuthering Heights". Is that weird? I doubt Kate would think so.

Jessica Oliver: Listening to Kate Bush makes me want to pull a Kate Chopin.

Jonathan Burden: Genius, probably a sorceress of some sort, and beautiful to boot.

Albert Stabler: Glorious genius outside of space-time.

Ashod Simonian: Without her there would be no Animal Collective.

Whitney Williamson: Love her music, but can't watch the videos. Her photographs are more powerful.

Amy Dials: She's made of magic. I want to go to lunch with her. I want to be her friend and listen to her records loudly. I heard her the first time a few years ago on a mix tape a "cool person" made me, I had no idea who she was and thought that she was like this brand new rad artist... And then I found out she's been around forever. Bitch is timeless.

Liz Payne: Timeless eccentric genius. Definitely on her own planet. She got me through the dark ages of college.

Steve Five: I would totally date her daughter. If she has one roughly my age.

Jerky McJerkinson: Hypothetical question: Iron Maiden is heading for the hill(s) while Kate Bush is running up that same hill. If they both leave the base of either side of equal distances at 7:45 a.m. and are expected to arrive at 11:06 a.m., then what kind of latte is needed for the camera crew to follow after them?

Stacy Sargent: I left a severely scratched Hounds Of Love" out by my back trashcans. Two weeks later it was still there.

Anna Peterson: I spent a lot of time in the Eugene, OR juvenile detention center when I was a teenager. My best friend gave me her album and sent me letters everyday when I was locked up. She would scribe, "Every time it rains, you're here in my head" on the back of the envelopes. It was tragically romantic.

Trisha Scearce: I'm picking up what she's putting down.

Jeff Kleinsmith: I love her more than I can put into words. I've made it clear to my family that if she ever asks me to come and live with her that I'm prepared to give all of this up.

Amy Bell: I will let these Kate Bush gifs, that somebody else made, speak for me.

Jim Finn: When Peg Lumpkin was in labor with our baby Franz, she put The Kick Inside (I think that was the album) on her laptop and listened to it with headphones a few times until her water broke and all hell broke loose. She would grab me and tell me to loop it back to the first song every 40 minutes or so.

David Williams: She is the Queen of what, at college, I called the Shelleyan Orphans.