Ten Days Late

She turned 28 on June 5th and I missed it entirely because my internet was down, which is both a terrible excuse and an accurate one. I had been meaning to mark it here—on what had quietly become something close to an unofficial Nora Tschirner appreciation page—not a shrine exactly, more like the kind of dedicated corner of attention you give to someone whose public persona manages to be genuinely appealing without feeling constructed.

Three things she said that I kept coming back to. First: If you’re lazy enough to let music channels shape your taste entirely, I still have no sympathy for you. Then this, which I found perfectly observed: Sometimes I try to look melancholy and introspective in public. It works for exactly as long as it takes someone to say hello to me. And finally, the one that felt most true: I genuinely prefer staying home. People who know me for how much I talk are always surprised by this. But I like being antisocial. In those phases I don’t answer calls and I push all my appointments back.

The contradiction in the last one is what makes it stick—someone visibly, audibly present in the world, the kind of person who lights up whatever room she’s in, who also just doesn’t answer the phone sometimes. That’s not a performance of introversion; that’s the actual thing. There’s something clarifying about a person who can hold both of those truths at once without treating it as a problem to resolve.

So: belated birthday, Nora. I owe you one. Same time next year—assuming the DSL holds.