Corbin Smith has a knack for chaos. His writing tends toward what’s charged and he doesn’t quietly approach so much as drop himself and whoever’s reading right in the middle, but once there Corbin knows what parts of a story to keep close, what sharp parts to pad with an almost yawning malaise, and what can be walked out, left to revel or run. The first time we recorded a podcast together he got up partway to make soup, leaving John Wilmes and I to talk around loud stretches of clanging pots. Another time a siren was faraway on my end, fading by the second, and he interrupted the three person recording with, “Whoa, WHOA, KH, what’s going on over there?” His awareness is high-tuned, impossible to switch off but acute, and also why under his cacophonous velocity he’s warm, gruffly sensitive. Maybe that was a secret, but you don’t hopscotch between earnestly, effortfully, striving to make sense of the snarl of the world and retreating, abruptly, for a breather without keyed-up empathy — an emotional state I feel is becoming the norm for many, in its wild oscillation, given the current condition of things. The secret was also gonna be out with his pick, the last in the inaugural Basketball Feelings Feelings Draft, of Love.
thank you for making me cry