Happy birthday, Dead Letter Offices

Celebrating one year of my Substack :-)

Wow! What a completely candid photo of me perusing New Order’s Technique (1989)!

I’m not sure when I first heard of Substack. Chances are it was either my high school mate AJ’s Substack, Dropout Diaries (a great read, which you can check out here) or a poetry newsletter run by one of my Tumblr mutuals. Either way, Substack slowly creeped onto my radar last year, and it wasn’t long before I decided that I’d create my own, what the hell.

I am notorious when it comes to starting projects and never seeing them through. I am the sort of person who gets possessed by manic creativity at 2am and bursts of inspiration that will inevitably fizzle out by the next week. My track record with blogs isn’t good, unless you count my Tumblr, which I have somehow never deleted or abandoned despite many failed attempts at sideblogging. That, and the fact that the site is long past its heyday.

My mum also likes to poke fun at me. She takes note of whatever current obsession has gripped me, whether that be an 80s synthpop band or a 41 book absurdist fantasy series. I know myself to be quite fickle at times. At others, I am lazy and unwilling to put in the effort if no one is holding me accountable. Yet despite this, I took the plunge and started a Substack anyway.

I think I can mostly chalk this up to the fact that my circumstances were different last year. Previously, I’d tried writing things here and there during high school, but 2022 marked my first year of university and my initial forays into being a Student Journalist™. I’d gone from writing sporadically to writing feverishly and frequently, from narratives and fiction to news stories and reviews. I was suddenly desperate to collate a portfolio for myself if not for some future job. I wrote (and still write) for my uni’s newsroom, Central News, as well as some student publications and blogs. But what I found was that I was always adhering to certain guidelines about what I could write and how I could write it, which is understandable, but I wanted the freedom of writing on my own terms about the things I loved.

Anyone who has gotten to know me in the slightest will know that music is my biggest passion, and the only thing I love as much as listening to it and spending all my money on records is yapping on and on about it. I’ve never been able to understand the types of people who just say their favourite music is whatever’s on the radio, or anyone who engages with music on nothing more than just a surface level. I don’t mean that in a way that tries to look down on anyone - I just mean that my brain literally cannot comprehend it. I have always been a music obsessive. If there is a song, artist or album I like, I need to read about it until I have squeezed out all the information available on it. I own far too many music books and hungrily devour music memoirs. My YouTube to-watch list is filled with countless essays on music genres and artists. I keep a list of my records and track them on Discogs, and if it’s an artist I really like, I will own their music on as many formats as possible. I relish meeting others who approach music with the same obsessive fervour. To me, there has never been much of a happy medium when listening to music. It’s all or nothing, a fundamental part of who I am. I don’t know where I would be without it.

All of this to say: I’ve never really had a space to write about music with as much freedom as I want. Sure, I’ve written music reviews. I had a cheesy column in my high school magazine called “The Professor’s Record Reviews”, where I, aged 13, would review all sorts of records from Rush’s Hold Your Fire to Japan’s Gentlemen Take Polaroids (needless to say, I’m sure nobody read these). More recently, I’ve done a few articles and interviews for Central News or for uni assignments. But I haven’t really been able to talk about the things I want, nor have I been able to bring in my own experiences and opinions fully whilst writing. In high school I’d also occasionally fantasise about starting a YouTube channel and making video essays or a podcast about music, but I hate editing and filming. It seemed like writing was the option that suited me best if I wanted to yap at length about my opinions and thoughts.

A list of potential video essay ideas I had in high school. These are just a handful of them, but I hope I can turn some of them into DLO articles.

As far as names go, the Substack title Dead Letter Offices came to me quicker than most. It’s taken from R.E.M.’s 1987 compilation of B-sides, rarities and outtakes, Dead Letter Office, which in turn takes its name from the facility that processes undeliverable mail. I chose the name in part because of my unwavering love for the band, but mostly because I thought of this Substack as somewhere to publish writing that, to me, had no other conceivable home. At this point I barely think about the name anymore, so occasionally when I’m talking to someone about my Substack, I have to take a moment to process when they say, “Oh, an R.E.M. reference! Nice!”, because these days I associate DLO more with my own writing than the compilation LP I borrowed it from.

When starting out, I was very inexperienced with the concept of Substack, so I didn’t bother to make an introduction post. Besides, every time I tried to do some sort of introductory post for something, I ended up abandoning it fairly quickly down the track. Hence why I just dove right in and wrote a piece about how Automatic for the People did so much for me as a teenager with undiagnosed depression. No “hi, I’m Mia and this is my Substack” post. Even now I can still recall the hours I spent huddled in some PhD offices at uni clattering away at my keyboard, all these thoughts I’d bottled up for years spilling onto the page. The continuation of the R.E.M. theme was just a coincidence, really - Automatic for the People was celebrating its 30th anniversary and I wanted to do my little celebratory bit for it.

The way I’ve written posts for Dead Letter Offices has always been a bit like a kid in a sweet shop in the sense that I’ve been free to write about whatever I like without editorial guidance. The hindrance of not having a fresh pair of eyes and having to do all the proofreading myself is a small price to pay for doing things the way I want. (Besides, I still get feedback on the pieces I submit for uni publications.) A lot of Dead Letter Offices has consisted of throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. I realised that this newsletter provided an excuse to request interviews with people who’ve interested me, such as Jen Matson, and it’s given me the chance to better my interviewing skills. I’ve written silly rambling reviews, navel gazing musings on artists and albums that have shaped me, and attempted a mixtape series that I swiftly dropped when I realised it bored me to write it. I’ve slowly learned what I enjoy writing and what I don’t, what works for me and what doesn’t, and I wouldn’t have gotten this knowledge without writing things for DLO consistently over the past year.

If I have an idea for a DLO piece, I always dump my thoughts in a notebook first.

Dead Letter Offices has seen me through a lot. At the start of 2023 I was going through a lot in my personal life, and this Substack became a crutch of sorts to help me cope. I would spend hours in bed writing and writing and writing. I churned out one to two posts a week, and it served as a marvellous distraction for how I felt when I wasn’t sitting in front of a Google Doc, eyes drying up and stomach rumbling from being chained to my laptop writing all day. I wanted to be the next Rayne Fisher-Quann or Savannah Brown (and let’s be honest, I still do), my writer heroes whose work I continue to follow obsessively. I don’t think I’m anywhere near their level yet, but I admire their work deeply even if the latter doesn’t even really write non-fiction, let alone music journalism. 

Fortunately, I no longer use Dead Letter Offices as a thinly-veiled coping mechanism, but I still love writing here. Even if I’m not posting frequently, the thought of writing something for DLO is always tucked away in some corner of my mind. Between uni, work, relationships, other writing, doing theatre productions and zine fairs, as well as countless other hobbies, a Substack often gets pushed to the side to make way for something else in my life. But DLO is my baby and I’m very proud of where both it and myself have come.

Some of my notes and handwritten plans for the article I wrote on U2 earlier this year.

Somehow I have managed to build a small audience here and I’m not really sure how. I felt so self-conscious promoting my writing when I first started, and to be honest, I still do. I know a lot of people are here because of the XTC podcast episode I appeared on, which in turn wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t spend an afternoon procrastinating a uni assignment by ranking every single XTC B-side and posting the results here on this Substack. (Sidenote: I am very grateful to Mark Fisher for inviting me onto What Do You Call That Noise? An XTC Podcast, and I would absolutely love to go back on again, if he’ll have me.) I also know I gained some readership from my piece ‘A Love Letter to the Cleaners From Venus’, which the Captured Tracks record label reposted to a much larger audience than I would ever be able to reach. I am of course very thankful for both of these opportunities and I’m still shocked that people care about my silly little writings.

If you have subscribed to Dead Letter Offices over the past year, thank you so much. I don’t really talk directly to the people that do (unless you comment on a post, in which case I always try my best to respond), but it feels good to have a readership, even if it’s very small. I’m aware I started this Substack with the intention of writing just for myself, but it’s infinitely nicer to know that there’s some people listening to me rather than feeling like I’m shouting into an empty void. And not just listening, but reciprocating too - you understand how I feel, enthuse the same way I do. As someone who grew up feeling quite lonely because no other kid their age shared their interests, it feels like I’ve finally stumbled across a community of people who are just like me. 

I post a bit more sporadically these days, but I really do try to keep a post a month as the goal. Sometimes life is so busy that even that isn’t possible, yet I’m still thinking of DLO and the readers I have all the time. If you have ever liked a post, commented, subscribed, donated or simply just read my work, I appreciate you. It feels like such a worn out platitude, but I am very thankful. After all, I’m literally just a 20-year-old Australian student who likes music. I’m no Pulitzer winner nor am I some indie darling, yet you’ve chosen to spend a bit of your time with me anyway. Here’s to another year of Dead Letter Offices, and many more after that. 

I’m always keen to chat about all things music, so please don’t hesitate to comment or send me a message on your platform of choice. But for now, thank you simply for stepping into my office.

All my contact details are on my about page! You can also leave me a tip here if you so wish <3