how to disappear

on the vanishing of Connie Converse

In between two tall mountains
There's a place they call Lonesome.
Don't see why they call it Lonesome,
I'm never lonesome when I go there.
“Talkin’ Like You (Two Tall Mountains),” Connie Converse

Perhaps there are two kinds of people: those who are terrified of being forgotten, and those who wish to disappear. I fall into the first camp, with a decent-sized yearning for the latter. Some people can seamlessly vanish from social settings. They are more memorable for their nonchalance. They lack the rot of desperation.

I’ve never been one for an Irish exit. Goodnight! Goodbye! I was here. And, now I will be gone. And, that will be different. Because if it isn’t different whether I’m here or gone… Oh God…

A spiral that isn’t to be entertained.

Sometimes, I worry that my friendships will fade away if I’m not standing right there, a physical reminder, an object to be loved. Hence, stunts like my protracted goodbye tour of America, handing out forget-me-nots to every soul I’ve ever met in New York. This is the kind of malarky I pull for a mere summerlong trip. I’m too narcissistic to fantasize about vanishing into obscurity, spiriting away to some unknown town. I’ve spent the majority of my life in the two largest and most ridiculous cities in America, attempting to collect as many people who will love me as possible. I’ve also never in truth understood that darker urge to disappear. The desire to not be here, or anywhere. My will to live is prolific. I wake up every morning starving.

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I’ve had a passing interest in the music of Connie Converse for years. I discovered her as many do these days—algorithmically. In early college, I came across Playboy of the Western World on a Spotify-generated playlist. The song tells a fanciful story of a woman and her charismatic, doomed lover. I was listening to a lot of creepy music at the time. Daniel Johnston. Vashti Bunyan. (Early) Angel Olsen. (Early) Mitski. (Early) Alex G. I was drawn, too, to Converse’s unusual voice. Her trilling, trans-Atlantic timbre. A rougher, more precocious Judy Garland. A less cottagey Bunyan. She sounded like my Midwestern grandmother singing Too-Ra Loo-Ra Loo-Ra as a lullaby before bed.

The impression her music made at the time was enough to save a few songs to a few playlists, but never enough to listen to an album in full, or look much into her biography.

Then, the algorithm struck again. I’ve been in a musical rut of late. I’ve been listening to old playlists that have not been satisfying. I’ve been letting Spotify extrapolate to a humming string of forgettable songs by indie musicians with 100k monthly listeners. I finally listened to Brat (ya, ya, ya). Mostly, nothing holds. This week on a walk through the streets of Islington, my attention narrowed when I heard a song begin with a snippet of a conversation.

An encouraging voice: Why don’t you just sing it, and we won’t record it?

In response: Oh, well, I can do that.

Then, a voice like an old friend. I Have Considered The Lilies reminded me of the tangled, whimsical world of Connie Converse. This time, my curiosity was piqued. I Googled her and came across a heart-stopping detail. In the place where her biography might say death, there was a line that read: Disappeared August 1974 (age 50).

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Horrible. Delicious. I tumbled down the rabbit hole. First, Wikipedia. Then, a very beautiful 2022 article for the New York Times Magazine by Hanif Abdurraqib (whom I’ve had the privilege of meeting in my line of work). After several thorough listenings to her album How Sad, How Lovely, I watched a documentary from 2014, and went to the library for Howard Fishman’s book, released last year. Of all the sources, I was greatly moved by the thoroughness of Fishman’s work. He devoted more than a decade to understanding and elevating Connie Converse’s story, and the result is a brilliant, triumphant labor of love.

Others have synthesized her story much better than I ever could. I will spare you a belabored retelling, and instead defer to their words.

In an unsent letter entitled “To Anyone Who Ever Asks: (If I’m Long Unheard From)” Converse wrote: This is the thin hard sublayer under all the parting messages I’m likely to have sent: let me go, let me be if I can, let me not be if I can’t. […] So let me go, please; and please accept my thanks for those happy times that each of you has given me over the years; and please know that I would have preferred to give you more than I ever did or could—I am in everyone’s debt.¹

Whether Converse truly intended to attempt a new life somewhere else, or if she was nodding to a possible death by suicide, we cannot know. Fishman writes:

Many who now love Converse’s music have expressed the hope that maybe, just maybe, she managed to slip off the grid, and lived out her life in isolated peace and quiet among the wildflowers, birds, and animals that appear in her songs. Maybe she was saving money to do just that. Maybe it’s possible that, though she did not vanish on the wings of glory, Connie Converse’s life continued somewhere else, maybe even as someone else.

For now, the only thing that can be said for certain is that Converse was last seen in Ann Arbor, in August 1974, her final, furtive act utterly consistent with how her life might be described: unpredictable and inevitable, opaque and mesmerizing, complete and unfinished, and almost unbelievable.²

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Her story is perhaps so captivating to a modern audience because of how impossible it seems to disappear without a trace. We are tracked and captured everywhere we go. We amble across the background of Ring camera recordings, and photobomb thousands of digital pictures. Our phones track our location to feed to our friends, lovers, parents, and whatever companies might want to sell us toothpaste. Biometric data is used to unlock our devices and facial recognition is becoming more and more common at airports. We can search our camera rolls with words like “baby” or “passport” or “dog” or “Charlotte.” Our banks send us real-time notifications of when, where, and how much we’ve spent. Our mapping apps suggest where to go next based on our previous behaviors. A friend of mine literally realized that he was bugged by his partner when his phone alerted him to an unidentified Apple AirTag in his backpack.

When I Google my name, I am confronted with a trash mountain of digital detritus—accounts, posts, mentions. It would take a lot to disconnect. Disappearing feels more and more like a romantic idea from a bygone era.

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The title of this essay draws from the Lana Del Rey song of the same name. It strikes me as a parallel contrast to Converse’s We Lived Alone. This is how to disappear, Del Rey croons, yet notably her narrator is always accompanied by a romantic partner to disappear with—John, and Joe, and eventually, simply, you. While these men are ambiently unavailable, cracking beers, with cuts on their faces, there still seems to be some reciprocity. There are two cats in the yard, which she cribs from Our House, an ode to John Nash and Joni Mitchell’s idyllic domestic bliss.

The We in Connie’s song refers to the protagonist and her house—we lived alone, my house and I. She lives in simplistic happiness until being interrupted by romantic desire. You.

Both songs are impressionistic, romantic, nostalgic, image-heavy. But, like much of her music, Lana’s story is a hard-boiled noir with layered storylines. Allusions to a bygone Americana. It’s theatrical with characters and action.

Connie deals mainly with a setting. Her portrait of the house is vivid and simple, rooted in the quiet objects that keep her company. She too, references a bygone Americana, appropriate to her own time and place. We can see the lamp against the dark and the table painted green and the pretty potato sack. She introduces conflict only in the last stanza. And when I set my eyes on you, nothing else would do. And, eerily, almost like a question, she repeats: Nothing else would do.

Both songs are lonely and beautiful. It strikes me that Del Rey captures what it means to vanish in full company. How to be alone, together. How to disappear with others and for others. Converse conveys a purer sense of isolation and physical remove. She’s Over There in the land where you might be forgotten. In her world, there are no cats in the yard. The song is brimming with tension: a yearning to connect with the living world. Her last stanza is so heartbreaking because it seems to ask: How can I not disappear? How sad. How lovely.

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There’s something about Connie Converse that strikes a fierce chord of identification for many. She is our lamp against the dark: brilliant, yet the relative scarcity of her story allows us to project what we wish onto the shadows cast on the wall. Abdurraqib writes about her with so much love: I realize that I am projecting. Converse was someone who, it seemed, made a path for her life, post-music, that was rooted in refusal. A refusal to be known, a refusal for access. […] I am drawn to Converse because she offers a model for these questions that I have weighed and carried in the past, questions that I will almost certainly be confronted with again.³

Fishman also describes resisting the urge to project: My sense of connection with Converse had naturally grown during this process of hunting down details of her life. But what I also knew was that this sense of codependency with her was not at all unique. Yes, I felt that she was singing across time to me, but I also knew that she was singing to all of us, to an audience that did not yet exist.

I feel it, too, grasping for biographical coincidences that will connect me with the lost woman. In all the snippets of her letters and journals, her voice is so strong and funny. From comic bits such as: it isn’t the heat, it’s the people who say it’s the humidity. To the moving clarity of a line like: there lay under us a sea of things that were not being said and should be said. In her music, I relate to her reservoir of solitude, her perceived separateness, her headstrong reluctance to ask for anything from anybody.

I’ve felt particularly chilled to learn about the solitary trip she took to London shortly before disappearing. In a letter, she says: I only felt country-bumpkinish for about 24 hours. I have taken to the underground like a duck to water [and] I find little difference between underground London at the rush-hour and subway New York at the rush-hour. I recall nearly identical conversations I’ve had about public transportation during my dates here.

I’ve thought about the fact that she was working on a novel as I tip-tap at my pages during mornings in coffee shops. I think to the nights I’ve spent in mild research of how I might get a visa to live in the UK, before chiding myself that I’m wearing the rose-colored glasses of temporarily disappearing from my normal life. And, from Converse, a passage that seems to be taking words right out of my mouth: I’m sure I wouldn’t be so fond of London if I had a job here; but I feel that if I did have a job here I’d like this city better than I liked New York in the late 1950s. A matter of temperament and texture, social texture.

My life in New York is frenetic. While there, I lack the discipline to sit alone with my thoughts, because there is always another tantalizing plan to accept. The world is always reaching out to touch me. This is both touching and overstimulating. Here in London, during the stretches when my roommate has been off traveling, I live alone. Last week in particular, I found myself friendless and an ocean away from anyone who knows me deeply. But, I wouldn’t call it lonesome. There is grace in solitude. Room to breathe. And, I know I can always rely on the company of my old friend, reaching out through space and time, forever here, forever gone.

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Thanks for reading! I realize this was a little different from what I usually do. I hope you liked it. You can support my writing with a like, comment, or share. No mixtape today, but you can view the archival Insecure Tea playlist here.

1. Many thanks to Howard Fishman for his work in synthesizing the letters, journal entries and stories from Connie Converse’s life. Any time I quoted Converse herself, it came from Fishman’s book, cited below.

2. Howard Fishman, To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse (2023).

3. Hanif Abdurraqib, “The Art of Disappearance,” New York Times Magazine, (2022).