A Bonus Song + My End-of-Year Favorites

№101 — Love Exists (demo)

organizing an accident is a newsletter where I leak home demos of unreleased songs, first draft lyrics, thoughts on the creative process, & dispatches from music life in Paris.

---

Listen to “Love Exists” (demo):

This song was written on May 17, 2018

A winter day in Paris. Photo by Hugo Cohen Sprung

This is demo leak #101

---

Greetings from Paris,

I am deep in the holiday spirit lately, spending all day with Janis and Otto, celebrating his second Chrismukkah. It has also been nearly one month since I ended organizing an accident, releasing the 100th demo of the series. I’m enjoying the time off but am also a lifelong lover of the game, so I’m back with a bonus song and end-of-year picks for my favorite albums of 2024 as well as my personal reading list from the past year.

I hope the holiday break has been restful, vibrant, or whatever you need it to be. Another year is over. I’m grateful for the wonderful friends and family in my life, most notably those who help to lift up my son and show him that a world of love, meaning, and magic exists.

Bonne année,
Ryan

PS: Here’s a nice poem I read this morning called Gratitude by Patrick Dundon.

---

“Love Exists” lyrics

Hold me with your two arms
Here in the middle of the road
I’ll begin when you start
Feeling our presence start to grow

Lonely in a blue car
I’ll let you drive so you will know
Not only when we’re too far
We are one among the stars

And I admit
I’m alright with this

I'm feeling a lot like love exists
It feels a lot like what this is
I’m feeling a lot like love exists
Feeling a la la la la la

Would you ever break free
Should this become unlivable
Someone's gotta come clean
It’s you and me against the world

Early when the morning’s wet
I like to have you by my side
Thirty years have come and gone
Urged me on
You are all I want

I'm feeling a lot like love exists
It feels a lot like what this is
I’m feeling a lot like love exists
Feeling a la la la la la

Figure it out by living
Together in flesh and blood
Picture it all forgiven
For you and I

I'm feeling a lot like love exists
It feels a lot like what this is
I’m feeling a lot like love exists
Feeling a la la la la la

I’m feeling a lot like love exists
Feeling a la la la la la
I’m feeling a lot like love exists
Feeling a la la la la la

These lyrics were written in May 2018.

---

From the Vault

---

2024 Favorite New Albums

• Mk.gee - Two Star & The Dream Police

• Laura Marling - Patterns in Repeat

• Jessica Pratt - Here in the Pitch

• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Wild God

• Geordie Greep - The New Sound

• Clairo - Charm

• Delicate Steve - Sings

• MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks

• Kendrick Lamar - GNX

• Sam Evian - Plunge

• Cassandra Jenkins - My Light, My Destroyer

• Michael Kiwanuka - Small Changes

• Katie Bollinger - Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind

• Hinds - VIVA HINDS

• Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee

• Porches - Shirt

• Goat - Goat

• Amyl and The Sniffers - Cartoon Darkness

2024 Reading List

• John Steinbeck - Travels with Charley

• Michel Houellebecq - Submission

• Gabrielle Zevin - Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

• Christian Wiman - My Bright Abyss

• Marilynne Robinson - Housekeeping

• C.S. Lewis - A Grief Observed

• David Mamet - True and False

• David Mamet - Speed the Plow

• David Mamet - Oleanna

• Ian McEwan - Machines Like Me

• Anton Chekhov - The Greatest Short Stories

• Samuél Lopez-Barrantes - The Requisitions

• Ira Levin - Rosemary’s Baby

• Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian

• Cormac McCarthy - The Road

• Mary Shelley - Frankenstein

• Tom Segev - One Palestine, Complete

• Rick Rubin - The Creative Act: A Way of Being

• Stephen King - On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

• Stephen King - Misery

• George Saunders - CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

• Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

• Quentin Tarantino - Reservoir Dogs (Screenplay)

• Elie Wiesel - Night

• Thomas Harris - The Silence of the Lambs

• J.D. Vance - Hillbilly Elegy

• James Pogue - Chosen Country

• F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

• Salman Rushdie - Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

• Joseph E. Uscinski - American Conspiracy Theories

• Leonard Cohen - Let Us Compare Mythologies

• Eva Illouz - Le 8-octobre

---

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

---

Read the previous post.