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# American Twilight
- URL: https://www.jamesreeves.co/american-twilight/
- Published: 2026-09-16T03:42:59.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-16T03:50:41.000Z
- Description: It’s odd how much I defer to a British accent, even when it’s harassing me.
- Author: James A. Reeves
- Tags: Midnight Radio, #mr-54, #email-cover

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/2026/09/MR54.webp)

Photograph by [Oliver Farshi](https://oliverfarshi.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co)

### 1

In the autumn of 2008, just as the financial crisis was about to hit, C. was offered a job at Nokia. She called with the news while I was smoking a cigarette on the corner of Broad and Wall Street, watching drunk men in blue oxford shirts kick trash cans. Maybe you should take it, I said. Seems like something bad is going down. And I thought we’d get to move to Japan.

But no, Nokia is a Finnish company that made paper in 1865, galoshes in the 1920s, cellphones in the 1990s, and now cellphones for drug deals and kidnappings in TV thrillers. So we moved to Helsinki, where I met [Oliver Farshi](https://oliverfarshi.com/?ref=jamesreeves.co). We found each other on Twitter in 2009, back when you could make good friends by typing things like *Helsinki* and *techno* into a box.

Olly’s from Manchester, and it’s odd how much I defer to a British accent, even when it’s harassing me. Like when we took an eleven-hour train trip to a film festival on the North Pole and played backgammon the whole time. The score was something like 1700 to 34 in his favor, and he sounded so charming as he gloated. Or the time we got into an intense argument about the existence of god.

### 2

Olly took a firm position on the subject of god in that Lapland motel. If you can’t prove something, he said, then it doesn’t exist. I had to concede this point. After all, nobody has proven the existence of leprechauns and centaurs, and thus I don’t believe in them. But I found myself on the mystical end of the debate, fumbling my way through the idea that faith itself *is* a form of proof, not yet knowing I would become a rigid atheist for many years after my parents died.

In those years, I understood faith only as a transaction, and I could not abide the idea that I lost my parents because I did not pray enough or we were bad people. But as time passed, I knew I had reached an unhappy plateau. I found myself wanting to believe in something mystical but not knowing how. 

Some people told me it was simply a matter of making a decision, that I could even invent my own higher power if I liked. But I required proof. A burning bush. A voice that shook the heavens. I waited for signals and signs until, around the time I started Midnight Radio, I learned to laugh at my absurdity. I mean, dig the size of my ego: demanding the divine prove itself to me rather than the other way around.

Now I believe we're meant to generate the signals and signs ourselves.

### 3

A few years after our God Debate, Olly and I ran a design shop in New Orleans, and he was a steady presence during my gnarly attempts at getting sober and dealing with panic attacks (although I maintain that my breakdown at an IKEA in Houston was a reasonable response to being at an IKEA in Houston). We worked together on a hotline for urban legends in Indianapolis, and he made a majestic [five-hour soundtrack](https://oliverblank.bandcamp.com/album/confessional-music?ref=jamesreeves.co) for [C's installation](https://www.candychang.com/confessions/?ref=jamesreeves.co) at the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. Then he moved to San Francisco to work in Big Tech and I thought that was that. 

But Olly did something that still shocks and awes me: he quit his fancy job to study photography. I knew he was serious when he said he was "making photographs" instead of taking them. Now he’s winning [prestigious photojournalism awards](https://oliverfarshi.com/stories/a-place-to-die/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and regularly appears in outlets like [The New York Times Magazine](https://oliverfarshi.com/stories/do-patients-have-the-right-to-die/?ref=jamesreeves.co) and [The Washington Post](https://oliverfarshi.com/stories/alexander-wang/?ref=jamesreeves.co). Most impressive of all, he made the [photograph of me](https://www.jamesreeves.co/about/) that appears on my website.

I admire how Olly traded the known path for uncertainty, and today we're still working together on client projects as well as fun things like [infrastructure for sharing dreams](https://thedream.club/?ref=jamesreeves.co). He also made a delightful game called [Jongle](https://jongle.xyz/?ref=jamesreeves.co) that C. enjoys playing.

And tonight he's brought us a deep playlist of Americana after crisscrossing the Great Plains and the Gulf. But first, a lot of life has happened to us since that metaphysical debate in a Lapland motel room, so I want to know: *Olly, do you believe in a god or any spiritual dimension to the universe?*

### 4

"I’d begin by considering what the functions of faith might be. Perhaps to help me live a life where I’m a good person, knowing that I’m watched over by a being that might punish or reward me. It could also be, maybe as an extension, that there’s a promise of something more, beyond this life, that is only accessible through death. Or just that there is a greater meaning and purpose to life beyond what I can reasonably fathom. I think faith is commonly tied to goodness. I think that’s good."

"I know it helps some people to have guidelines that are credible because they’ve been passed down through generations, and those guidelines lead them on a path of faith and goodness. I don’t reject this. I’m more interested in the idea that it’s good to be good not for any of these reasons though. It’s good to behave well because it’s nourishing for the self and those around us. If I’m not good, it will be detrimental. Not in a metaphysical way, but in a literal sense. If I behave poorly, even in a small way, I will do myself an injury. Specifically a moral injury. I do not want to injure myself or others."

"I think a lot about Kant’s Formula of Universal Law: if we all behaved a certain way, would this be a world I could tolerate living in? I also think about moral injury. If I take a certain action, do I move closer to or further from the person I want to be?"

"Which is all to say, for me, this dialogue with the self is spirituality. I see spirituality not as a magical realm but as the essence of being."

### 5

For tonight's broadcast, Olly sent me a dozen songs for long nights on county roads: steel guitars, desert tones, and dusty voices. Listening to these selections took me back to our days of driving around New Orleans, where Olly introduced me to the godhead of radio-ambient, the [KLF's *Chill Out*](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-klf-chill-out/?ref=jamesreeves.co), an album about a Gulf Coast road trip made by two Brits who'd never been there. One of them said, "I don't know what those places are like, but in my head, I can imagine those sounds coming from those places, just looking at the map." I pondered this while I assembled tonight's episode, how signals work on the imagination and vice versa. Sometimes the imaginary and half-remembered become more true than the thing itself. 

Selections from *Chill Out* are laced throughout tonight's mix, along with some of Olly's own music, and I've stitched it together with radio static, reverb, thunderstorms, and the hope that it sounds like a reassuring signal in the night.

Thank you for listening.

1. **Oliver Farshi - Echopraxia** (Midnight Radio Murder Mix)  
*Fin* • 2020 • [Bandcamp](https://oliverblank.bandcamp.com/album/fin?ref=jamesreeves.co)
2. **Grouper - Headache**  
*Paradise Valley* • 2016 • [Bandcamp](https://grouper.bandcamp.com/album/paradise-valley?ref=jamesreeves.co)
3. **Chuck Johnson - Riga Black**  
*Balsams* • Vin Du Select Qualitite, 2017 • [Bandcamp](https://chuckjohnson.bandcamp.com/album/balsams?ref=jamesreeves.co)
4. **The Dead Texan - Taco de Manque**  
*The Dead Texan* • Kranky, 2004 • [Bandcamp](https://starsofthelid.bandcamp.com/album/the-dead-texan?ref=jamesreeves.co)
5. **Rameses III - Across the Lake Is Where My Heart Shines**  
*I Could Not Love You More* • Type, 2009 • [Bandcamp](https://ramesesiii.bandcamp.com/album/i-could-not-love-you-more?ref=jamesreeves.co)
6. **Stars of the Lid - Music for Twin Peaks Episode 30**  
*The Ballasted Orchestra* • Kranky, 1997 • [Bandcamp](https://starsofthelid.bandcamp.com/album/the-ballasted-orchestra?ref=jamesreeves.co)
7. **Old Saw - Dirtbikes of Heaven, Grains of the Field** (Meridian Mix)  
*Country Tropics: Meridian Edition* • Lobby Art Editions, 2024 • [Bandcamp](https://oldsawtownandcountry.bandcamp.com/album/country-tropics-meridian-edition?ref=jamesreeves.co)
8. **Dirty Three - Feral**  
*Cinder* • Touch and Go, 2005 • [Bandcamp](https://dirtythree.bandcamp.com/album/cinder-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
9. **North Americans - Greetings From a Distant Friend**  
*Roped In* • Third Man, 2020 • [Bandcamp](https://northamericanszone.bandcamp.com/album/roped-in-2?ref=jamesreeves.co)
10. **Harold Budd - The Serpent in Quicksilver**  
*The Serpent (In Quicksilver)* • Cantil, 1981 • [Bandcamp](https://haroldbudd.bandcamp.com/album/the-serpent-in-quicksilver?ref=jamesreeves.co)
11. **Damien Jurado - Silver Joy**  
*Brothers and Sisters of the Eternal Son* • Secretly Canadian, 2014 • [Bandcamp](https://damienjurado.bandcamp.com/album/brothers-and-sisters-of-the-eternal-son-deluxe-edition?ref=jamesreeves.co)
12. **Oliver Farshi - Confessional Music** (Midnight Radio Mix)  
*Confessional Music* • 2014 • [Bandcamp](https://oliverblank.bandcamp.com/album/confessional-music?ref=jamesreeves.co)
13. **Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood - You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'** (Midnight Edit)  
*Nancy & Lee* • 1968

#### [Download](https://media.transistor.fm/e46d3f3b/a2867709.mp3?download=true&src=site&ref=jamesreeves.co) • [Podcast](https://midnightradio.transistor.fm/?ref=jamesreeves.co)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/85/bb/85bbc222-eb2e-4bcf-8b92-f241768e9260/content/images/2026/09/MR54-Notes.png)

The first draft of this episode.