The grass grows up. Welcome to 'Now Here We Are Thirty Years Later', a memoir in Mountain Goats songs by poet and critic Richard O'Brien. Over thirty episodes, I'll be telling the story of my life year by year from 1990 onwards through the lens of my favourite band. Topics in this introductory episode include memory, forgetting, Neanderthal burials, and dead links on old forums.

Links to articles mentioned in the episode:

- Lamartine on lizards in the Colosseum: https://spilltheink.proboards.com/thread/315/lizard-alphonse-de-lamartine

- Ezra Pound's rendering of Horace's 'Odes 30:3': https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=j_r6kWN5RiUC&pg=PA280&lpg=PA280&dq=%22this+monument+will+outlast+metal%22&source=bl&ots=z9RinS6bgL&sig=ACfU3U0wkxeWqmjmw_-KggT-DrCF4sE7NA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi3w7-gyL_wAhW0p3EKHUXpDTQQ6AEwB3oECAcQAw#v=onepage&q=%22this%20monument%20will%20outlast%20metal%22&f=false

- Shakespeare's Sonnet 55: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46455/sonnet-55-not-marble-nor-the-gilded-monuments

- Jon Mooallem's essay 'Neanderthals Were People Too': https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/magazine/neanderthals-were-people-too.html

- Rose Kelleher's poem 'Neanderthal Bone Flute': http://www.14by14.com/Issue6/NeanderthalBoneFlute.html

- Interview with Pitchfork about Neanderthals: https://pitchfork.com/news/41231-mountain-goats-john-darnielle-talks-new-album/

Books:

- Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art (Bloomsbury, 2020).