“I guess my fantasy has always been that things can be reasonable, that life can be arranged in sensible, pleasant ways. But it can’t; I always underestimate the destructive element in human nature…”

Aphorisms, meditations, and provocations on New York’s independent theater scene, artmaking in the age of artificial intelligence, devotion versus doom scrolling, and the usefulness of heartbreak. Matthew Gasda argues that we invent the self by way of documenting the self—and in Writer’s Diary, we see Gasda’s sense of disconnection from culture paired with a relentless determination to create meaningful work.