We recently published Mileva Anastasiadou’s splending “Evan Dando is Haunting Me, But This is More Than a Ghost Story.“

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love the choice of Evan Dando as the haunt in this story — in a remarkable coincidence, the day after you submitted this story, I saw he was scheduled to perform in my town! I don’t know that he’s ever performed here before. So — what made you pick Evan Dando as the ghost haunting the narrator?

Before wtiting the story, I came upon an article on Evan Dando, which mentioned some rumors that had him dead several times although he was alive and well, and this piece reminded me of him, and I played the song “Into my arms” on repeat for several days, and that’s what happens with music, a song can serve as a time machine, it can take you back in time, especially if you haven’t heard it for long, it takes you back to the past and to emotions you had back then, and this was an unironically happy song in an ironically happy season, in the sense that I have romanticized the past, I think most of us have the tendency to do so, and it brought back all those feelings, the angst, the loneliness, the longing for a place where I’d belong, a safe place, which, I think, is what this song is about, 

2) Of course, this isn’t a ghost story at all — or at least, not in the traditional sense! It’s a story about growing up and growing old. And, maybe, holding onto that youthful part of us? What do you think?

Totally true, this isn’t a ghost story because Evan Dando is very much alive and I’m thankful for that, mainly because he’s a real person and I wish all of us could be alive and well for as long as possible, but also because he’s a huge part of my youth, and if he’s alive a part of my youth is alive too. This story is mostly about the haunting power of our youth, about how time flies, about how we grow old and we cling to the past, or we forget it and then the past – the people, the places, the music –  comes back as memories that define us and remind us who we were and who we’ve become. It’s about time, running out as we grow older, and maybe that’s why we romanticize the past, because back then, we had more time ahead of us and that made us infinite.