Last night The Mortals Live did something it's never done before — we went live on two platforms at once. Katharine and Chris of As The Hearse Turns pulled up a chair, and what followed was the kind of conversation only people who've stood on both sides of the arrangement table can have: the real weight of this profession, the stories that stay with you, and why talking about death openly might be the most life-affirming thing we do. If you found me through their show — welcome to The Mortals. If you're one of mine, go give them a follow. You'll be glad you did.

🎙 Guests: Katharine & Chris of As The Hearse Turns
Listen: https://open.spotify.com/show/1UCaFYiU8FFIknyzkHtrlO

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He was blinded as a child, preached and sang on Texas street corners for coins, and died penniless in the ashes of his own burned house. They buried him in a grave with no name. Thirty-two years later, NASA bolted his wordless, three-minute song of grief to the side of the Voyager spacecraft and launched it past the planets. Tonight, Blind Willie Johnson's voice is the farthest-traveling human sound in existence, and it will outlast the Earth itself.This is The Mortals Live. One honest hour, every Tuesday. A funeral director and songwriter talking about death, grief, presence, and the quiet lives the world walks past. Tonight: the man the world decided was worth nothing, and how wrong the world turned out to be. No script. No pitch. Just the truth, and a room where you can just be here.🖤 The Mortals community: https://stan.store/thenathanmorris🎙️ The Mortals podcast (every live becomes an episode): https://open.spotify.com/show/3OEFJ4GX7ylWSMk4p0dz82Subscribe and turn on notifications. We go live Tuesdays around 7pm ET.#themortals #blindwilliejohnson #grief #funeraldirector #voyager #legacy #music

"Pick a lane." I've heard it my whole life — funeral director, musician, divorced dad, creator — like one of them has to cancel out the others. Tonight I'm done apologizing for being all of them.This is The Mortals Live. Every Tuesday, 7PM ET. We open with a story of someone the world mostly forgot — tonight it's Gordon Parks, who refused to be just one thing his whole life — and then we get honest about the boxes other people build for us, and the ones we quietly build for ourselves out of exhaustion. If you've ever softened the truest thing about yourself with a "kind of," this one's for you.💬 Tell me in the comments: what's the one true thing about yourself you've been shrinking? I'm answering the best ones by name at the end of the show.🕯️ Send a Super/gift with the name of someone you've lost, and I'll say their name out loud on the live tonight.🧢 Grab a MORT hat tonight (memento mori — remember you'll live) and get 3 months of The Mortals free. Winner featured live at the end. - https://tr.ee/mG1jxm🖤 The Mortals community → https://stan.store/thenathanmorris🎵 My music → https://tr.ee/buBv0G🔔 Subscribe + turn on notifications so we don't lose each other. New live every Tuesday, 7PM ET.#TheMortals #NathanMorris #FuneralDirector #Grief #MementoMori #Identity #Singersongwriter

Tonight on The Mortals: the funeral songs that undo an entire room — and the one thing almost nobody thinks about. It's not which song you play. It's when. A funeral director and songwriter on grief, the music that says what we can't, and how you keep showing up when life hands you a season you didn't choose. Pull up a chair. 🖤🎵 The new song, "Just Me, Just You" → laylo.com/nathanmorris/VWYZ2m🖤 MORT hats + community → https://nathanmorrismusic.com/en-usd/products/the-mort-hat-2Subscribe + turn on notifications so we don't lose each other.

He was blind. He was self-taught. And for nearly thirty years he stood on a sidewalk on 6th Avenue in Manhattan dressed like a Viking — cloak, horned helmet, spear — while the city hurried past and called him a curiosity.His name was Moondog. What almost no one rushing by understood was that the man on the corner was a serious composer, building orchestral works in his head and on paper, year after year, whether or not anyone stopped to listen.This week on The Mortals, I tell his story — and what a man who wrote symphonies on a street corner can teach the rest of us about mortality, dignity, and refusing to die with the music still inside you. Make the work while you're still here to make it. Don't wait for the room to understand you first.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━🎵 STREAM MY MUSIC — "Just Me, Just You"https://tr.ee/iO8ojm🛍 EVERYTHING I MAKE LIVES HEREhttps://stan.store/thenathanmorris🎙 THE MORTALS — full episodes & podcasthttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCH6mE8zfCHNclQOtVHb5Af0w_rPS-e_l📨 A WEEKLY EMAIL FROM ME — "Feel Anything"https://nathanmorrismusic.beehiiv.com━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━📲 FOLLOWTikTok: @nathanmorrismusicInstagram: @nathanmorrisX: @nathanmorrismsc#Moondog #TheMortals #NathanMorris #FuneralDirector #SingerSongwriter #VikingOf6thAvenue #FuneralPop #JustMeJustYou #DeathPositive #Grief #Mortality #NewMusic2026

A funeral director on what happens after you put something into the world and the room stays quiet. The story of Sixto Rodriguez — who released two albums into total silence, went back to demolition work for 25 years, and never knew that across the ocean he was a legend — and why we have to stop creating in hope of applause. On music, grief, and any goodbye you finally say out loud.

🎥 Watch: youtube.com/@nathanmorrismusic

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· 🖤 stan.store/thenathanmorris

0:00 Cold open — sit down, grab the tea

2:00 Opening statement: October 1956, Chicago — Vivian Maier walks down a sidewalk

6:00 The 150,000 photographs nobody ever saw

13:00 Why did she do it? The question I keep sitting with

15:30 The room with the door closed — this episode's thesis

17:30 My grandfather, the double Windsor knot, and the mundane that mattered

23:00 Grief as fuel — what Vivian and I have in common

29:00 Nixon, Watergate, and dying without your name cleared

34:00 Why I keep writing songs that nobody might ever hear

43:00 The TikTok story: showing up every day for three years even when I couldn't walk

52:00 Reframing — your suffering is the storage locker

57:00 Mortals shoutouts + the next single artwork vote

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What if the most important work you'll ever do is work nobody is going to clap for?

This week on The Mortals Live, I tell the story of Vivian Maier — the Chicago nanny who walked the streets for 40 years with a camera around her neck, took 150,000 photographs, never developed almost any of them, never showed them to anyone, and died alone in 2009 not knowing she would become one of the greatest American photographers of the 20th century.

I think about her a lot. Because there is a room you stand in alone — the one with the door closed — where the only witness to the work is you. The recovery. The marriage. The child you're raising. The song you can't stop writing. The grief you're carrying.

Nobody is paying for it. Nobody is thanking you. Nobody might ever see it.

But the work is the work. And the recognition is beside the point.

This is for the people in that room.

Tuesdays at 7pm EST.

JOIN THE MORTALS — first looks, first listens, producer credits on the next single: https://nathanmorrismusic.com/supporters

"Feel Anything" — out now wherever you stream music.

Nathan Morris is a singer-songwriter and former funeral director. The Mortals is a weekly conversation about grief, music, and the people who keep doing the work in the room with the door closed.

#TheMortals #NathanMorris #VivianMaier #Grief #FuneralDirector #LifeAfterLoss #Mortality #Podcast