This is an ongoing conversation between two friends, Kim and Rachel, about what it’s like working within popular formats, music and literature, while being informed by, creatures of, the art world—a place that has less rules (no rules, even) and more tricks. The Mars Room, Rachel’s latest book, she’s described as her “conventional novel.” No Home Record is Kim’s most commercial work as a musician. Is there some method to secreting subversion into tradition? To hiding in plain sight? And how do we respond to and utilize contemporary life, the ugliness of the marketplace, in our work, stare down the cheapness of the world, without being made cheap?