For a time during his teenage years, Mitchell Borden feared that he had begun to acquire the dangerously alluring characteristics of a cult leader. 

“I wore sandals and robes in high school,” Borden tells me. He’s tucked into a corner of Ornithology Jazz Club, which he founded in October alongside his wife, Rie Yamaguchi-Borden. “I was worried that I was a little bit Charlie Manson, because I did have followers. I had my little devotees. And I was worried that they were, like, blindly following me.” 

But the thing is, once you start listening to Borden’s careening detestations of popular culture and his determined advocacy for a life turned inward — for a life free from the violent demands of a society bent on reducing a human’s worth to that of a commodity — you’re at risk of wanting to tell Borden that if there is in fact a cult, you might like to sign up.