Friends of the newsletter know that I spent last week in the mountains which was incredible for many reasons. Primarily because I had a nice ten hour car ride x2 to reflect on the present state of my personal affairs. I envisioned using the week of downtime for lots of writing—which I did!—just not the public consumption variety.1 For that reason, today’s newsletter is more squishy stuff than culture or business stuff (though I’m including a section below appropriately titled the Baader–Meinhof Beat because a few things I’ve written about seem to be popping up everywhere.)
I think it’s important to wedge in some personal essays every now and then. Resisting the attention economy by being a real human being etc, etc.2 As always, thank you for reading!
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I feel utterly neutral about small talk as a concept. I don’t mind it, I can make inroads with almost anyone by coasting on genuine curiosity and enthusiasm. One piece of the conversational pie that I dread, though, is hometown inquiries. A nomad for my formative years, I rely on a catch-all mantra: “I moved around a lot as a kid.” Which, when you’re a kid, you just sort of take as fact and assume other kids can relate. You don’t think about how it’s shaping you, what lessons you’re learning and unlearning in new environments, and how your memories are populated by rotating, nameless characters. Through the many changes, my father often dispensed the advice, Bloom where you’re planted. I hated this. It carried with it an air of corporate speak: be nimble, be flexible, be adaptable in the face of adversity. Blah blah blah.
As stable and happy as my childhood was, it lacked consistency and the nurturing of roots. My grandmother’s home in North Carolina provided that. A permanent fixture that saw an abundance of excitement and tears and torment and peace for over 25 years. Anywhere else I can only think about my life in the abstract but when I’m there in the mountains, visceral memories and touchstones to the past hit me… hard. Flashes of writing my name in crayon on the unfinished walls while the house was being constructed. Bringing my first boyfriend to meet my grandmother and sneaking him into my room once she went to sleep. Weddings, funerals, Christmases.
During this last visit, I ruminated on Joan Didion’s oft-cited observation from Slouching Towards Bethlehem:
I think we are well-advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends. We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget the loves and the betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were.
I find it impossible to forget anything when my life is divided so neatly into chapters. The lack of fluidity alarms me, frequently. What must it be like to slowly evolve without pinpointing progressions of tastes and preferences? To not have an anchor to regularly return to that reminds you of all the ways you’ve changed?3 Perhaps people who have existed for so long in one space or attitude don’t tally their shortcomings and hypocrisies as I do. All my glimmering successes and false starts have beginnings and ends and places on a map.
Recently, though—probably a happy consequence of age, reframing, and the fuzzy-ing of memory—I’ve started to view my experiences as a pile of gems,4 rather than discounting them as individual vignettes that amounted to nothing. The simple fact of my life (and perhaps other artists/writers) is that I have a hunger to investigate everything. Every emotion, every fascination, every person, every place. On paper it looks aimless and undisciplined. I often subscribe to that thinking during weaker moments. But during my week of Rest and Relaxation, I wrote something so validating, so perspective-shifting, that I immediately knew I needed to document.
I’m funny that I talk a big game about wanting to feel and experience everything yet I spend much of my time wracked with self-consciousness about my own non-linear narrative. It’s like I’m saying I want to feel and experience everything as long as it’s pleasant. But that’s not how life works. You let the bad in with the good. A favorite, relevant bit of dialogue from Netflix’s Never Have I Ever that makes me sob: “You feel a LOT. Which means sometimes you’re going to hurt a lot. But… it also means that you’re going to live a life that is emotionally rich and really beautiful.”
Or, to invoke another colorful and fiery female protagonist: Auntie Mame’s declaration that “Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!” Tracing my life as it coincided with trips to North Carolina never fails to unearth just how many interesting things I’ve done, how many people I’ve known and loved, how many things I’ve learned and created. How much I’ve already lived! Perhaps imperfectly, but, like, that’s the only way to do it?
During my many hours on the road I revisited the “bloom where you’re planted” advice and a thought occurred to me. What if the adage is less about adjusting to your surroundings and more about preserving your unique self and spiting the circumstances? Following the straight line works for so many people—I envy them, really, I do—but it’s my lot in life to live by the scribbled line. Kind of like those winding mountain roads.
Circling Back
Tinder is launching a high end membership……. Like I said, Matchmaker Resurgence is imminent
Elizabeth Lopatto at The Verge contemplates ditching algorithms and returning to the ethos of Web 1.0. I very much support
The perils of highly processed food! I’m no Goop, but I really do think this is the beginning of more damning results from longevity studies and public wrestling with processed food
During my North Carolina trip I spent time with one of my best and smartest friends. We discussed beauty and aging and she reminded me of her favorite lesson: “being critical of your appearance is like having a house and living on the lawn.” Which obviously made me think of A) the overlapping subjugation of homes and faces by the market-reflected gaze and B) that I haven’t yet extolled the virtues of beauty critic Jessica DeFino in this newsletter!!! This interview is a really good primer. I hope to write something about her work at some point, which I find really important in informing my own relationship with beauty culture
Sidewalk Reporting
Sidewalk Reporting, North Carolina Scrapbook Edition!!!!!! Not pictured: the multiple bags of Muddy Buddies I ate on the road.
That’s it for now! xoxoxoxox
I used the rest of the time to walk because I’m me. I think the two are intertwined!!!
I’m linking my first newsletter where I reference “being a real human being” because I consider this a companion letter of sorts??
Please write me if you do, I’m vv curious. The only other way I can conjure this feeling is by revisiting music I was obsessed with decades ago
I’m linking this Ask Polly column in perpetuity until literally everyone I know reads and can reference in conversation