#1: Wounds & Scars
"Feel the fear and do it anyway," me to me pressing publish on my first newsletter.
I just watched John Mulaney’s new special “Baby J.” I was wary given his short break from rehab to the stage, but as a long-haul fan I was rooting for him. When I finished I realized how short of my expectations it fell. Not because I anticipated a return to his most potent, high energy and neurotic form. Nor did I desire a “Nanette”-style dismantling of stand-up culture. I wanted something impossible: I wanted John to transcend his level of celebrity and meet the audience as a human being. A struggling, questioning, relatable human being.
I visited the Reddit message boards to gauge other fans’ reactions. One smart user observed that the special crumbled under its own weight because John was writing from wounds, not scars. Perhaps he felt pressure to immediately discuss The Thing (his addiction and star-studded intervention) but in hastening the process he shortchanged the impact… for both himself and his audience.
This struck me. What if all art can be viewed through the lens of wound versus scar? Wounded writing can be cathartic, visceral, immediately empathetic. A snapshot in time. A diary entry. Scarred writing is a teacher, a guide. A pause to reflect and assess and connect the dots to a larger picture. Timeless. Gospel from on high.
When you’re expecting a scarred perspective and receive a wounded one, disappointment surfaces. You think, You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know. I wanted you to tell me what happens on the other side. Something new. Something wise. It’s easy to write off wounded art as gratuitous or derivative when what you crave is an answer or reassurance.
One of the first books I picked up this year was “Dirtbag, Massachusetts,” based on its stellar blurbs. Referred to as a “memoir of male misbehavior” by the New York Times, the self-labeled “confessional” bore almost no resemblance to my usual fare, aside from the fact that it was a voice-y coming of age story. I flew through author Isaac Fitzgerald’s debauched adventures and meditations on what it’s like to be a heterosexual male in the 21st century (more nuanced and touching than it sounds). His novel begins with the epigraph:
When stray dogs finally catch you in the alley
You don't consider their point of view
But when the wounds are healed and the scars are shiny
Sometimes then you do
It’s from the song “As Many Candles As Possible” by the Mountain Goats. I think about it at least once a week. When I first read it, I thought the lyrics were asking why we are only willing to seek counsel from tragic figures once they’ve overcome the adversity of their circumstances. I’ve since amended that analysis.
What songwriter John Darnielle and Fitzgerald probably meant was that when you’re a victim of horrible events, you aren’t interested in your antagonist’s intentions or motivations. What matters is: you’re fucking bleeding. Wounds not scars. Both interpretations agree, though, that scarred perspectives are inherently better teachers than wounds.
Much of what I loved about “Dirtbag” was Fitzgerald’s wizened and conspiratorial commentary as he ran back raucous tales of his youth. Knowing and apologetic interjections informed by intense therapy and self-reflection. A compelling constellation of scars that, viewed from a distance, create a map of a multifaceted person’s life.
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Reflecting on this strange, suspended period of my life, I’m aware of all the scarred art I’ve consumed. At times it’s uplifting, other times I feel discouraged and small. These people can make sense of their lives, why can’t I? I keep making the wrong decisions, I keep fumbling the pass. I keep bleeding and I’m ashamed of it.
And if you want the honest truth, my shame is why I put off writing this newsletter for so long. A newsletter I started years ago, when friends and family kept asking if I would start writing again. Everything felt too raw, too disorganized to be published. Every time I drafted something it felt wounded and unpolished. I wanted my essays to be clever, clear headed, and brilliant. Guidebooks for navigating growth and grief.
Then I read something that made me reconsider. Heather Havrilesky’s (Ask Polly) words have saved my life on more than one occasion. One of her essays sits folded in my nightstand, revisited often during sad spells. No surprises then that her April 24 newsletter “Mistakes Will Be Made” lit up a part of my brain like lightning in the night sky. She writes,
It's strange how we blame ourselves for everything. Even though we all lose the thread and break things and change our minds and foul everything up, most of us take it all so personally. We treat mistakes like avoidable anomalies, but mistakes are the main event, the meat of life. Our lives are just a long series of screw ups.
Last year, I reached a peak state of I AM MESSING EVERYTHING UP. And then I just decided that it didn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter, it couldn’t matter… The real challenge of being alive isn’t making sure you never mess up, making sure you get everything right, making sure that everything looks and feels and sounds perfect – or else you’re a loser, or else you’re an idiot, or else you’re doomed to fail and be miserable. The real challenge of being alive is to savor the moment and give your love freely in spite of the clown show unfolding around you.
My favorite stories are messy stories. My favorite people are messy people. A separate Heather line lives rent free in my head: when praised by a friend that she’s a “real human being,” Heather responds, “I am. I wasn’t a few years ago. But I am now.”
I don’t think I was a real human being until two years ago. And my life is richer because of it. My life is even sweeter when other real human beings share their own mistakes, regardless of where they sit on the wound to scar scale. While “Baby J” might have been more satisfying with time and perspective, I’m grateful it exists. I’m grateful that John––to an extent–– modeled very human behavior.
As I was writing this newsletter, I thought back to the inspiration for its title: Left on Read. It was always conceived to be a “Work in Progress” type of newsletter. Half baked observations that were too good to go unexpressed, but thoughts that I didn’t want to create an explicit discourse around. Essay length musings that, sent to a friend or family member, would (ideally and in all likelihood) be Left on Read. Strong opinions, loosely held.
So off goes the first Left on Read newsletter. Ready before I am and already turning a looking glass on itself. But! If I’ve learned anything from Heather’s wise words, it’s that humans do everything imperfectly and no one is the exception. Sally forth with humor and a light heart and be pleasantly surprised when it all miraculously comes together, she’d advise. I’m writing from a place of wounded-ness. Perhaps one day a greater understanding will emerge from the scars. Either way, what follows is deeply human.