More Stupid Things 2017
I went on a cruise with my siblings last May. (It was an Alaskan cruise, which you have to say when you talk about it to cool, with-it people, so that you can signal it's, like, a special cruise, not a corny one. I promise it is as embarrassing, culturally insensitive, and capitalism-obsessed as the rest.) Not sure if you guys have been on a cruise before, but on this one, we got a newsletter in the little mailbox outside our room every night, outlining the full schedule of events on the boat the following day. THERE WERE SO MANY EVENTS. I would say roughly 95% of the events were centered on selling things to you (weird seminars about weight loss, spa promotions, pop up shops, etc.) but some were quant activities, reminiscent of maybe a summer camp (I've never been) or at least the summer retreat from Dirty Dancing.
For the first two days, we mostly ate, napped, explored the ship, napped again, and tried to move around enough so that bartenders wouldn't notice my sister and I were both using her unlimited drink pass. But on day three, my youngest brother and I were reading through the daily schedule (THE PATTER, it was called the Princess Patter, I just remembered) and we were like, "High tea at 1? Learn how to make boxes at 3? 'The Voice of the Ocean'??" and we realized we were squandering these truly unique opportunities. So we went back to the room, woke up our brother and sister and announced, "We've decided we should be doing more stupid things."
I'm trying, in general, to do more stupid things. Not like. BAD things. Just stupid things. They might not even be stupid, but calling them stupid deflates their importance, making them easier to do. At least, for me. I started a stupid project on Instagram for my stupid drawings. Brendan and I are finally starting our stupid zine about the stupid walks we go on. My sister moved back to New York and we're up to the gills with stupid things to do together — make Christmas stockings for our cats, take one of those BYO painting classes, watch the Young Pope. There are so many reasons to not do something; I'm embracing permission and enthusiasm.
"Um???? I thought this was a newsletter about books???" you're saying to yourself right now.
You're right. I'm getting to it!!!! One of the reasons I've stopped myself from doing [stupid] things is that I've always known I wanted to be a writer, and thus have always obsessed over what kind of writer I would be. Before I could articulate the politics of brand management, I understood the idea behind it, and it terrified me. When I took my first media job, doing daily blogging for a local neighborhood site, I agonized over my future Wikipedia page (ugh, I know, I'm sorry, please just kill me). Would JOAN DIDION write reviews of frozen yogurt spots??? Ditto my next job. Would RENATA ADLER ever have grouped pop culture ghosts by fuckability??? The answer is, obviously, no, but even more obvious is that I am not and will never be Didion or Adler. The problem became, then, that I was grasping for a career I could mimic. Cheryl Strayed? (If only!) Roxane Gay? (Please!) If I could find a template, proof that someone had been as irreverent and disorganized as I am, but had still found respect and success, I could maybe for even a second calm down.
I know this doesn't work. I know I am leagues away from these women. But I'm also just tired of obsessing over arbitrary rules that might best position me for a success that may never even happen. I am as excited about Harry Styles fan fic (have you heard? you can pre-order my and Katie's book here) as about dysfunctional family dramas. I can tweet about the police brutality protest I went to even though my profile header is an image of Tina Belcher saying "butts." I want to write book criticism and draw stupid pictures. Well, why not? We contain multitudes; we can have it all. Maybe. I hope so!
Here is my segue: Someone who had it all and did it all and whom I've become obsessed with is poet and doodler Stevie Smith. Stevie Smith, who wrote from 1937 to her death in 1971, got on my radar a while back via this fantastic NYRB piece; it pointed out her common descriptors as "dotty, batty, silly, odd, childish, droll," and I was like, "I'm listening." I forgot about her for months and then saw ALL THE POEMS at Quimby's in Chicago (WHAT A BOOKSTORE!!!!) and immediately bought it.
When I got back to New York I started reading random poems aloud to Brendan before bed, mostly because he got tired of my reading them quietly to myself and, every five minutes, gasping or laughing and telling him to just listen to "this one thing" and he was finally like "okay, let's just recognize that you want to read me these poems." She was supremely strange and funny and delightful and prescient and lonely and irreverent and all of my favorite things. She was vicious about the publishing industry and rejected propriety/status as a prerequisite to art. She was a critical of god and religion. She was bisexual, and wrote aching, sexy, playful poems to the men and women she loved. She was a vocal animal rights activist. She was SO MUCH and didn't let being one thing stop her from being another thing that some might think contradicts the former, and I love her.
You might know her most famous poem, "Not Waving But Drowning:"
Obviously, great, but here are some of my other faves:
Just FUCK me UP, girl.
As an experimental addition to this newsletter, here are some things I've learned in my recent readings/findings. You might know some or all of these things! If so, I hope you enjoy being reminded of them.
Late poet David Budbill talked about how wealth and commercialism negatively impacts creativity in a 2003 interview republished in The Sun, remembering a gas station owner who turned his broken washing machine into a flowerpot, and though I don't *totally* agree with advertising as inherently at odds with creativity, it resonated: "What often happens with the affluent is that their lives become so secure that need and necessity are forgotten, and this limits the imagination... To be able to see a washing machine as a container for dirt and flowers, one must make a metaphorical leap. If your mind is focused on consumption and money, you will go to a store to buy a big flowerpot. You will never see a broken washing machine as a flower pot, because your imagination has been turned off by affluence and advertising." Mostly it makes me feel better about leaving a good-paying job and being broke as heck.
DID YOU KNOW that humans rely on communal knowledge and divvying up "cognitive labor," which, re: evolution, is GOOD when it comes to technology and scientific advancement (like, imagine everyone who used a toilet had to be able to make one or even describe how it worked) but becomes dangerous when it comes to political and social concepts, which Elizabeth Kolbert talks about in her review of some new books about confirmation bias and groupthink": "'One implication of the naturalness with which we divide cognitive labor,' they write, is that there's 'no sharp boundary between one person's ideas and knowledge' and those of other members 'of the group.'" I know, we're living it, but it's a lucid explanation.
Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou, born in 1923, is a nun who is also a magnificent piano player and songwriter, and who studied in the "sacred music tradition of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church" which is a thing I didn't know exist! Until I found her song "Homesickness" on Spotify and holy moses is it beautiful and then spent a whole night diving into her bios.
Have you read "When Things Go Missing"? Did you see GET OUT? Both are very good, and I recommend highly! (Also: have you run up against a limit of articles you're allowed to read for the New Yorker but alas cannot afford to subscribe? Email me and I might be able to hook you up.)
Okay, that's all. Missed you dudes. Do you like this new "things I've recently learned" segment? Do you miss general links to good stories? Would you be interested in my including stories I'm writing? Did you forget this newsletter even existed and you're like "what the heck, unsubscribe"? (Nooo don't go!) Send me that sweet, sweet feedback. And I'll try not to wait like three months before returning.
<3 <3
(By the way, on the cruise, we missed the box-making class, but I did try [and fail] to win The Voice of the Ocean.)