Almost a New Year
Starting over without forgetting, and a bunch of things that will make you feel good.
Preamble: I’ve moved some of you onto this newsletter from the one I’m no longer using. If you’d like to unsubscribe, please scroll down to do so, but read what I’ve got here and give me a chance! Also, it would mean the world to me if you shared this newsletter. I’m off social media now, and pouring a lot into this weekly newsletter. I’m also still finding my way, so I’d love to hear what resonates with you. You can reply and I’ll get the message! I’ll even respond! Okay, on with the show.
I’m not insinuating we start over.
We can’t. You know that, right? It’s taken me a long time to accept that starting over is a myth. We can never go back and do something again, wiping clean all the knowledge we’ve accumulated in our experiences. But we can start, right? Open our eyes a little more? Fall asleep again, and once again wake up? Each minute, hour, day, week, year. Each moment that begins is a moment for us to begin again.
I deactivated all my social media.
I did it on Christmas Eve. I’d been planning on it, but I didn’t know when I was going to press the buttons. I’ve deactivated before, but never for longer than a month. This time, it’s six months. Maybe forever? I don’t know.
I am not under the impression that deactivating all my social media deems me superior to anyone. In fact, it proves me inferior, as I simply can’t seem to walk the fine line between having a fun time connecting with people and being hopelessly addicted to people’s approval. I always lose my footing and tumble into the latter, yearning for likes and faves, mindlessly checking apps and safari, blocking and unblocking sites from my phone.
But exiting social media doesn’t mean exiting the internet, which is still chock-full of things I love. Remember the early days of the internet (if you’re old enough)? As a child, when the internet was a seed in the mind of the universe, I loved paging through encyclopedias. The breadth and depth of their knowledge floored me. I’d find a subject like, say, tree frogs, and go to the library, check out all the books on tree frogs, and learn everything I could. I was always hungry in that way, and the internet still exists as a giant encyclopedia full of information, though I didn’t need to worry about fact-checking the encyclopedia (maybe I should have).
Since deactivating, I’ve found myself seeking out websites to peruse instead of relying on Twitter for all of my cultural information. I’ve also found myself picking up my phone, only to check my email (nope, no new emails) and set it down again. There’s not much to do on my phone now, and I refuse to load replacement distractions, such as games.
There is, also, a sense of panic, that I will lose touch with the world without social media. But good choices are not made from a place of fear or scarcity.
I would write about the holiday, Christmas, that everyone always goes gaga over, but I celebrated it (that’s an overstatement) alone. On the day, I woke and worked on a short story. I opened one present: some bath salts (yes, the kind for the actual bath) from a friend. I took a bath. I read The Aosawa Murders and James Baldwin and watched Big Mouth. It’s rare that I give up on books, but I gave up on The Aosawa Murders (which was chosen as a NYT notable) over halfway through. I really wanted to love it, but I only liked it, which meant it got put down in favor of something else.
I hope you spent your holiday in whichever way gave you the most comfort. If it was a terrible day, I’m glad you made it through. Here are some photos from where I spent Christmas Eve day, at Dosewallips State Park in Washington State. I was supposed to spend several days there, but I got really sad so I came home to my warm apartment. Here’s to not forcing yourself to do things that make you sad on holidays that are already difficult.
This week Barry Lopez died. We must lose everyone we love— that’s the deal we make for being alive. Lopez’s work was important to me, but so was his openness about having experienced sexual abuse at a young age. May I guide you to his book Arctic Dreams (and this beautiful essay by Anna Badkhen about the book), which is one of the most beautiful things I’ve read? I’ve yet to read Horizon, which took nearly two decades for Lopez to finish. May he rest in power.
Here are some things I loved this past week:
The Forty-Year-Old Version fucking killed me. I can’t remember the last time I so thoroughly enjoyed a movie. Maybe it’s because I’m a struggling writer who just happened to turn forty during a pandemic summer, but I related to Radha Blank’s breakout film so hard. A Black woman playwright who experienced acclaim at a young age is given a chance to produce her play, but only if she orients towards white audiences and a white producer, who only want to see “poverty porn.” She also wants to rap, and damn is she a good rapper. If you want to laugh out loud at a film while also kind of crying, you may want to watch this.
Another film I watched this week of Sound of Metal, starring Riz Ahmed, who I remember mostly as that surf instructor who fucks Lena Dunham in Girls. He’s getting a lot of much-deserved praise, but I was also awed by Olivia Cooke, a British actress who plays his girlfriend. This film is so gorgeous— its sound is superb, both capturing the loudness and quietness and absence of noise. Ahmed plays Ruben, a drummer in a metal band with his girlfriend, who suddenly loses his hearing almost completely. He’s also a recovering addict, which is a key piece of the film. As someone who’s been clean from heroin for nearly 20 years, and sober from booze for six months, I was surprised at the potency of having a recovering addict go through something so harrowing. The most remarkable thing about the film shouldn’t be remarkable at all: it places deaf actors and sign language front and center, aiming the viewer’s eye towards a world they may have never experienced, nor considered. It reminded me of the mid-nineties German film Beyond Silence in the way it handles deafness; not as a handicap but simply as another way of being in the world. There are so many beautiful moments in Sound of Metal, but one of my favorites involves no sound and a metal slide. Let me know if you watch and spot it. It took Darius Marder thirteen years to make the film.
I only worked for two days this week (twenty hours) and all that time was spent organizing the pantry, washing and changing bedclothes, taking stock of the freezer, organizing the children’s books and making way for new incoming toys. I wonder if I’m as excited about their Christmas haul as they are? The thought of them finding a toy that fascinates them more than their train set is both exciting and unbelievable to me. While I do household management stuff I often listen to books and podcasts. I listened to the book Eat the Buddha, by Barbara Demick, a foreign correspondent who gained access to Tibet and became curious about why the country has the highest incidence of self-immolations. Eat the Buddha is a deep dive into Chinese policy, discrimination and oppression of Tibetans (and Buddhists), but more importantly it’s a portrait of individual Tibetans who have been profoundly oppressed and traumatized and concluded there is only one way to visibly resist. It’s a beautiful book, although of course very sad.
It’s been nearly a year since I traveled (from Europe to America in March!) and I’ve been experiencing a bit of wanderlust. I loved the words and pictures in the NYT piece about small vehicles people have made into homes, although neither vehicle is currently in use.
I loved this Vox piece that came out last January about Bach’s famous cello prelude, so I’m sharing it with you.
Last week I delivered CSA bags for Cooks for BLM, a product of local cook Jude Watson which delivers locally crafted CSA’s that raise money for BLM. (If you’re in Seattle and want to be involved, lmk). I’m also hoping to become more active in the Seattle Pedaling Relief Project, which does a myriad of things but most notably saves food from local groceries and bikes them to food banks around the city. I’ve been thinking a lot about Mutual Aid, and how I can be more involved. When I was in high-school I volunteered at Books for Prisoners, which isn’t currently operating, but when I worked as a firefighter and lived a more nomadic life, involvement in community fell to the wayside. Just this last week Ariel Aberg-Reiger, a visual storyteller, compiled a beautiful history of mutual aid for Bloomberg’s CityLab. The takeway? Mutual Aid is embedded into the American fabric, but it’s essential that we all participate. Especially those of us who have money to throw around (ahem, not me). That said, one of the greatest things about mutual aid is that you don’t need money to be involved.
I adored this short video about artist Ann Hamilton’s exhibition “the event of a thread,” which features gigantic swings and a draping white fabric. Watching the video, hearing the background noise of voices echoing in a large space and seeing people reclined to gaze at the billowing fabric above them, made me nostalgic for shared spaces where art is immersive, dynamic, and explored.
This reminded me of the Olafur Eliasson exhibit at the Tate in London, which I attended August 2019. One piece, beauty, consisted of a few lines of light mist falling in a dark room, a spotlight shone on the water to create undulating rainbows. The best part? We could step into the mist. My favorite was Din blinde passager, a tunnel of fog that is at first entirely disorienting and slowly accumulates enough light to orient the walker. The timed entry makes it so there is no one ahead to guide you. My friend Isabelle and I cackled joyfully as we explored the unknown. It was my 39th birthday. Here’s a wonderful chat with the artist about how his work is informed by climate change.
Lastly, I read this piece on The Visionary Depth of Coldcut’s “Paid in Full” Remix. If you like rap and you like electronic music, it’s a must read. Also, here’s Coldcut’s latest project:
I know I said I’d be releasing my newsletter every Monday, but I’ve decided to release it every Sunday. So it’ll be coming to your inbox weekly on Sundays. I envision you reading it while drinking a late morning coffee or tea and eating some sort of pastry, but you do you.
You can register HERE for my New Year’s Eve write-along, which won’t involve alcohol but will involve an hour of writing and friendship.
Love,
Stacy (they/them)