Dear Gatherers,
It shouldn’t be surprising that after a couple weeks of no newsletter, you are now receiving a full Gathering newsletter when I am again in the midst of another social media hiatus. This month I started my June Pratyahara (there’s still time to join! It’s free!) and I can already feel my creative energy spooling back on the cylinder, collecting itself from the realms of Twitter and Instagram and yes, even Facebook. I’ve also just started BODY TALK, which feels nourishing both for me and its participants.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m tired. And a little burned out, like many of us are. But I’m not languishing. I’m teaching a weekly yoga class called Playing with Shapes (so fun, through my Patreon), working on the next draft of my book (due in two weeks!), and nannying twin boys full-time. I’m also, like, trying to rest. Without beating myself up. Which is hard, right?
I had been planning to take this social media hiatus for about a month, but now that I’m here I’m not sure I’ll ever go back (said that last time but). The way I feel after a little over 24 hours away from social media is telling. I am less stressed. Less obsessed. And I have more time. I pick my phone up and put it down, rather than falling into it. Funny, I also picked up a book called No One is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood, who wrote Priestdaddy and whose internet presence I have envied since a long time ago. It’s about a woman stuck in The Portal, an internet thing that takes over her life. Except it’s a lot like our internet. She’s famous, but only because of a stupid phrase that went viral, and people listen to her because of this fame, despite the stupid phrase being really stupid. It doesn’t matter; it’s about the fame.
The fact that I read the entire book is a direct result of my not being on the internet.
The internet is, I think, the new television. What I mean is, when I was a teenager and in my early twenties there were some of us that didn’t have televisions. Whenever I said I didn’t have a television people would always respond with a certain amount of surprise. You don’t have a television? What do you DO? And now I think that the internet is the television, or maybe social media is. You don’t have the internet? WHAT DO YOU DO?
That these corporations who own these social media sites are for-profit doesn’t seem to affect all the accounts posting about anti-capitalism. Those accounts, like me, are ruled by the algorithm and maybe the owners of those accounts, like me, click on the ads for the cute new handweights and the orange face oil and the (insert here). None of us are immune, right? But I keep thinking about Jia Tolentino writing derisively about her barre experience while being an avid barre attendee and the ways in which we are voluntarily living inside this racist, fatphobic, oppressive and exploitative system, and how we complain about it but continue literally buying into it. We say we’re stuck there, but we aren’t. We really aren’t.
I’ve also been reading Kate Zambreno’s Drifts. It’s fair to say that I’m now obsessed with Kate Zambreno, although it took me about twenty pages to become accustomed to her voice. Sometimes I pause reading and turn the book over, just so I can look at her face, the halo of dark curls and her arresting gaze. In Drifts she orbits Rilke, Chantal Ackerman, her dog Genet, her neighborhood and how it feels to be a writer with several published books and yet still tenuously calling oneself a writer, because what is a writer? Is a writer someone who has made a lot of money writing? Are we writers if no one has heard of us? Or if our neighborhood bookstore doesn’t carry our books? What is a writer, or an artist, in a capitalist system?
I watched a film called Butter on the Latch, a strange, musically emotional film with no discernible plot carrying it forward, and without social media to distract me I found myself rapt before the meditations of the director Josephine Decker, and yet of course this film wouldn’t be shown in a large theater, would never be called a blockbuster. In its textures I found threads of Midsommar. Did Ari Aster watch this film? How many superior books, films, paintings, dances are plucked from obscurity by artists who repurpose them for marketability? If Josephine Decker directs a blockbuster in ten years she will be called “newly discovered,” as if she didn’t exist before everyone finally knew about her, as if to exist we must be admired, and our work must be universal.
There is so much I want to read and watch, and it’s summer, and I’m still nannying and there is also so much I want to write. Things I want to try. I sit in a quiet room and listen to the birds and know that I will not be on social media in earnest again for the entire summer. I must not, to honor my writing, my sense of self, my creative energy and spirit. So, I’m not on social media. There is so much more to do.
What I’m reading:
Wintering, by Katherine May. A perfect book for a summer where everyone can’t wait to see each other.
Christopher Stone proposed legal rights for trees, oceans, and river, amongst other natural lifeforms. I wonder when we’ll catch up to his thinking.
No one knows why this herd of elephants is moving north.
I had never before thought of the need for safe public spaces specifically to keep teen girls safe, but now I can’t stop thinking about it.
It honestly infuriates me that so much of the dialogue surrounding Mare of Easttown is about how Kate Winslet refused to let her belly be edited onscreen and had to send the advertising materials back twice in order to get them to make her look more “realistic.” The interviewer here also made sure to point out that “in real life” Winslet’s skin is beautiful, unlike Mare’s. Gee, thanks for letting us plebes know.
I cannot wait to read A Ghost in the Throat, which I just put on hold at the library.
What I’m listening to:
I’m obsessed with Cat Power again.
I’m loving Beverly Glenn-Copeland for warm afternoons walking in my neighborhood.
New LUMP!
New Mannequin Pussy!
Truly loving Issam Hajali lately.
What I’m watching:
I am currently making my way through Chantal Ackerman’s oeuvre.
Tonight I’m going to watch A Woman Under the Influence.
Another film on my list in Phoenix, directed by Christopher Petzold, whose film Undine has just been released.
What I’m doing:
Taking care of myself with somatics, yoga, and a much needed vacation.
