We’ve officially entered the second half of the year which means my mother has said something ridiculous by now. I say ridiculous here because it’s always delivered with an unawareness of its wisdom and the farm-girl-matter-of-factness she was raised on. While my father and I are delicate souls and chronic overthinkers, my mother prefers to just get on with it. As John Mulaney said, she’s the type to give you a glass of orange juice after you’ve brushed your teeth and declare that’s life, drink it. Last year, she told me I’d been swimming freestyle through my days for too long and I should breaststroke for a while. This year she essentially told herself that. It was a Thursday night and, as she opened a bottle of wine, she declared she was done being better this year. She was going to eat her chocolate and drink her alcohol and simply keep going without the ridiculous assertion of trying to be better at it, because the year itself was hard enough.
Over the last week I’ve heard similar declarations voiced and it’s had me thinking about a shift in our culture; possibly, the departure of an era of relentless self-improvement. Many of us have never felt the weight of our lives being restricted or our dreams being pushed off course by an outside force beyond our own ambition, but here we are. Coming to terms with our imperfect existences. A few days ago I listened to an old Longform podcast with New York Magazine’s Ask Polly columnist, Heather Havrilesky. The podcast episode was an old one, from 2018, and at the time Havrilesky claimed everyone was expecting too much from themselves. “People are almost having this existential crisis as a whole, as a culture, and they’re all saying, ‘God. I’m so far off from someone who could give a TED Talk. I’m so far off from someone who could be a brand,’” she said. “I think everyone feels that successful living is like, you know, you must be doing yoga. It’s not just an option. You better be doing yoga. If you’re not doing yoga, you must be meditating. Everyone wants to be a clean, polished, completely realised [person], inside and out. We’re all supposed to be living our best lives on the outside and on the inside which is f***ed up and impossible.”
It was with a sense of distance that I listened to Havrilesky. A sense that we may not be out of this era entirely, but we have one foot out the door. I haven’t seen anyone share their 10-step skincare routine on Instagram lately, and that feels good. The 10-step skincare routine is the perfect depiction of the clean, polished, completely realised life and the performativity that comes with it. The act defined not only by the belief you are living it, but the perception that other people want to see it. And as people are losing jobs and futures and possibly loved ones, as people navigate loss and uncertainty and grief, we don’t give a sh** about someone’s 10-step skincare routine anymore. We care about delicately navigating our way through this moment and maybe helping some other people along the way. Our focus has been turned outward, or we’ve at least been handed a good dose of perspective. Yet as we move out of this era and into another, it seems as if we’re still holding onto some part of our old idealised lives in the sense that we may not be broadcasting the perfection so stridently anymore, but we’re uncomfortable presenting anything less to the world. We can’t fully admit that we’re in pain or experiencing failure or coping with loss, maybe because we don’t believe we should be. Maybe because the era of relentless self-improvement deluded us into thinking we were in control.
On Saturday night, I watched Call Me By Your Name because it is now out on Netflix. It is a heartbreaking, earth-shatteringly beautiful story of a young boy’s coming of age and as the film nears its end, his father delivers a five minute monologue on coping with loss in love, but also, simply loss. “Right now you may not want to feel anything. Maybe you never wanted to feel anything,” he said. “We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster, that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to make yourself feel nothing, so as not to feel anything, what a waste.” He continues: “How you live your life is your business. Just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once… Right now, there’s sorrow, pain… don’t kill it. Find with it, the joy you felt.”
As we muddle our way through our newfound messy existences, it seems many of us are uncomfortable being here, feeling this, when this is the cost of living. So if you are experiencing pain or grief or loss right now, whether that relates to a job or a dream or something else, allow yourself to feel it all - including the joy you once felt. Nothing exists without contrast and no feeling exists in isolation. They are part and parcel of each other. While knowing this may not make it any easier, while it may not make it right, feeling it all helps you process the pain, and at least come out the other side without numbing yourself. To feel anything less is to be deluded into thinking we have full control when we have very little. Nothing good can come from that. Two months ago, after the first edition of this newsletter was sent out, my uncle sent me a line that had been running around his head for days. It was the epigraph in Helen Garner’s Yellow Notebook and was originally published in Primo Levi's The Periodic Table. It read: “We are here for this – to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to stand the blows and hand them out.” My uncle said he hadn’t handed out his share of blows yet. I haven’t either, but the point is this: sometimes we have to drink the orange juice and it hurts. Acid may be natural, but it still burns. No filter, no mindset, no amount of yoga or meditation or polish can eradicate it. So, feel the hurt, taste it all, take it in. Don’t kill it. Sit in the quiet chaos and pay attention, if only to muddle your way through until you can correct yourself again. That is the game and the blows are the price we pay to play. Good riddance to the era that deluded us into thinking anything otherwise.
Some related (and unrelated) recommendations:
This Good Weekend feature on the demise of the magazine industry in Australia, which was largely brought to its knees by one company. Trigger warning for anyone who worked there. I’d been working as an assistant to the editor-in-chief of the Women’s Weekly when Bauer bought the company. Still remember the day.
I love this Vulture profile on Michaela Coel with my whole heart. Her show, I May Destroy You, is on my 'to-watch' list.
This article by Nikole Hannah-Jones for the New York TimesMagazine on what the U.S. owes black Americans. If you haven’t listened to her podcast, 1619, on how slavery transformed America, I highly recommend it.
Call Me By Your Name is finally out on Netflix. A beautiful watch if you haven’t already seen it or are keen to rewatch it. The film won a bunch of awards when it was first released a few years ago.
I’ve almost finished Rodham, which is a novel about Hillary Clinton and what her life (and America’s life) would have looked like if she never married Bill.
If you loved Fleishman Is In Trouble, Taffy Brodesser-Akner has written the quarantine sequel to the bestselling novel, this time called Fleishman Is In Lockdown. The short story is now on The Cut.
I have nothing to say about Kanye West running for U.S. President. I'm still not sure he will actually do it. Anyway, here is his first interview about it for the confused among us, which is probably all of us.
Obviously, this Longform podcast with Heather Havrilesky. It’s old, but still fun. Favourite quote: “I don’t give a sh** if I succeed or fail or what I do next, I just want to do things that are strange and not sound bitey. I don’t want to be polished. I want to be such a wreck that no one will ever say ‘let’s put her on her own talk show.’”
Most importantly, please watch this young boy process information in class which is a lesson for all of us on how to get through 2020. Slowly, surely, gently. Feel it all.
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