august 18 hmm
Recently, a friend suggested that I write a Chuck Klosterman-esque essay explaining looksmaxxers and in suggesting that I would not do something like that, I made a joke about why I would not do something like that. The relevant section looks like this:
...the only things I really want to write essays about revolve around love and life, and looksmaxxers don't know what either of those things are.
I do want to write essays. I like the form. I like the idea that someone would choose to make a point in an entertaining, illuminating way. I want to write essays because it took me far too long to see the form as interesting and relatable and not academic and dry. In re: my essays, a prof at McGill used to deride me for my "zip bang" sentence fragments. He one told me I write more for a journalist's audience than a scholarly one. It wasn't meant as a compliment but I took it as one; even back then I was a pain in the ass who wanted to do the thing in a very specific way.
Thing is, writing essays is hard if you don't trust your voice, or your memory, and it's even harder if you don't think your opinions matter. This is about low self-esteem and self-regard, because I am the same broken (but hopeful!) person as I always am, but it's also about how giving people positive reinforcement here and there is potentially the difference between whether they take risks or not. And it has been my experience that if you want to make art, or otherwise make something that lasts a while, you have to take risks. You have to risk embarrassment and humiliation. You have to have guts. Guts come from taking risks and living to tell the tale. You take risks when you feel like there's a modicum of a net. And now we are back at the beginning.
If someone put a gun to my head, right now, in this moment, and said "you have to tell me what you'd write a book of essays about in the next five seconds or I will pull this trigger," I know what my answer would be. I would write about television. About its codes, customs, and tropes; about how existing as art, as cultural product, and as a conversation with the status quo is interesting and difficult; and about how a lot of shows that people think of as low art (think network crime shows) are actually wildly complex deeply beautiful.
I'd write about how Person of Interest may well be the best (and obviously the most prescient) network show of all time, and about how the first season of Veronica Mars changed my life.
I'd write about the first episode of the second season of 19-2 (English), which was so visceral and perfect I still don't know how to describe it; the first episode of the second season of Catastrophe, which I have never watched all the way through without pausing because it makes me laugh so hard I gasp for air; and about how Garret Dillahunt belongs in the television actor hall of fame.
I'd write about how Bryan Fuller, Liz Meriwether, Noah Hawley, and Marcy Carsey affected the way I see the world. I would find a way to tell you that the second I saw Amanda Peet play Jordan McDeere, I pointed at the screen like DiCaprio in the meme and said "that's Jamie Tarses, right?" and about the moment I knew Adam Driver was going to be a star two years before Girls premiered on HBO.
For the longest time I felt dumb for liking television (and sports, and fantasy sports, and the internet, and clothes, and sex, and plants, and math, and and and) as much as I did, the way I did, but I don't feel dumb anymore. Instead, I feel grateful. It is a profound privilege to love things, and if you are ever feeling low or unmoored, I highly suggest going back to first principles. Find something you love and let it kill you love it as purely as you can. You'll find your way back to the road.
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch watch
🌳 grass tv
🌷 now
Be good to yourself.
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