EPISODE 426: THE FULL OSTRICH
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Well hello you. How are you living? Did you enjoy the debates?
Yeah, no. Me too. 20 candidates is way too many to put on a stage and ask me to sort through. I want everyone who wants to run to be able to, but tag me in when we’re down to Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and one of the old guys.
(Also, why does my Microsoft Word for Mac know how to spell Buttigieg already?
Big Brother: Spell Check Edition is not comforting.)
(Also also: I really love saying Hickenlooper and Amy Klobuchar.
When you keep forcing me to listen to 24 candidates, Democrats, these are the kinds of things I start to think about as a criteria for voting. Get your act together.) ++ It's been a busy week in the neighborhood. Lots of writing and conversations about writing and being around writers talking about how can we do more writing and also get paid things for it. It's been great.
A friend of mine who has done pretty well as a young writer was talking about buying his first house, and how semi-terrifying that is when your full time work is freelance. "I have the money for the downpayment, but will any other money be forthcoming?"
God: Please send answer soon. Loan to be signed in two weeks. Cash also accepted. ++ I've been cracking away at two projects in particular, which will henceforth be known as CHEAT CODE and DONNIE P, as coming up with silly fake names for things is a practice I have seen some of my favorite writers use in their newsletters, and last week I learned that visualization is a thing that can lead to realities, like Oprah.
I was talking to a mentor friend of mine about CHEAT CODE, just sort of a "here are some things I'm excited that I want to happen in it". Then he interrupted to point out my climax is actually not my climax but the movie's midpoint, which is the moment in many films when a character shifts from chasing whatever they want to facing up to whatever it is they actually need.
This is not an insight that makes one feel good. "I like your story; you still need to come up with half of it." But man if in trying out what he had said the film didn't start to have a lot more energy and focus.
Writers: good people. ++ I recently started listening to “Ten Things That Scare Me”, a micro podcast/radio show from WNYC in which people you know and don’t know tell you in 5-10 minutes what they’re afraid of.
I’d say it’s another iteration of fans wanting to slake our never-ending thirst for more information about whoever we consider celebrities (Alex Goldman anyone?). But as is often the case with celebrity-related whatever, it’s actually more complicated than pure voyeurism. Celebrities are really just another form of “my stories”, a place we come to not simply be entertained but to consider the stuff of our own lives. Listening to Anna Sale of Death, Sex and Money talk about being afraid of losing the people she loves, “the temporariness of them”, I get that. It’s stuff I lose sleep over too.
Most of the time as it turns out I’m not listening to learn what Maybe Famous Person X is afraid of but just to hear someone talk about their fears, so that I can be okay with mine. There’s that old comment that more than anything the Devil doesn’t want you to talk about the plans you and he hatched over coffee; it’s not that there’s anything wrong with them (yes it is), it’s just he wants our thing to be special (no he doesn’t).
Fears are like that. Saying them makes them a little less nightmarish, a little less This is Everything in the World and There is Nothing Else. That’s not to say they go away. In fact as I listen to U-God from Wu Tang Clan talk about being afraid of getting shot by the police I walk away even more clear about how true and real and well and truly fucked up that fear is. Sometimes naming my fears is satisfying not because they are lies and wrong and I am going to be fine but because they put words to what otherwise is sort of free-floating anxiety. Yes, I am afraid of never accomplishing anything. Yes, that is it. Ahh.
Also: Ten minutes or less is a good length for things.
If you want one more great example of the pod, listen to the Starlee Kine episode.Then Google Starlee Kine and listen to everything else she has ever done, because she is great. ++
One thing that filled me with a weird relief that I learned from listening – I am apparently not the only one mortally terrified about global warming and what the world is going to look like in thirty years and/ or California by the end of the summer.
I have started reading David Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Planet, because The People said it was Important and Must Be Read. And for the first 5% (thank you Kindle) I felt the same. Now I veer back and forth between Yes, this is important and You Know, I Think I Can Scare Myself, Thank you Very Much.
It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says it isn’t happening at all, and comes to us bundled with several others in an anthology of comforting delusions: that global warming is an Arctic saga, unfolding remotely; that it is strictly a matter of sea level and coastlines, not an enveloping crisis sparing no place and leaving no life undeformed; that it is a crisis of the “natural” world, not the human one; that those two are distinct, and that we live today somehow outside or beyond or at the very least defended against nature, not inescapably within and literally overwhelmed by it...
Some of what he has to say is interesting strictly from a science fiction story ideas point of view, and you know, if things go as badly as they could go, sure, we won’t be able to go outside ever because the air will be too warm for our skin to discharge body heat, and we won’t be able to have air conditioning and so everyone will die or suffocate or something. Fine. Thank you.
But I also wonder, is this how my parents felt in the '80s over nuclear weapons, or their parents in the early 1960s? And does that mean my nephews and nieces have some version of the fantasies and nightmares I had as a kid – how far from the horror zones are we, where should we move to be okay?
I guess the other question is, is what we’re all doing with our lives absolute foolishness, in light of all that? Does it make sense to write stories and teach classes and spend a weekend at the beach given what we’re hearing? Or is that the only thing that makes sense, and what we actually have always done as a species, insist on a place for ourselves and also beauty and goodness and community in the face of an existence that is fragile and always perilous and going to end?
The bishops of California recently put out a letter of their own about global warming. I was struck by their invitation that we all spend more time enjoying the natural beauty of our world, that that is the path beyond paralysis, denial and bourbon (your mileage may vary) to some kind of conversion. They’re even hopeful: “Conversion is not just turning back to God, but always embraces new thinking and new decisions—a new way of life as we move into the future.”
New! Future! I like it. ++
++ Maybe our immigration issues require a similar stepping back from policy to just plain see and appreciate immigrants for who they actually are rather than what they might represent? This week’s Black Cardigan newsletter – in which writer Carrie Frye talks about Lin-Manuel Miranda recently breaking down the Queen/Bowie song “Under Pressure” – had the great insight, When we talk about immigration crises or deportation, we’re not talking about something happening to “those” or “others” but “us”. They are us. ++ Elizabethan Netflix: for some reason I love this idea. (It comes from Damien Williams over at Technoccult.)
Give it a second. ++
In addition to indulging all my fears, this week I watched the three previous Toy Story films.
(Basically if you want to get me to watch/read something, just tell me it’s part of a series.)
Yes, I’ve never seen those movies. Feel free to judge me. I did try to watch TS3 when it came out. I hate to say this but I fell asleep. At one point I woke up and there was fire and the toys were holding hands and I was like, whuh? And then I went back under until the credits.
The Toy Stories: My Reactions in Emoji Descriptions.
Toy Story: Shrug?
I know it’s much beloved and also I’m assuming it was revolutionary for its time. Toys have lives of their own! Cool!
But eh. Not much there for me.
Toy Story 2: Raised eyebrow.
I was liking it, it seemed punchier than the first one. Then we get the Jessie origin story, and this idea of how every toy is eventually discarded I was like DAMN YOU GUYS WENT DEEP.
Toy Story 3: Munch Scream.
So basically Toy Story 3 is the fear of Toy Story 2 brought to realization. Andy has grown up, he’s going to college, the toys are done for.
I liked it for that, but really did not for its decision to throw the toys first in that crazy nightmare jail. First of all, it’s not really on point, and also I just don’t want little kids learning about torture, brainwashing and solitary confinement.
I do like the we’re all going to be burned alive climax, because that is on point and also embraces the conclusion of TS2, basically that we will face whatever comes together and that will make it bearable and even meaningful. I actually would have liked to see the die, maybe? (Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself….) I just felt like The Claw was kind of a cop out.
But it did create that amazing moment at the end where Andy becomes the parent having to let go of his children, and that was just brilliant. (The beginning and ending of that film were fantastic.)
I have not seen TS 4 yet. Everything I’ve read suggests it is an existentialist nightmare. They might as well have put a bow on it and given it to me for my birthday. ++ LINKS ++ This is clearly important and I want to write a story about it and also I don’t understand it: https://thenextweb.com/science/2019/06/28/scientists-teleported-quantum-data-into-the-flawed-heart-of-a-diamond/
Incognito Mode: The Real Story
A fantastic new Twitter game: Choose Your Own Beyoncé Adventure
And this week’s song, from the incredible film The Last Black Man in San Francisco.
It's a holiday week. Picnics and fireworks and probably something ridiculous politically. It's like knowing when your kids get tired they're going to start fighting: We've been there, we can handle it, they will not keep us from our beer and rosé.
Remember, the Founding Fathers would have no idea what to do with 2019, but they would also insist you are amazing.
See you next week.