Five Things
Assorted musings for the weekend.
This was one of those weeks where I didn’t have a clear idea of what to write about, so rather than trying to conjure up a boulder, and then force that boulder uphill, I am going to take a page from Rihanna’s book and try the more laidback approach. I’ve always loved that kind of old-school blogging, the casual “here’s what I’ve been up to” post, so that’s what I’m trying to do! Maybe this will become a semi-recurring feature. In 2023 we are about working smarter, not harder. Anyways! Here, just in time for the weekend, are five random things currently on my mind.
Last week I took a super quick, twenty-four trip to Florida. Along with two other wonderful authors (the foreign correspondent Elizabeth Becker and the novelist Lisa Barr), I spoke at a ladies’ luncheon fundraiser event in West Palm Beach last Friday. Three hundred women in a ballroom, all of them avid readers, with book sales on site: bless! It was my first time doing this kind of event, and at the risk of sounding terribly business-like, it was excellent bang-for-the-buck. Every author knows the pain of giving a reading at a bookstore and having, like, three people show up. And one of them is your mother. And another person already bought your book on Kindle. I believe in bookstores, I believe in supporting bookstores with author events, but I also love this kind of approach, where the audience may not be there to see you specifically, but they are avid readers and book-buyers, and if you do a compelling enough job of speaking about your book, they just might decide to give you a shot.
I was supposed to get home late that Friday night, but I was at the airport with a bunch of extra time, and the very nice man named Reggie at the JetBlue desk managed to get me on the earlier flight to LaGuardia. So I was back in New York in time for a late dinner! Magic. Thank you, Reggie. Thank you also to the people who renovated LaGuardia. I love LaGuardia.
You know what else I love? Rick Rubin’s book, The Creative Act. I will not shut up about it! I have been telling every writer and artist I know to get themselves a copy. It’s interesting, though. I bought this book as soon as it came out, and started reading it right away, but at first, I just couldn’t quite find my footing with it. This is not a book you’re meant to devour. There is no story, no narrative. You have to meditate on it. You have to slow yourself down and spend some time with it in order to absorb what is being offered. There is a simplicity to this book that, at first glance, conceals the depths. But if you can slow yourself down enough, you can enter those depths.
I’ve only been reading a few pages at a time. Any more than that and it feels like too much to absorb in a single sitting. There is so much wisdom in these pages. I have joked before about how, if Rick Rubin were a cult leader, I would happily join that cult, but what I love about this book is the relative absence of the author. He doesn’t overshadow these pages, not in the least. There is very little of Rubin-the-person in here. That said: a writer friend and I were texting the other day, talking through some nitty-gritty stuff about process and career, and how to hold space for our art in the world, something that Rick, if he were our friend, would undoubtedly help us to do, and we were joking that we needed to get t-shirts made that said BE YOUR OWN RICK RUBIN.
Yet another thing I love: early bird dinners. This week I met a friend for dinner at 5:15 p.m. at EJ’s (definitely my most frequented restaurant on the Upper East Side and possibly the world), and you know what? It was perfect. She has little kids and their bedtime was part of the reason for it, but honestly, it was perfectly suited to my schedule too. We sat down when it was still light outside (hallelujah!), we got a side of fries and a side of pickles, because why not, and and I got home with an absolutely luxurious amount of time to relax before going to bed. Bearing in mind that I go to bed at, like, 9:30. Being in your mid-thirties is wild!
A real talk moment. Like the rest of the internet, Andrew and I have been watching The Last of Us, but these last few weeks? We’ve kind of been … losing steam. I don’t know where the show is going, and the violence is starting to feel unrelenting. I can handle darkness if the darkness is in service of the storytelling, but we have reached the point where I can’t tell what it is meant to serve. Honestly I’m sad about this! I love Pedro Pascal, I love Bella Ramsey, there were a few episodes where I was just so into it, but now? Each week goes by and I find myself less and less invested. I think I’m out. Sorry, HBO. But don’t worry, I will see you in a few weeks for the return of the greatest television show ever made, aka Succession, aka the Harry Potter of TV shows, by which I mean (stay with me here) it is my favorite thing in the world, it is a story I will never get tired of, I could watch Succession over and over until I die and I would die a happy person.
Finally, in other breaking content-consumption news, I finally finished reading The Magic Mountain! It took me multiple months and multiple library renewals, but I did it, and it was absolutely glorious. I will be thinking about this book for a long, long time.
I tend to do this once every few years. I decide to put on my crampons and grab my pick-axe and scale my way up the forbidding slope of a Big Classic Novel. Now, look. I may be a nerd, but even this nerd can’t just casually sit down and start reading War and Peace or Middlemarch or Henry James. It’s not a la dee da undertaking. For me, it takes a certain amount of commitment. I have to be ready for that full-scale immersion. But these are the books that have nourished me the most. I tend to take a lot of notes as I am reading these big books, and the note-taking—using the novel as an occasion for contemplation—is what deepens my relationship to it. The stories and ideas become alive within me.
That said, when I finished The Magic Mountain, I decided to treat myself with a Daniel Silva novel, and let me tell you, that was a lovely change of pace.