Recent iPad sketches, demonstrating that I should really do more of these to get better at them. (And at using iPad as a sketchbook, too.)
How Does It Feel To Feel?
In two separate conversations lately, I’ve been giving friends updates on my current work and financial situation — spoilers: both have been better than they currently are — only to receive roughly the same response: “I’m surprised how upbeat you sound, despite everything that’s going on!”
I’m paraphrasing; one of the responses was more along the lines of, “Why do you sound so happy?” as if I was doing something wrong by not being more depressed, which I admit that I love. There’s something amusing to me about admonishing someone for not being distraught enough in reaction to dire circumstances, as if they’re doing it wrong. Aren’t we… supposed to not surrender to the history of the world, and all that kind of thing…?
Nonetheless, I’ve been caught with the idea that I am happier than I have the right to be over the last few days. Not that I feel as if I’m being criticized, per se, because that really is just a funny idea to me — be more sad, dammit — but, instead, that maybe I’m missing something that means far worse things than I have properly taken into account. What if I really should be more sad, or more worried, or more angry, than I currently am?
Ironically, that concern — that I’m missing some implication or meaning that others are instinctively, immediately grasping, and it’ll all end in tears — is what’s been keeping me up at night, almost literally. I’ve had dreams about things going worse and me not seeing it coming, and woken up uncertain and wishing I could remember the details more clearly, just in case.
The idea that there’s worse around the corner and I’ve been blissfully unaware has slowly been becoming the worse that’s been around the corner all along, and now it’s derailing whatever good mood I was in before this. Is this a sign that memetic warfare is possible and potent, or merely that I’m particularly impressionable when things are up in the air?
Start Getting Real
Watching The Real World: Homecoming or whatever it’s called yesterday proved to be a nostalgic experience, if not for the exact reasons that the show’s makers had intended. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun enough to watch Kevin, Heather, Julie, Norman, and the other three whose names I forget go on at genuinely extraordinary and dull length about how unbelievable it was that they were in exactly the same loft space as they’d been in 29 years earlier — that the show couldn’t have been filmed a year later to coincide with an actual anniversary feels as if it says everything about how lazy and contrived the whole thing is, wonderfully — but the nostalgia I felt wasn’t actually anything to do with the show itself, not really.
In the UK, the first season of Real World didn’t air on MTV, but as a Sunday lunchtime show on mainstream network Channel 4. As such, it picked up a lot of viewers who would otherwise have passed it by out of ignorance or simply never watching MTV. For example, me. Even better, for a further example, my mother.
While I’ll happily put my hands up as a fan of reality show trash, the same would never be true of my mum, who never watched an episode of Big Brother or any similar show in her life. But that first season of Real World obsessed her as much as it did me, feeling like the social experiment that the show claimed to be at the time — Michael Apted’s 7Up series on fast-forward and filled with particularly insufferable people.
We’d watch the show together as we ate lunch, the rest of the family doing more important things. (It was a Sunday, so they were probably reading the newspapers; buying seven or eight massive Sunday papers, with all the supplements and the magazines, was a weekly tradition in my family; we’d spend the rest of the day reading them.) It was a small, silly thing, our watching together and getting breathlessly sucked in — and reacting together, at whatever ridiculousness was happening that week — but, even at the time, it felt comforting and important, an unexpected thing we shared and bonded over quietly.
Far more than what had happened to the original cast, that’s what the reunion made me think of; a summer of lunchtimes with my mum, almost three decades ago. It’s a favorite memory, when I return to it.
Start Walkin’
I’m not entirely sure why it happened, but yesterday I heard “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’” and became utterly obsessed with the second verse. I’ve known the song for decades, and like all good people have long loved its casual cool in the amazing bass line, the sassy Nancy Sinatra delivery, and the ridiculous, overly enthusiastic horn section at the fade out, but this was something new — and, I suspect, something long overdue.
It’s not as if I was unaware of how good the lyrics to the song were; there’s no way you can hear the song and not notice lines like “you’ve been messin’ where you shouldn’t be messin’” or the amazing “I just found me a brand new box of matches/And what he knows, you ain’t had time to learn.” Even the verse that caught my ear yesterday starts with the iconic “you’ve been lyin’ when you oughtta be truthin’,” another memorable earworm.
There’s something about that line that sets up what struck me, though; the confidence about it — here’s how you should behave — and the wonder of “truthing,” a word that, if it did exist previously, certainly wasn’t commonly used. It’s so bold, so self-assured, that it’s utterly compelling in how quickly it communicates the attitude of the entire song: I’m not like everyone else, and you’re going to realize that when I’m gone.
The rest of the verse follows suit, with each new line a masterclass in both wordplay and attitude. “And you keep losing when you oughta not bet” is such a great put down of the song’s target — it’s not just that they’re losing, they’re dumb enough not to know when to quit — while “you keep samin’ when you oughta be a’changin’,” is more of “truthing” again; a word that doesn’t exist but should, creating something that just feels true and easily understandable in opposition to the norm. We know what changing is, so of course “saming” makes sense.
And then, of course, the killer kiss-off, to end the verse (and, likely, the heart of the song’s target): “Now what’s right is right, but you ain’t been right yet.” Good luck coming back from that.
Yes, Nancy Sinatra performs the shit out of the song, and, yes, the arrangement is a masterpiece. But what caught me yesterday was, to be blunt, sheer jealousy over how well-written these lyrics really are. If only I had even half the skill to be able to write like this. Good job, Lee Hazlewood, you talented fuck.
Not The Droids You’re Looking For
One of the unexpected side effects of getting back to pitching and sending out feelers for work is that I suddenly have to pay attention to my email again. That’s not to say that I’ve been completely ignoring my email before now — although I have, I confess, been guilty of paying less attention to it than I should — but there’s a new hunger and need in me to pounce every time a notification appears that I have new mail: what if it’s someone saying yes? What if it means I get to write one of the stories I really want to write?
(This suggests that I’ve pitched stories that I don’t really want to write; reader, the truth is, I’ve pitched a number of those stories, mostly because I think they might be useful to editors and/or outlets, and I want to be someone who appears useful to editors and/or outlets. I’m my own worst enemy, especially if those are the pitches everyone says yes to.)
The problem with this is that I’m not entirely sure that it’s healthy to get as excited — or, perhaps “agitated” would be a more appropriate term to use — whenever I get email, given just how much email I’m still getting from the days when I was writing for two high-profile outlets and therefore placed on seemingly every PR person’s mailing list. I’m seeing notifications come in and thinking, maybe this is the one, and it’s really just the one from someone I’ve never heard about telling me that this is the time I need to start listening to this particularly country artist, or that I need to treat myself and they have the ideal product to help with that.
On the one hand, these emails aren’t really a problem; I scan them and, for the most part, delete them, all of which is easy enough to do. But I’m getting tired from the emotional rollercoaster of thinking that things were about to change, only to realize that the only thing changing is the exciting life story of the creator of a new and exciting vegan restaurant in Los Angeles.
Insect Infect Insect Infect
Of all the fake names ever used in spam comments on this site, “Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine” is perhaps the most amusing and the most timely. I’ve been thinking a lot about the vaccine lately; about its availability, about when I’ll be able to get it, and about just how successful it’s going to be in the grand scheme of things.
In some abstract way, as we approach a full year in lockdown — although, it strikes me, few have fully observed the lockdown for that entire time; the seemingly increasing number of people wandering the streets without masks makes that all too clear, sadly — the idea that the vaccines will work, and that we may one day return to something close to what we used to call “normal,” feels almost impossible.
This, by now, is normal. This weird world where we don’t really go out and do things, is the world as it is and has been for the length of our short-term memory; even moreso, the idea of doing something else, whether it’s going to the movies, or going to a restaurant, or anything that used to be considered an usual social occurrence, feels not only alien, but more than a little unsettling to boot. Imagine being that close to strangers without wearing a mask at all times!
(Or two masks, even; I’ve taken to wearing two masks out in public after reading advice that it would be advisable considering the new COVID variants, and even that has become less strange and uncomfortable incredibly quickly — it was only a couple of weeks ago when I felt as if it was too much, and that I was breathing oddly, but now I do it without even thinking and feel entirely normal when I do.)
Perhaps this is just what happens, perhaps it’s just how our brains work. All I know is that, this far into COVID lockdown, the very notion that there’s an “other side” to the virus and to lockdown that we’re headed towards feels as if it’s science fiction.
With A-Mixed Emotions
I spent some time yesterday writing a pitch for a piece that I might be working on in the future, if all goes well; it’s something that I, ironically, was hoping to do for THR, before I was laid off and was then invited to pitch for elsewhere. The plus side of this is, I have a pretty good idea of what I’d want to do, given the chance. On the other hand, my pitch alone turned out to be longer than some stories I’ve written for outlets in the past, so it would be a significant undertaking.
(But, oh! If I had a chance to do it! It could be so much fun, despite the workload…!)
I am returning, in my head, to work — or the idea of working, anyway. I’d planned to use February to step away and get my head straight, to plane future moves and take a break before returning to things properly in March and pitching everywhere, writing some things for outlets old and new, and generally discovering what the future “swing of things” would look like. It felt like a good idea at the time, not least of all because, while I didn’t realize quite how much I’d been affected by being laid off, I knew the answer was “probably more than I know right now.”
Now that I’m here, though, I find myself both excited at the thought of working again — which is, in itself, surprising and exciting — but also quietly terrified about the vague plan I have for my future. Really, the fear centers around a very simple idea: what if I fail? What if I can’t make a living doing this anymore?
It’s a fear born of rejection anxiety after being laid off as much as any practical, “real” concern, I’m well aware. It’s also coming from the knowledge that I really did have it unnaturally good before, with my relationships with THR and Wired, and that things will never be that good again. I’m trying to be okay with knowing that, though, and embracing whatever is next, in whatever shape it comes. Even if it means writing enormously long pitches and crossing my fingers that someone says yes.
There On The Stair, Right There
Watching It’s A Sin has unleashed a wave of unlikely 1980s nostalgia in me, and not because much of the show’s period soundtrack turns out to be surprisingly great; instead, what I was reminded of was the way in which the decade felt, at times, like the end of the world.
I remember, for example, the AIDS crisis becoming mainstream, and the panic and misinformation that brought with it — everything from the apocalyptic adverts on television and in newspapers, made by the government, that basically said, there’s this illness, we’re not sure how it’s transmitted, but don’t get it or you will die, good luck, to the rumors of how you could get it from using public toilets. There was a sense that it was an almost Biblical plague and, as such, it was incurable, so the only option was to surrender to it and accept its spread as unstoppable.
(I half-remember some of the context that It’s A Sin provides, but I wish I’d known more at the time; I was just a kid at the time, sure, but nonetheless, I wish I’d known more.)
It wasn’t just AIDS, though; I remember the free floating feeling, almost a certainly from many, that we were almost guaranteed to die in an imminent nuclear war. I remember hearing discussions about the US Navy base at Holy Loch, just across the river from my hometown, and how that was almost sure to be one of the first targets if and when war broke out. We were, I learned, pretty much assured to be vaporized when the US and Russia went to war, which I was all but assured was going to happen any moment.
Again, I was just a child during all of this; I was five when 1980 started. I never really stopped to wonder whatever that must have done to me, growing up with a background certainty that the end was nigh, but I’m sure the answer isn’t “nothing, that kind of thing is good for a developing mind.” It makes me wonder, not for the first time, what this COVID era is doing to kids today.
That might be the thing, though; maybe it’s always the end of the world for kids, and it’s just we adults that learn to tune it out.
And In The End
And so, here they are — the last graphics I made for THR‘s newsletter before I left. (I was going to say, “jumped ship,” but I think that’s the term when it’s more intentional than what actually occurred. I might be wrong, though.) As I write, there’s discussion about whether or not I might return to do more for the newsletter, which I assume would include more graphics, but nothing’s been finalized yet, so… we’ll see, I guess. For now, consider these the last ones I made — although there are others that I made around the same time that haven’t seen the light of day yet. (Well, one has, but not the rest.) Maybe they’ll show up here at some point in the future…? For now, say goodbye with these ones…
I Remember How It Used To Be
For reasons, I’ve been thinking a lot about my art school days recently. Not so much in the sense of the social aspect of it all — traditionally my go-to when feeling nostalgic about that time of my life — but the work-related parts of it all: what we were expected to do, and how we were expected to do it.
At the time, the studio structure of school was something we didn’t really think about. It felt like a classroom, after all, and that was something that the majority of us were all too familiar with; in fact, for most of us, it was all we’d really known to that point. The idea that we’d all sit at tables crammed next to each other in relatively sizable rooms just made sense, because that’s what we did, as a matter of course. You sit down surrounded by other people and you do the work.
Coming almost a year into lockdown, and multiple years into freelancing from home, I can’t help but wonder how the studio shaped the work I was doing, and the methods of working I had in general. I wasn’t in a bubble, just the opposite; I was literally surrounded by people struggling with the same things I was, and all our ideas were cross-pollinating, intentionally or otherwise. We were teaching each other as much, if not far more than, any of the lecturers were teaching us. How could we not?
I think back, and I can identify ideas I discarded or approaches I abandoned based on the people around me — either because they were doing something that felt better (or easier, or ambitious in a way I wasn’t, or vice versa, or…), or because I felt self-conscious doing so in comparison to what they were doing. I can think of times when I approached problems with solutions that were entirely based on what I’d seen others do in previous projects.
Working in a studio was, in a way, like having another teacher in the room at all times. (Or multiple teachers.) I mean that as a positive and a negative; after working in relative isolation for so long, it’s something I miss to a degree, but also something I wonder if I was accidentally constricted by, without realizing it.