I turned a new age. For my birthday, please consider donating $1, $3, $13, or $31 to PAL Humanity to support the work of Nour and Nagham, doctors and sisters on the ground in Gaza.
We skipped the last post because I was on a road trip with two of my best friends using an 8-person tent. Had there even been wifi to post, my energy was consumed completely by the construction and tear down of the 8-person tent.
WHAT HITS
Have you guys heard of music? I’m telling you. This stuff.
I was given “The Work of Art: How something comes from nothing” by Adam Moss for my birthday and it rips. Moss interviews 43 different artists on their process for a specific piece. I’m 14 artists in and and my favorite interview has been with musician Moses Sumney on writing “Doomed” from his 2017 album, Aromanticism. Sumney had the song for a year but he didn’t have the words. “I didn’t know what it was about, but I could feel it. And it also felt hefty; those lyrics had to be damn good. So what I did was to start performing it. I probably performed it for a year without words. People came up to me and said, ‘Doomed,’ that was my favorite song, I couldn’t stop crying.” He goes on, “I think I felt it was about God from day one. They hymnal quality…All right, God, I’ll make this about you. You want attention so bad. Of course, I knew that I was addressing aromanticism as a concept, so putting those two together was really interesting.” He continues to talk about the push-pull of writing it before finally discovering the missing piece once he found the line, “If lovelessness is godlessness will you cast me to the wayside?”
You have to watch this performance of it, I’m sorry. I linked it to start at 6:34. When Sumney turns and starts conducting at 11:34, I lost it. He’s in it, man. I sent it to a friend who watched the performance and replied, “I know art is not supposed to be a competition, but some things really are more transcendent than others.”
While we’re on music, let’s talk about the healing power of summer pop albums. Dua Lipa lets you be heartbroken for about 2-3 songs/album but only at a beat you can dance to. “Anything for Love” on her new album, Radical Optimism, kills. It’s over too fast and will be my most listened to song in 2024. You can sing it at anyone or anything, self included. She has a line from the first track, “End of an Era,” that only a club girl could write - “In the clouds, there she goes, butterflies let them flow. Another girl falls in love, another girl leaves the club. Send a big kiss goodbye to all of the pretty eyes. Another girl falls in love, another girl leaves the club.” I love it. As if we are all club girls. Perpetually clubbing. Until true love steals us from the club. I’m telling you, healing.
A DRIP on this drip
HITMAN is growing. Rock on. Creating this is more complex than anticipated because people I know and love subscribe to it. I listened to a conversation between Mike Birbiglia and Chris Fleming recently and Mike said, “I think comedy is a little bit like being a stripper. Which is you’re revealing yourself to a group of people and then it’s like, well, you don’t want to strip for your family. It’s just not really where it’s at. You know what I mean?” To which I replied, “Yes.”
One of my favorite conversations with any creator is their relationship to the audience. It’s always fruitful. I was given a book of quotes by writers and in the chapter covering audience, the advice ranges everywhere from, “write for one reader” to “write for your wife and your agent” to “write for nobody but yourself.” You need different advice for different days. There’s a quote that smokes from John Keats in the book, “I never wrote one single line of poetry with the least shadow of public thought.”
Keats! Not once, my man? I looked up the quote’s origin. It’s from a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds in which they’re discussing audience. The quote followed a few lines on how he writes differently for his friends. From his letter, “If I write a Preface in a supple or subdued style, it will not be in character with me as a public speaker—I would be subdued before my friends, and thank them for subduing me—but among Multitudes of Men—I have no feel of stooping, I hate the idea of humility to them.”
I hear this. In live performance, I focus on the work. I don’t care if the audience likes me or it, I care that they got of their house and showed up. They should see something that was worked on. Live performance is ephemeral. Even if the audience is full of friends and family, it’s easier to step offstage and be separate from the thing. In writing, I can’t cleanly step to the side. In the erasure of this physical step, my eye has shifted towards likability. A slippery slope to no voice.
We’ve all got things that shake us into awareness. One of mine is autobiographical writing. Being alive is the story. The essay is a chapter. The truth is the point. In skipping parts of the story to stay safe in likability, it’s a hack job.
Why tell the truth? Why am I so freaked about not telling it? Why use a medium that reveals? Why make … anything?! Here’s why, for me.
Years ago, I went on a Joseph Campbell kick and read The Hero with A Thousand Faces, The Masks of God, and The Power of Myth. If I had to suggest one, I’d read The Power of Myth. Or, watch (for free) the 1988 PBS documentary the book is based on, “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth.” It was originally broadcast as six, one-hour conversations between Campbell and journalist Bill Moyers. The Power of Myth is based on the interviews.
“Campbell blends accounts of his own upbringing and experience with stories from many cultures and civilizations to present the reader with his most compelling thesis that modern society is going through a transition from the old mythologies and traditions to a new way of thinking where a global mythology will emerge. The main theme of the book is the universality of myths—what Campbell calls ‘mankind's one great story’— that occur throughout the history of mankind, no matter which epoch or whichever culture or society is considered. The reappearance of certain themes, time and again, in different mythologies, leads to the realization that these themes portray universal and eternal truths about mankind.” This paragraph is ripped from Wikipedia. Hang onto the bolded line.
I read Campbell’s work shortly after moving to Chicago. I was immersed in more ways of life than I’d ever been exposed to, at odds with my own beliefs because of it, and became completely liberated by Campbell’s ideas. We’re all telling variations of a similar story and arriving at similar truths. In our religious texts, yes. But, also, in the stories we tell each other about our lives. At any given time, we’re all on one of the 12 phases of the hero’s journey. Reading Campbell was permission to derive meaning and metaphor from all myth and all life. Permission to pay close attention. When I tell a story, personal or made-up, and someone responds with, “That thing, I know it too,” well, zing. Now we’re cooking. Now we’re swimming in the language of the bolded line. Now we’re playing catch in the ego-free field spouting, “Is it a joke? Is it God? Is it a game? Is it nothing? What else have you found out so far?” That entire conversation can occur in a laugh or a nod.
Elaine Stritch’s husband, John Bay, had an aphorism, “Everybody’s got a sack of rocks.” As in, everyone is carrying around their own load of hardship and mistakes. It may never be sorted out. You can hold a rock up in your work and say, “woe is me,” or hold it up and say, “huh, so here’s a rock” and explain why it’s funny, how it cracked something, what it brought.
I may mention more rocks, ethical fouls, divisive topics, show work I’ve made from the past that I’ve held off on - because I love to make, man. The above is why. I’m 31. What an age. I’m just grown. I’m just aging. I’ve got no choice but to be old enough to accept my writing, and I, will be disliked. I take my work seriously but it lives in the land of impermanence. I hope my work, in and outside of HITMAN, doesn’t touch our love. If it does, let me know and we can set up an 8-person tent together. Abby and Annie can attest, this will force us to get to the bottom of our relationship.
For the remainder of HITMAN, I’ll be doing exactly what I’ve been doing. Essays or blurry videos of fruit or that one thing I did with Will and the video of the rich people who love beverages. This was an internet blog manifesto for myself. A change none of you would have noticed. A parade in which I am both the only float and singular person on the side of the street screaming for candy. The last act before bravery is admitting cowardice.
WHAT’S UP, IDA?
Ida!!!! I love Ida. We met overlapping at the Neos. This is a person I have not gotten enough time with. What I love about Ida, and I love many things, is that she knows how important it is to find the joke. It’s all we’ve got. It’s wise to find it everywhere you can. For the latter part of our friendship in the same city, we’d be equal amounts of bad at indoor bouldering together. This stretch of time with Ida is a lemon cake memory. Pure fun. The day after my buddy died, Ida met me at the bouldering gym. She immediately made a joke and I will never forget how much this rocked. We will live in the same city again. (I don’t know if we will, but I’d like to write it to make it so.)
1. What is something strange, cool, or funny that happened to you recently?
2. What advice would you give yourself one year ago?
Pepper jelly is not that good for a charcuterie board. See you soon.
"huh here's a rock" !!!!!!!!!!!! i love