Find the Pony
On finding the space where good can be
I’ve been wanting to tell you how much it means to write to you every week. Many of you I’ve known for a long time. Some of you I’ve met through the course of writing this newsletter. This started out as an exercise to pay attention to what I was paying attention to, to drop little bread crumbs as I was wandering in this forest. Judging by the open rates and by the replies you’re sending to each newsletter, you’re all lost in the same forest I am. There are just too many damn trees, and new ones all the time. Remember when the British Prime Minister who looks like a hale Donald Trump kicked Winston Churchill’s grandson out of his political party, and then his own brother rejected him? That was before Trump went on a multi-day tirade about Alabama, I’m sure there were more important things going on, but what in the entire hell?
Every week you pick up the bread crumbs, happy to know that you’re not alone in the forest. In truth, it would be easier to make your way through the forest if not for all these blasted trees. And some of you call out to me in a digital game of Marco Polo, except it’s not always clear who has their eyes closed. There are just so many trees.
My friend D.G. always has his eyes open, and he’s always telling me to stop looking at the trees. “Look for the good,” he says, which isn’t wrong, but it reminds me of the story of the optimist who’s happy to be thrown into a room full of horseshit. “There’s got to be a pony in here somewhere,” he says, happily digging through the mess. And I don’t know if which one of us is looking for a pony.
Turning my attention from the trees to look for the space between them to calm my mind feels like a dereliction of duty. We’re being gaslit constantly. Our brains are having to justify the skewed angles of the world. We’re being told that maps don’t show what we can see with our eyes. We’re being told there’s nothing amiss at all, that we’re overreacting because of our own biases, that these trees not only have always been here but at the same time are not here at all, they’re actually in Alabama. It takes concentration not to go mad. We stay vigilant just to be sure what is so and what is not so. And then, when we look up at each other to make sure that just so we’re clear, we’re all standing in a roomful of horse poop up to our ankles, we feel crazy nonetheless. I mean, you’re seeing this, too, right?
I don’t need to find the pony. I just want to see a space where a pony might reasonably be, where I can imagine someday in the future brushing one. I remember doing this as a child. When I was a small boy who lived in a city, my grandmother rented a pony so I would not have to learn to ride on a giant horse. I did not enjoy riding, but brushing the pony soothed me. But that pony must have died decades ago, and a strange disease took my grandmother from me long before she actually passed. The fact that this all actually happened doesn’t make it any less of a specter to me, impossible to return to. A new space is what I need, if not to find then just to look for, even to simply imagine that such a space could yet be amid all these fucking trees.
The problem with looking for the good in the world is that if you don’t watch out you can walk right into a tree and find yourself agreeing with a David Brooks column, because if words have lost all their meaning then what harm can high-brow gobbledegook do? We keep trying to find the right words for things, but as Dan Zak pointed out, “If we keep returning to the dictionary for new words to replace them, will there eventually be any left?”
So we try to repeat the names of things, hoping this mantra will lift the spell and return us to something we recognize, but the power of words fades with reuse. They begin to mean something else, like “thoughts and prayers.” A few years ago those were a safe space for people to name the unthinkable until we figured out what to do, but now thoughts and prayers are the name we give for our inability to do anything. Thoughts and prayers are the name we give to our inability to avoid the trees over and over and over and over again until walking into trees seems inevitable. Thoughts and prayers are what we call an age when a politician saying the f-word seems like courage and honesty.
There was a time when I thought this newsletter would not be about laying down bread crumbs every week. I amused myself with Jason Statham’s trilogy of dives in The Meg, what Magic Mike XXL has to say about toxic masculinity, and what my smart friend has to say about the concept of real life in a digital age. But I kept walking into trees. There are so many trees. I had to keep track of the trees even if it meant getting lost in the forest.
And then I started getting bread crumbs returned to me. You would email back that you were in the same forest with me. So do not think I am not looking for the good stuff when I write these letters. Because now I see.
You are the good space between the trees.
What I’m reading
Old busted: influencers. New hotness: curators.
Nuance and authenticity might be the only way to save us from misinformation and a divided populace. That’s right. It’s time for footnotes.
Even though he ignored Frank Turner’s hopepunk anthem “Make America Great Again,” Chris Richards’ takedown of modern protest songs illuminates something that is wrong with our culture.
Love the rabbit hole this writer went down to learn about a tote bag. And I looked. You can’t buy the bag on the bookstore’s website.
Humans are vulnerable to misinformation because we’re social learners. Meanwhile, the U.S. military is working on a response to misinformation operations.
The inaugural ASEAN-US Maritime Exercise (the US Navy plus ships from southeastern Asian countries) is totally not meant to send a message to China about the “contested” South China Sea, so don’t let that worry you.
Here’s why male tennis players are pickier with their balls than women are.
You know that common depiction of evolution starting with a chimp and progressing through various iterations, finally becoming a human? That’s wrong, and here’s why.
Vanity Fair did a great analysis of how the President watches TV, and you gotta read it.
You didn’t laugh at the thing about men being pickier with their balls, did you? Frankly, I expected more from you. Just because men don’t like their balls to be fuzzy… Now, come on!
Variety: “The number of women in speaking roles on television hit a new high in 2018-2019, as did the number of women working behind the camera.”
Walmart’s decision to take anti-gun stands is actually in line with a majority of Republicans. The New Republic, though, doubts that CEOs are the new politicians.
OK, the world’s most-spoken word, has an odd history.
Most American adults trust law enforcement to use facial recognition ethically, more so in fact than they trust tech companies or advertising agencies.
Recent studies indicate: Squirrels eavesdrop on birds. Languages convey information at the same rate. Mass shootings in the previous year result in 115 percent more laws loosening gun restrictions in Republican-controlled states.
News nerds: The media is overcorrecting from the Great Recession and from 2016. Most (85 percent) of female journalists feel unsafe working alone in the field.
Last word: The great Dan Zak watched all seven hours of the climate town halls so you don’t have to, and by now we know to read anything he writes, yes? Same goes for Monica Hesse, who has decoded Ivanka abroad.
What I’m watching
I saw My Favorite Shape by Julio Torres on HBO a month or so ago, and I can’t stop thinking about what a weird, dear piece it is. It’s avant garde yet accessible, weird but friendly. It’s a whole mood.
What I’m listening to
Midland, a country band from just outside of Austin, is making some spectacular country music. There’s a lot of debate about whether the band is authentic, but damn, that music. Here’s the lead single off their latest album, and yes, that is Dennis Quaid in the video. Not coincidentally, there is debate about whether Quaid is a real Texan.
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