The Next
Did I ever tell you about the time my wife was (almost) an astronaut?
This week my friend Bishop Garrison writes about what we’re all doing — getting by by getting by. And the biggest Springsteen fan I know, Bob Doyle, has come up with the essential Bruce Springsteen pandemic playlist. And as always, we remember some whom we’ve lost, recommend some great things to read, watch (David Simon is back with The Plot Against America!!!) and listen to.
But first, did I ever tell you about the time my wife was (almost) an astronaut? It’s a long story worthy of its own letter, but long story short, she volunteered for a one-way trip to Mars, and I supported her in a Texas Monthly essay that drew the spotlight onto her. Sonia’s brand of hopepunk exploration got outsized media attention. The headline in Time was “Why I’m Volunteering to Die on Mars.” A BBC announcer didn’t just ask about our sex life but, when we demurred, asked an awkward follow up. Kelly Ripa told Meryl Streep that she should play Sonia in a movie. Larry Wilmore said of my brilliant and brave wife, who is humanity at its most export quality, “I hated her every second she was on my show.”
Larry’s show got cancelled because viewers apparently felt the same about him, and the Mars plans fell apart when the organization got swindled on the Dutch stock exchange, which apparently exists. Now, her brief flirtation with another planet is a memory of my imagination. I imagined her getting along with a small crew as they colonize another planet, her bounding along in a space suit in Mars’ lighter gravity, her becoming the example to every earthling about humanity’s potential. I had no trouble picturing me cutting the ribbon at the Sonia Van Meter Elementary School for Adventurous Girls. The only thing I had trouble conjuring was how she would survive the seven-month-long flight to Mars. Would they have to put her into a deep sleep? How could they store enough food?
Now I know, because we’re all on a spaceship, except this one isn’t going 104 million miles to another planet. We’re traveling not through space but time. We entered our vessels eight weeks ago and hope to disembark onto a safer planet. We hoped for jet packs and a vaccine, but I’m beginning to make my peace that I might have to make do on ubiquitous testing and new social conventions of social distancing, bowing instead of shaking hands, and manic hand-washing.
There’s no question that our leadership failed us, but so did our language. We went from warning to processing so quickly that the lexicon we have for public trauma couldn’t adjust quickly enough. Never again. Never forget. Boston strong. Public displays of bravado and defiance failed us. All too slowly, Americans adopted slogans more suited to a natural disaster. Retreat from danger and forbearance became our frameworks. Turn around, don’t drown. Keep calm and carry on.
I am more conscious of what I do with time than in the Before Times. I tell my sons, one taking final college exams in that bedroom, the other taking an AP U.S. History exam in the other bedroom, that they will remember what they make of this time, or rather our passage through it. They could put themselves into deep sleeps, anesthetizing themselves with snacks and screens, or they could grow stronger in seclusion. We are all refugees in humanity’s mass digital migration. Layoffs came this week; I was spared. My sons still have the luxuries of food, shelter from the pandemic, and relative economic security in a depression. No one can take that for granted anymore, but their greatest gift is now time.
I imagine my sons in their quarters as Sonia and I pilot this vessel. We do recon missions to Costco and the liquor store, rewiring social constructs for an uncertain future. I hope my sons are more than occupied. I hope they are curious. There will be no New Normal. We’re headed into a long period in which past trends of change have accellerated. Smart people are planning to reintegrate humans into a more perilous environment than previously existed. But those are only the conditions of the planet we will occupy. How they arrange those desks will not define the course our future takes.
Who we are when we disembark will define the future, The Next, and what we have made of this time will go a long way toward determining whether we can adapt as a habit and evolve on the fly. We are moving from an economy defined by abundance into one likely defined by constant, jagged change. This is the planet we’re moving to, where my sons will grow into adults and reasonably ask themselves the question that existed as hyperbole for their comparatively spoiled parents and grandparents: Is it right to bring a child into this world?
And the answer to that question will to a large extent be answered by what they make of this time we have now, onboard this ship together, traveling through time toward whatever is Next.
Faux Endor
by Bishop Garrison
Bishop Garrison is one of those people idealists think should be running the world. After graduating from West Point in 2002, he served two tours in Iraq with the U.S. Army. After that, he graduated from the William and Mary School of Law and worked in the Obama administration in a variety of national security roles before serving as the Deputy Foreign Policy Adviser on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Bishop has two Bronze Stars, a Meritorious Service Medal, and a Combat Action Badge, as well as the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. I asked him to write something about how he sees the world right now. He took me literally.
***
We Need Bruce Springsteen
by Bob Doyle
That picture above is of Bruce Springsteen crowdsurfing over my friend Bob Doyle, the biggest Springsteen fan I know. He says that now is the time we need Bruce Springsteen. From time to time, Bob, as a way of nourishing his soul and, in some small way, put some points on the board for humanity, likes to share his thoughts about the Boss. Much is demanded of the reader who chooses to walk beside this writing to the bitter end. Bob’ll throw a punch or two, revel in obscure references to the Bruce anthology, and share his thoughts about how Springsteen’s music brings meaning to his life. And because he’s a mensch, Bob did us up a playlist of all the songs referenced herein.
RIP
I would like to pay respect to those we lose along the way. If there is someone you would like to be remembered in future newsletters, please post links to their obituaries in the comments section or email me. Thank you.
How we’re getting through this
Baking ramja
Making espresso tonic
Learning the word “poggers”
Having streets overrun by goats
Having dance parties to Perry Gripp
Going to virtual prom with Michelle Obama
Turning our hands into a digital time machine
Ordering delivery from Michelin-starred restaurants
What I’m reading
Ad Week: “These Brands Are Still Tapping Into Nostalgia for Slavery, Whether You Realize It or Not”
The Atlantic: “The Day the Live Concert Returns,” by Dave Grohl
FT: “Inside Trump’s coronavirus meltdown”
“It is as though we knew for a fact that 9/11 was going to happen for months, did nothing to prepare for it and then shrugged a few days later and said, ‘Oh well, there’s not much we can do about it,’” says Gregg Gonsalves, a public health scholar at Yale University.
The Guardian: “US lockdown protests may have spread virus widely, cellphone data suggests”
Jericho Brown: “Duplex”
Pitchfork: “Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh on the Music That Made Him”
Sosnik: “The Post-Political Realignment Electoral College Map”
U.S. News & World Report: “Songwriters Go Online to Craft the Next Hit Song Remotely”
Vanity Fair: “He Wouldn’t Call Up Obama, Clinton, or Even Bush During This Crisis: Trump’s Cold War With the Former Presidents”
Visual Capitalist: “Zoom is Now Worth More Than the World’s 7 Biggest Airlines”
Vulture: “My Appetites”
WaPo: “How Glen Weldon would spend a perfect day in D.C.”
WaPo: “Korean soccer club apologizes for using sex dolls to fill empty seats”
Got some reading suggestions? Post them in the comments section, and I might include them in the next newsletter. Have a book to promote? Let me know in the comments or email me.
What I’m watching
Glen Weldon loves The Great on Hulu, so you know what that means, right?
The Daily Show explains Obamagate.
Speaking of Obama, did you know Michelle was reading kids stories on PBS?
Alexander Wendt TedTalks about the science of UFOs.
David Simon’s The Plot Against America posits the ludicrous notion that the United States of America could ever elect an America First celebrity as president.
“That’s how this happens – everyone is afraid.”
James Poniewozik makes a great observation in his review in The New York Times about how real Simon (“The Wire,” “Show Me a Hero,” “The Deuce”) makes this seem.
In the 2020 version, Simon draws not a frighteningly different America — as in “The Man in the High Castle” or “The Handmaid’s Tale” — but a chillingly familiar one, both in its echoes of current fears and in its evocation of the past. The opening of “Plot” could be any remembrance of urban life just before World War II.
This alternate history of America won’t make you feel good, but it does, at least for me, make it easier to understand what happens now. I’ll give Poniewozik the final word:
It’s a frog-in-boiling-water situation, and Simon keeps a steady hand on the burner dial, patiently moving through the stages — denial, anger, desperation — of realizing that you are a stranger in your own country. …
[T]he charismatic bigot in the White House is not simply an aberration who can be erased and forgotten like a bad dream. The problem is as much the passions and cynicism that made him possible: the citizens whose prejudice was validated, the officials who got a taste of thugocracy, the society that learned the norms of decent behavior were always optional, the minorities who found that equality is revocable.
Got suggestions? Post them in the comments section, and I might include them in the next newsletter.
What I’m listening to
YouTube’s music app is crazy cool.
MAITA, a band from Portland, just dropped its debut album, Best Wishes, and it’s pretty darn good. The lead single reminds me of dancing in my socks.
The Marsden girls turned me onto Perry Gripp. I’m addicted. The sisters are four and six, but I can’t not.
Got suggestions? Post them in the comments section, and I might include them in the next newsletter.
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