We Get Letters
Apparently you all are down to clown
First, you may have noticed that I changed the name of this newsletter. The old name (Behind Frenemy Lines) was taken from a political blog from my partisan punditry days, and this newsletter feels like a different thing, though I’m not sure what it is yet. Hence, The Stanford Newsletter Experiment. Thanks for reading.
Got a lot of responses from Sunday’s newsletter about my musical self-preservation in a time of political cholera. Let’s get to it.
S.R. offered this poem in response to my conundrum.
The Word
– Tony HoaglandDown near the bottom
of the crossed-out list
of things you have to do today,between “green thread”
and “broccoli” you find
that you have penciled “sunlight.”Resting on the page, the word
is beautiful, it touches you
as if you had a friendand sunlight were a present
he had sent you from some place distant
as this morning—to cheer you up,and to remind you that,
among your duties, pleasure
is a thingthat also needs accomplishing.
Do you remember?
that time and light are kindsof love, and love
is no less practical
than a coffee grinderor a safe spare tire?
Tomorrow you may be utterly
without a cluebut today you get a telegram,
from the heart in exile
proclaiming that the kingdomstill exists,
the king and queen alive,
still speaking to their children,—to any one among them
who can find the time,
to sit out in the sun and listen.
S.O. sends the most incredibly thoughtful responses every week, and I don’t know if he knows how important this correspondence is to me.
I got very caught up, when reading this on this passage.
Seeking out what is good in this world feels like a betrayal to those in the fight as well as to those who sleep in cages under metallic blankets crying for their mothers, to the staggeringly high number of people in this boom town who go to bed hungry, to the children who are given “The Talk” about how not to get murdered by the police. What right do I have to tell you that Gloria Gaynor has put out a gospel album that sounds fresh? (Seriously, listen to “Back on Top.”) The respite of joy that a good chord progression can provide me feels like the worst indulgence when state legislatures are LARPing The Handmaid’s Tale.
I'm gonna need to take some time to think and process this. My initial thought is this:
The children in cages, the people who are hungry, the victims of police violence, they are not going to be better off because you deny yourself the joy of music. They are going to be better off because of the work that you do for them. As people who want to make the world better and who are lucky that the world is so often good to us, our job isn't to make it less good for ourselves. It's to make it better for others.
Back before Obergefell V. Hodges, I remember talking to well-meaning straight people who would talk about how they refused to get married until everyone could. It was a well-meaning gesture, but I always thought, "Great. So now, in addition to not being able to get married myself, i get to carry around the fact that I am the reason that you have less happiness." That denial of happiness didn't help me. A donation to the cause would have helped. Writing to a senator would have helped. Talking to a loved one on the other side of the issue would have helped. Denying their own happiness didn't help me. What it did do was make my pain about them. It was more about signalling their virtue than helping me, and it made me think about how often I do things like that in my own life.
I often ask myself what right I have to have the amount of happiness that I do in a world that is so full of pain. And the answer is that I don't have any right to it. None. But I have it anyway. And that comes with a responsibility to do what I can to make the world better for people who don't have it, but it doesn't come with a responsibility to deny that happiness.
Working in the field I do, I've seen so many incredible people who are so focused on the pain of others that they burn themselves out and become ineffective advocates for kids. They become tired. They become jaded. They decide to quit working with neglected and abused children and become realtors, promising themselves that they will donate 5% of their proceeds to the cause. Compassion fatigue is a real thing. Secondary trauma is a real thing. We have to take care of ourselves as we work to make the world better, because it makes us better at doing that work. The fact that other people don't get to take those breaks because the world is so unbelievably broken is part of the problem and part of the reason that we need to do what we can to lock arms with them and lift them up. It isn't a condition for us to emulate.
Joy and laughter aren't just an antidote to fear, like Colbert said. They are healing. They are recharging. They allow us to do the work. And we need to be charged up enough to do the work, because the people who are putting children in cages are not being exhausted by the misery. They aren't wringing their hands worried about what right they have to experience joy. They are sleeping comfortably on expensive sheets and waking up every morning refreshed and ready to wreak new havoc. So, I say read the entertainment section. Listen to the music. Find joy and create joy wherever you can, because the world needs more joy not less.
And then do the work. Make the donations. Have the difficult conversations. Volunteer. Call your congress people. Organize. Fundraise. Do whatever you can. Just do the work. Then recharge your batteries and start all over.
D.G. told me to “hunt the good stuff.”
In another life, when I used to deploy to really unpleasant places for months at a time, we used to have a saying, "hunt the good stuff." The idea being when the whole world around you is a wretched pile of burning shit you need to look for the little stuff that makes it bearable. Smiling kids playing with a soccer ball, 30 uninterrupted minutes with your iPod, the smell of soap wafting up in the steam of a hot shower that drowns out the funk of reality just beyond the bathroom door. We took solace in video games, pictures of our friends and family, the occasional phone call home. In a place where everything is bombed out and smells of a mixture that is equal parts death, charred metal, and an open sewer, it becomes even more necessary to take a knee, catch your breath, and "hunt the good stuff." It's what gives you the ability to push through and keep fighting. The ones that don't learn how to occasionally look away end up burnt out at best and permanently broken inside at worst. So, as long as your hunting for the good stuff doesn't devolve into escapism there's no reason to feel guilty by distractions. I'd argue its very possible man first created beautiful things because the world was tough and cruel and sucked so much that it needed beautiful things to make it bearable. So, listen to the songs, watch the movies, clink glasses with your friends, and enjoy the quiet of a Sunday morning with your family. The war will continue to rage without you for a few minutes. There is always more work to do but you can't do it if you're broken inside. Hunt the good stuff.
N.R. says he’s going through the same struggle I am:
God, this one was so good. As a straight white dude, I find myself often feeling the way you described: wondering if it's worth it to save a culture I currently feel guilting enjoying. And then I remember that I live in a body that's never known the true extent of American oppression, and I look at those who don't look like me who have lived under it for this country's entire history and I know I owe it to them to keep going and to enjoy and learn from this culture we're all creating so we can make our country's legal and political future better together. That may all be a bit trite, but it's one thing that gets me up in the morning, outside of any new music Anderson .Paak, Lizzo, or Gary Clark Jr. may have put out, you know? Happy Monday!
C.H. sent this while traveling for work in Italy:
Really appreciated this. I often feel frustrated by the need to disengage, especially b/c it's hard to do so in ways that feel genuinely restorative. I'm trying to renew my old passions for literature (hard to not prioritize nonfiction, aka work-reading), art (handlettering/gallery hopping/learning typography), and sports, but too often it's such an uphill battle that I just zone out on Netflix again. Which... I mean, we're in a Golden Age of tv, so I'm not unhappy. But I need to do better.
All of which is to say, I appreciate you giving voice to this need and to its complexities. It's nice to not feel alone w/ either that desire or the ethical tension of what it means when we do it. Looking forward to following up on your recs, too!
E.J. checks in with a practical solution.
you should create a shareable Spotify play list... it'll save the wear and tear on my mouse of copy/pasting.
I’m an iTunes guy, but I’m open to suggestion if anyone else thinks this is a good idea.
And K.B. live-texted while reading it on Sunday morning:
TOURISM IS EXPLODING I LOVE IT
And then:
Oh haha it’s so funny you included that GPS article because I read it and thought to myself this is something I would expect to see linked in Jason’s newsletter
What I’m reading
Monica Hesse wrote about Kylie Jenner’s “Handmaid’s Tale”-themed birthday party and landed the column.
Ann Hornaday asks what happened to sex scenes in movies.
The Southern Poverty Law Center now tracks “male supremacy” as a hate category because it “amounts to a new feeder network for white supremacy and neo-Nazi groups.”
My mom always taught me that cursing was a sign of a limited vocabulary. Turns out, the opposite is true.
How you frame tax breaks such as the mortgage interest tax deduction makes no difference; “citizens favor expanding benefits via the tax code — even when it’s clear that higher-income households will get more of those benefits.”
What Americans say they want the news to cover is not what news they actually read — except when it comes to foreign policy and religion.
It’s not just you and your friends who are talking about abortion these days. It’s everybody.
Holy cow! They’re coming up with a pill to treat breast cancer. No more chemo!
Trump is losing to all comers in the latest Quinnipiac poll, even Cory Booker, whom I keep forgetting is running.
Apparently the falling price of coffee is contributing to the migrant crisis.
Kraft is rebranding ranch dressing as “salad frosting.” You know, for the kids.
Fish get their hearts broken, too.
Did you know 424 people competed virtually in the New York City Marathon? Me neither.
What I’m watching
The Chi is going off the rails with its imitation of a criminal investigation. Pity. Not sure I’ve ever enjoyed watching a movie as much as HBO’s Deadwood. Consider this fan serviced. And thanks to my friend Glen for vouching for Amazon’s Fleabag, which was like an onion: It had layers, made you cry when you cut into it, and turned sweet when you applied enough heat. Mom, DO NOT WATCH THIS. I’m done with Season 1 and starting the second season next week.
But what I want you all to go buy tickets to is Booksmart, the surprising directorial debut from Olivia Wilde. Yes, that Olivia Wilde. It’s the first teen movie I’ve ever seen where the point of the gay characters wasn’t to be gay. It’s the first teen movie I’ve seen where I felt like I was inside a female friendship. Olivia Wilde chose songs for the soundtrack that make me suspect she is far cooler than we ever gave her credit for, and she got Dan the Automator to score the movie. My sons vouched for the authenticity of the depiction of teen life, and I laughed my can off.
What I’m listening to
David Berman, late of the Silver Jews and now of Purple Mountains, sounds like a real trip. The band’s first album is out next month, and if the first single (“All My Happiness is Gone”) is any indication it’s gonna be a good one.
What do you think of today's email? I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback. I might even put ‘em in the newsletter if I don’t steal it outright.
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