2.3.2022

The 33 Project

Morning! Things are chugging along over here - nothing all that exciting to report. I’ve been enjoying catching up on the seemingly endless supply of good writing from substacks and outlets and Jami Attenberg’s memoir, which is excellent. On to this week’s recs.

1/ The Believer delivered two incredible, unrelated (but maybe kind of related?) postings recently that I want to share. The first is this interview with Andrew Garfield. His portrayal of Jonathan Larson in tick, tick…Boom! is so perfect there’s really not much else to say. In this interview he talks about his family and his outlook on things and it’s just a lovely profile of an artist working at the top of his game.

Here’s a particularly meaningful passage:

I think about a profound moment when my mom was sick with cancer. I was struggling with it, and before she passed, I was, like any person, resistant and angry and having terrible anxiety about it and what it meant and where it was leading. It was a really hard thing to accept, of course. And it still is. I still find it hard to accept that she’s no longer here.

But I remember I was walking along—I was on Fire Island, in New York, prepping for tick, tick… Boom! or Tammy Faye, and I had to take a break because I had this knot in my chest and I just couldn’t get rid of it.

I went for a walk on the beach. The sun was setting and it was freezing. I found I needed to jump, so I just jumped into the ocean. And it’s funny: as soon as my full body and head were submerged, it was like I got the medicine, and my chest released, and I let it all go. My interpretation of that moment was that it was the wisdom of nature, the wisdom of the earth, the wisdom of the ocean letting me know, Hey. Yeah, it’s hard, it’s horrible. I’m not taking away this unique pain you’re feeling, but just so you know, us out here, us water molecules—we’ve been seeing this for millennia. And actually, this is the best-case scenario for you to lose her, rather than for her to lose you. This is a much better situation.

And, again, my ego was holding on; my ego thought I knew better. My ego said, No, this doesn’t make sense. No, no, no, it should be this way; it should be that way. But actually it took the ocean, the greater opponent, to just hold me under and say, It’s really horrible. And sons have been losing their mothers for thousands and thousands of years, and they will continue to, and you’ve just been initiated into that awareness and into that reality. Some illusion has been lifted. You’re in a realer version of the world now, and it’s painful.

The second from The Believer is this excellent piece of experimental writing. In Ghosts, Vauhini Vara turned to the weird magic of AI to help tell the story of her sister’s death. It’s a fascinating piece on grief and words and how we tell stories. She starts with giving the AI very little information, then reveals more and more over the course of six postings, and in doing so articulates her experience with more clarity and depth. It’s very touching. Also, maybe, a little scary.

2/ I’ve been loving this category of YouTube videos where architects or interior designers take a sample space and render a much better, more design forward version. This was a fun example of just that.

Bonus: Also, EmilyRayna on TikTok does wonderful makeover content.

3/ Jeanette Winterson, My Therapist, and Me is a real deep cut for my fellow lesbian writers. It involves therapy, a book of cheap lesbian books, Ani DiFranco, some self-realizations, and lots of teenage feelings. Also I stan Jeanette Winterson till death, obviously.

Ok, that’s all for this week. Back to the grind. As always, thank you for reading and feel free to share with anyone you think may be interested. Have a great Thursday.