The fire come through me now
ISSUES #4
letter from the editor
While rereading last month’s installment, it hit me that each of these is a reflection of where my head is at at the moment I’m hitting publish. Which… of course, duh. Intellectually, I understand this. Every periodical reflects its period. I just hadn’t really considered how much it also reflects its editor.
On the surface (which was the only level I had considered) this project is about trying to understand the world now through the lens of the world before. How we got here. I’ve said it before but the internet is fickle, collective memory shifts. An old opinion column (or better yet, advertisement) timestamps a perspective like a handprint in cement, permanent. At Issues, we look back to notice patterns.
All of this is to say I wanted to avoid writing about myself. But apparently, substack is not the place you go to avoid writing about yourself. I thought I was writing to understand what I’d been reading. In reality, writing has allowed me to process my own thoughts.
Number four (4) has been tough to compile because no single theme (thought?) became the obvious choice. Spent a lot of the past six or so weeks panning for gold through a scattered media diet. An abbreviated list is below:
Joan Didion’s best-selling, National-Book-Award-winning account of grief and temporary insanity, The Year of Magical Thinking. It got me thinking about the warping nature of memory and inspired me to improve my own heart health.
Earl Sweatshirt’s 24-minute feast of growth, acceptance, and joy, Live Laugh Love. His accompanying media blitz (on NYT, Apple Music, and Big Biz) was full of nuggets of wisdom and hilarious insight, just like the album itself. This guy puts his heart on his sleeve, and arm all in the thing like Vince Carter. Ten years ago he released an album called I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, and here he is looking healthy in his 30s talking fatherhood and self-improvement. Good stuff.
Spike Lee’s latest joint about a rich old guy in a pickle, Highest 2 Lowest. I have never seen Kurosawa’s original, so I don’t know how much of the character’s stubbornness and rebellion against a world that’s moving on without him was from Spike’s direction. As someone who feels old but is in fact still young, this movie felt like an unintentional cautionary tale.
The poetic character lore at the bottom of Pokemon cards.
During my search to find meaning and stave off boredom I’ve also been on a steady diet of chit-chat podcasts. Listening to these conversational shows feels a little like eavesdropping in a cafe, so ultimately I think it’s probably not a good habit because we should be eavesdropping in cafes more. But in times of need, it can be incredibly helpful to listen to the conversations of people you admire. To that end, New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck talks self-help books and finding your line style.
What I’m seeking right now isn’t any one mood - it’s balance. My astrology girlies will say “that’s because you’re a libra” and unfortunately I cannot disagree. I see both sides like Chanel. But balance to me is a see-saw rather than scales. No need to focus too hard on equilibrium, just make sure you push back up when you get to the bottom.
~ pat
ISSUE 4
It’s really all about balance. Take the good with the bad, ups and downs, balls and strikes, grief and joy. This issue contains accounts of loneliness and reminders how to fight it. It includes hard truths and simple imaginations. Life is never just one thing.
Old and new. There’s words of encouragement from Oprah in the year 2000, a biblical cartoon to remind us that sadness arrives at moments of change, and tips from The Dude himself on how to fight anxiety and stay zen.
The rest of the articles included are from this year, and they all speak to the same creep of discontent. Derek Thompson in an Atlantic article from February takes a deep dive into the root causes of the unsocial living of modern life (spoiler: the culprits were television and automobiles). In March The New York Times Magazine put out The Happiness Issue, and through explosive bright colors, enormous fonts, and quirky portraits virtually begged its readership to interact with other people. Men’s Health in May explained to its “optimize myself” audience why even they are unhappy: not enough silence, not enough grief, not enough time, not enough friends.
We really are all in this issue together.
Read if you need a pick me up / notice you’re lacking some good old fashioned human connection / live alone / don’t know how to emerge / like talking to strangers / hate talking to strangers / want to infuse your life with some whimsy / wonder how the Dude abides
Huge shouts list this month. Shouts to anyone that has subscribed to this or tolerated a conversation with me about it in real life, thank you. Shouts to James for hyping me and this project up in the world, to his friend Eric for the suggestion of reaching out to people because you never know, to Devon for the pity party, to Art for sharing wisdom, to Jim for sharing your Pokemon cards, to Brittany for identifying me as a yapper, to everyone who’s put up with my yapping. I’m lifted by the people I’m surrounded by, can’t recommend it highly enough. Shouts to binder clips of all sizes.
