#37: New year, newsletter

Actual updates

So I’ve stopped posting about this newsletter on Twitter; I’ve stopped posting on Twitter at all, not that I really did much at all in the last few years, but it wouldn’t make sense to keep talking about something I care about there now. I still read it, though - plenty of interesting people haven’t given up yet - but I haven’t posted about this there in the last couple months, and instead switched over to posting about it on Instagram, which I have on private.

Since then, the view counts for each post have about halved; I don’t know if my friends just really love clicking through on Twitter in a way they don’t on IG, or if the people making up the difference there were strangers. I do have plenty of followers there I don’t know personally, for reasons I can’t fathom1, few of whom ever interacted with me on any level; are they really that interested? I don’t even always click links from people I know well or have followed forever! Also, if you’re that interested, just subscribe!

God, the spacing on that thing is execrable. Anyway.

So I guess now that I control the visibility of the links I post to just the people I’m friends with on IG2, I’m seeing the true number of views by people I actually know. With that in mind, the drop is less startling - it probably isn’t because I super put off people with whatever I said back in, what, October? Time is fake, but you get my point.

Speaking of time, by this time, I really thought we would be in Vancouver; one piece of the immigration puzzle has come through, but we’re still waiting for the bigger one (I have Hap’s certificate of citizenship in hand now, which came with a helpful note that the oath of citizenship has been changed so that it references Charles instead of QEII). Every winter, I think, well, at least this is the last one I’ll have to spend being this cold, fingers cracking and aching, dashing into the unheated and drafty pantry to grab a pan and running back out so my feet don’t freeze; and every summer I think, well, at least this is the last one I’ll have to spend sweating it out in 90+ degrees with full humidity. So far, I have been wrong every time. I hope so badly it’s going to be this year, if only because I can’t take much more hoping.

But speaking of the state of the weather, it’s backwards. This isn’t a novel or unique observation, but: our winter this year has been unusually mild and snowless, whereas Vancouver has the winter we should be having, with chilly temps and a foot of snow. We’ve had about an inch and a half here, across two separate storms, all told. I’m typing this on New Year’s Day, and it is currently 49°F (9°C), down from a high of 55°F (almost 13°C). That’s Vancouver behavior; I remember spending New Year’s at a friend’s one year when I was home from college, and going on a lovely little stroll3 the next morning where we just needed hoodies. Right now, in Vancouver, it is a little chillier, 7C rather than 9, although it’s forecast to get up to 9 later. See? We’re having their weather. At least they have gone back to also having their weather.

Okay, hard left from casual weather talk4 into art (or even Art) and people-pleasing, inspired by an Instagram post that someone else shared that I sort of identified with. But sort of not. It’s a bit over-the-top, but there’s more than a kernel of truth here. Viz.:

So, okay, right off the bat let’s dispense with the idea that art will “always ruffle feathers.” Some art is inoffensive; that sounds like damning with faint praise, but some stuff isn’t built to ruffle a feather or even make enough of a ripple to be noticed that way. To take this a step further, I don’t think I’m writing something that would “ruffle feathers,” although I suppose it might bother people who would be bothered by rampant and unremarked queerness5. But maybe the idea here is that if your art doesn’t upset anyone, it isn’t Art? That it’s motel room paintings? I can’t evaluate that statement - it might be true, I don’t have enough distance to speak to it. I wrote a song about unionizing the skeleton factory, you know? I wrote a song about a sheep that has a knife. I’m not even sure those are Art, and I wrote them myself.

But there’s definitely something to the “people-pleasers will always struggle to make art because not everybody is going to love it” concept. I’m certainly not without people-pleaser tendencies6, and I’m not just worried that the people whom I love and who love me, for whom I'm really writing this, won't like it (although I do worry that! all the time!). I worry that total strangers who know whereof they speak won't like it.

For instance, I follow some authors I like online, and sometimes they talk about what they do, and more importantly, don't like in the stories they read. Similarly, musical artists I follow who talk about what they do and don't like in, even, their own work. And if that doesn't match up with what I like or what I do, I feel like a fucking asshole! Look at this idiot, liking the albums their own creators hate. Look at this chump, writing exactly what this one author doesn't like. They’re never going to read my book - odds are, no one is, but even if it sees daylight, it's not going to set the world on fire enough for these lights of the literary scene to take notice. So why am I worried? Why do I have to make art that checks all the boxes for someone who will never know it exists?

More important that it checks the boxes for my friends and loved ones; I know there are plenty of people for whom it doesn't, already, and I’m keeping it together about that as best I can, but it’s so hard not to want to change it into something else, something that will make more people love it, something that is all things to all people. I know that's a dangerous direction to go - I know that is the direction of making sauceless pap - but I can see why that's seductive! Imagine if you made something and people loved it. Imagine if, by extension, people loved you, because you made the thing that made them happy. Imagine if you had finally earned your validity, your right to exist as an artist or as anything, by making enough people happy. Sure, define the group of people you need to please as strictly as you need to, but who isn’t trying to accomplish this very thing, and if you’re not, what are your secrets?

This is a stupid thing to worry about as a person of my age. I’m at the age now where I’m “a person of my age,” by the way; I’m solidly middle-aged now, which is disconcerting because I don’t act like it, except for all the ways in which I do. But one thing I’m realizing is that getting older means less about my body falling apart (which it is, I guess, but I don’t care very much), and more about realizing all the things that have passed me by. Ships that have sailed, things I would have had to have done in my 20s or even 30s, things I would have to have to have done when I was single or things I would have needed to have done when I was a different person.

This was precipitated by a book I just read - I was going to say, the last book I read before this one, but I actually just finished that one and have moved on to another, which I’ll talk about in its turn. But the earlier one was Sabrina Imbler’s How Far the Light Reaches, which is in the category of “nonfiction books with sex in them”7, because while it is about various fascinating sea creatures, each sea creature is linked to a story from or exploration of a facet of the author's life.

All of it is wonderful, and I recommend it, but one of the essays is specifically about their visits to, and feelings around, a particular queer beach. I read this chapter on the train home, and then I got on the bus to complete my journey, and nearly missed my stop from feeling sad and looking at the sunset. And that’s silly and affected, but the point is that this lovely chapter bummed me out so much that I got lost in thoughts about what could have been, or what couldn’t have been but it would have been nice if it did, to the point that I nearly rode halfway out of my neighborhood without noticing.

What got me so glum about an essay that was, honestly, quite joyous - a celebration of queer community? Envy, I guess8. It's not that I don't have any queer community; I do, but it's pretty much contained within a cluster of group texts - it isn't a place where I'm going to run into the ex of my ex. It isn't a place where I'm going to run into anyone I don't already know, actually, which certainly has its upsides. In fact, the Queer Group Text Network is a vital part of my life, occasionally a lifeline, and certainly where I spend more time every day than I truly ought to (I do have, for instance, a job), and I wouldn't trade them for the world, but I wish I could also be supplementing them with this other type of community. I've missed this particular boat; I can't do any of these things anymore since I'm not the right age for it, I'm not the right singleness level for it, and when I was either of those things9, I didn't know I needed it. But I did. I do.

On top of that, I’m facing losing what community I have been able to find by moving three time zones away; of course a group text knows no boundaries of geography, but being offset in time, and simply never seeing each other, are recipes for friendships dwindling. So I’m mentally preparing for that eventuality, and on top of that, I’ll have to start over finding my people and growing those friendships once I’m back in the old homeland. I was so pre-emptively lonely, reading that queer beach tale, that I started googling whether Wreck Beach, Vancouver’s famed clothing-optional beach, has any areas with a similar vibe. I mean, a nude beach at the bottom of a cliff sounds tailor-made for the purpose, surely? (Per the internet, there is a gay section, for the gents, but nothing seems to be codified for anyone else) It isn’t that I’m particularly eager to get naked around a bunch of like-minded strangers, but the privacy and tolerance for all sorts of bodies that Wreck is known for seems like the right atmosphere. Also, it’s beautiful; I love its beauty most in the winter when no one’s there except maybe a couple guys fishing off the rocks by the old gun emplacements, and it’s all fog and rocks and trees.

So, where does this leave me? Same place as ever, I guess; wistful, worried, lonesome even in a crowd, and dreaming of sitting on a rock looking at the sea. Some things never change.

What am I reading

Well, what I’m actually reading now, after all that, is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I’m a little behind today, because suddenly you start back to work and can’t casually read a few pages with your tea, so I’ve barely gotten started - only 50 pages in so far. I got this book (well, I asked my mom for this book when she wanted to get me a Christmas present) because of the nonstop promotion of it I’m seeing from Hunter Harris across all forms of media. The thing is, she says it’s fantastic, and she shares any posts people make about how good it is where they tag her, but - unless she’s said more in the paid issues of her newsletter - she hasn’t said anything about it beyond that it’s good and everyone should read it (unless she did, and I missed it?).

So that’s how I went in: I deliberately avoided reading the jacket copy and blurred my eyes as I scrolled past it on best-of-the-year lists, of which it is on several. I’m not sure this was necessary unless it gets really nutty and twisty, but even if it’s just a straightforward yarn about two people and also video games (which is as much info as I had and therefore as much info as I’m giving you), it’s already really good. Finely drawn emotions, a keen remembrance of what it’s like to be a kid and how kids understand and misunderstand things, nerd shit.

I hope this book doesn’t break my streak of Books With Medium-to-Heavy Queer Content so quickly this year (I’m counting the book I referred to above as being this year, because I finished it this year, and if that means I just read the last 5 pages in 2023, that’s none of my business). So far, so not gay, but again, I’m only 50 pages in. There’s still time to be gay!! This is also my reminder to everyone in a general sense. Happy 2023, there’s still time to be gay.

Some links

Speaking of “[still] time to be gay”!! I assume this will mainly be used by nonbinary competitors since unless international-level rules also get changed, it wouldn’t help a team of, say, two women to compete together domestically all year and then have to either change partners right before going off to an international event, or not qualify for the international event at all if their same-sex skates don’t count. So first of all let’s see more of this at a higher level. But maybe some skaters who aren’t at a proficiency level yet where they would expect to go to an international event can make use of this, and I can get to see men lifting each other and women throwing each other around and all sorts of romantic programs of a queer nature. Sportsgay content, let’s go! Skate Canada Changes Ice Dance and Pairs Rules to Allow Any 2 Skaters to Compete Together at Domestic Events

I feel like every other issue I’ve got another ART SURPRISE article. Well, here’s this month’s! For 158 Years, a Cézanne Self-Portrait Hid Behind a Still Life of Bread and Eggs

Long soup: The “Perpetual Broths” That Simmer for Decades

Speaking of soup, etc., I bet you had no idea that the history of the slow cooker was interesting. Well it is!! Life in the Slow Lane

Do not tell me, do not tell me that you aren’t at least a bit captivated by the incredibly tumultuous, sexy, on-and-off-and-back-on-again love story of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. They got condemned by the Vatican for “erotic vagrancy”! I mean, do your best not to have affairs and so on, but if you’re going to have one, go all-in and be an erotic vagrant. The Incredible Story of How Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton Began Hollywood's Most Famous Affair

Even from the headline you can tell that this is going to be a ride, but what it doesn’t include, for some reason, is that it also involves a polygamous fundamentalist Mormon sect? There is a LOT going on here. Bleeding the Beast: Crooked Cops, an Armenian Mob Boss, a $500M Scam and an Unlikely Love Story

RED ALERT STOP THE PRESSES THERE’S A GOTH TOONIE?!?! (it’s a funeral version for Queen Elizabeth’s death; effectively the whole toonie is become a black armband, but that’s not as fun as GOTH TOONIE) People Are Obsessed with Canada’s New Goth Toonie

I’m sure you just assumed that competitive bodybuilding was terrible for the health of the participants, like I did, but if you’d like ample proof of both how high-risk the sport is, how little oversight there is in terms of whether competitors are doing anything insanely dangerous to their health, and whether anyone seems to care about these athletes, this article breaks it all down: Dying to Compete

Also a terrible, sad story; the fact that there is an opioid epidemic is not news but looking at the way these deaths are part of chain reactions that just core out families and communities is a different and affecting way to look at it. Drugs Killed 8 Friends, One by One, in a Tragedy Seen Across the US

This is an article by a scientist about how the human brain experiences spiritual connections and other seemingly unquantifiable events, and it’s interesting throughout but at the very beginning he asks a brain researcher whether he can look at two brains and predict whether their owners will fall in love, and I think that’s a fascinating idea. Is that because I’m a big sop in general and want to read about love and so on? I mean, probably. The Transcendent Brain

Of course I watched Andor; I’m a reliable nerd and I’m going to watch a Star Wars show. But in case you weren’t already aware, it’s great and really worth watching even without the link to the larger storyline and mythology. It spends a lot of time exploring how empires are perpetuated by armies of mid-level functionaries Just Doing Their Jobs, much more than overt and dramatic acts of evil, and how true believers on any side are likely to wind up dead. The prison-industrial system (literally!) is a major component. The actress who played The Waif in GoT is in it, and the character of Cassian Andor is, hilariously to me, understood by everyone to be a bit of a slut. But this isn’t about that; it’s about the costumes specifically, which were tremendous. There’s a color throughline from Andor’s childhood on one planet to his adult life on another! That’s attention to detail! And my god, the absolute CRISPNESS of the line from Imperial bad guy Dedra Meero’s jacket through to her pants, it looks like a single garment. I’m so glad someone wrote an article about it; the costumes were spectacular. Dressing the Galaxy: Designer Michael Wilkinson Defines the Look of Andor’s Costumes

And, finally, airport curling! You Can Now Go Curling on the Tarmac at This NYC Airport - Here’s How

Tunes I’ve been listening to lately

Sometimes when your little optical drive gets all fucky, you wind up listening to the first few songs on an album a bunch of times over. Fortunately they’re good. I liked the earlier, more rockin’-er stuff as well, but when Matthew Good Band got all expansive and cinematic on their final album, it really took things to an interesting place that I enjoyed. Be advised, this isn’t a video, it’s just a still photo.

I’ve known this song for years and years, and I’ve never known the name (or at least, never known the right name) until I got the album sometime recently. Like, last year level of recently.

Listen, it’s the start of the year, I’m learning how to be a person again after having a few days off, and I’m not making any effort in the tunes department other than “it’s good.” It’s good. You know that. Consider this your reminder, and enjoy.

This month’s top 5: Song references I make

One thing I’ve learned since having a kid is that I have a reference from a song for every occasion. So here are the top 5 songs I’ll start breaking into when necessary10. This is going to inflate this year's playlist, I think, and so much the better.

1. Any time Hap is trying to balance on something (more often than you’d think!) I start singing the first lines of “Avalanche” by Matthew Good: “One foot in front of the other…”

2. Hap got a snakes and ladders game for Christmas and has been moderately obsessed with it - I’m so glad to have a board games kid, as a former board games kid myself who could never get the rest of my family to play with me11 - but he has absolutely terrible luck at it. This is a bummer for him but it does mean I get to sing the backups from Neko Case's "Bad Luck" relatively often.

3. The reason Hap got hooked on The Wizard of Oz a year ago is because every time he’s why-ing me to death, I just let loose with a “because because because because becaaaaauuuuse…” and one day about that time I decided to show him where the song actually came from, and the rest is history. So here it is.

4. Every time there’s one more day until something, I become very annoying singing the last line of “One Day More” from Les Miserables (which is my own personal Formative Musical; what’s yours?) - “One more day! One more dawn! ONNNNNEEE DAAAAYYY MOOOOOORE!!!” - and it’s a miracle no one has told me to shut up yet. My new party trick12 is to sing the whole song and try to make all the different characters in it sound distinct. God knows I listened to the Broadway cast recording enough times as a kid that I have everyone's little mannerisms memorized.

5. Whenever I have occasion to refer to Matt as being contractually-obligated to like me, or making the same joke about other married couples, I must reference The Tossers’ “Breandan O Beachain”: “Marriage is a contract, marriage is a solemn pact…” - although following it up with the next line (“Love is not a contract, it’s really not the same”) kind of kicks a hole in the bit and it’s hard to leave it off. I also whip this one out whenever we would go to The Behan, a great little pub near where we used to live in JP, not that we've gone in years. But it's also right next door to the tattoo shop and that just reminds me that I have to email them about an idea that I’ve been sitting on.

Honorable mentions: Further to the board game kid content, we also play Candy Land semi-often, which means I frequently have a good reason to announce "Queen Frostine eleventeen" from the Moldy Peaches' “I Forgot” (sometimes I add the "...marzipan" at the end since it sounds unbalanced without it, although marzipan is, in actuality, gross). The funny thing is that I was in the middle of listening to Upset’s “Queen Frosteen” when I was starting to write this, and that never comes to mind in the situation (but there it is anyway).

Also, anytime Hap is acting a little spoiled about something, I used to sing him “I Want It Now” from Willy Wonka (original recipe, please), but then he got so obsessed with it that he needed it to be played at bedtime. So that’s gotten a bit of a rest lately.

Okay! Record-length issue nearly over! May your 2023 be rewarding, may you do something brave and have it work out, and may at least one of your dreams come true! But like, a good one. Not that one where you’re stuck in your childhood home but it’s all wrong for some reason. BYE!!