When you look up at the stars the more you see the more you see; at first it may seem like there are no stars you can see but once you see one you see two three four maybe five. Don’t look away from what looks like a blank sky before giving your eyes time to adjust.
The heart is unreliable, the head is unreliable, you’re screwed either way, but the heart is usually more fun to follow around.
(Listening and following are two different things)
(Everything is fun until it’s not)
I lost my headphones for a week.
I love music a lot, I always have, but I have recently felt much less connected to music than I used to—I listen to music, and I love it, but I have not really been following what is happening with music at the moment. When asked if I’ve heard a new album, the answer is usually know. I realized that most of my time spent exploring new music was in transportation, while on the subway or walking down the street. But I lost my headphones for a week.
When I lost my headphones for a week, I realized how much I enjoyed not using them. I enjoyed hearing my surroundings rather than creating my own world. I still listen to music, but I have lost a lot of my discovery time. For that reason, this has been a year of solidified favorites on repeat—remembering, performing, listening as a collective experience. These are some of my all-time favorites. And there are also some songs that remind me of great memories with great friends.
advice, lessons, etc
Quality over convenience is my motto for 2023. Convenience is neutering, desensitizing.
Humility is vital.
Anxiety is not a feeling, it’s a state. It’s a neutralizing state where anxiety fills up the spaces where feelings should be.
“Home is anywhere you hang your head.”
I once told a friend I need a breath of fresh air and they informed me that there is a red panda at Prospect Park Zoo.
Reminders aren’t necessarily advice but the advice is built into the reminder. Nobody reminds you of what you seem to remember, so the advice in a reminder is Remember This.
I moved my things into a new apartment in April. I sat down to read Ecritis on the sofa because I needed a break. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a cockroach, and started beating it with the book. Lacan might be the only thing in the world that can kill a cockroach… but even then, it takes a few whacks.
“It’s impossible to trust someone who won’t show you what their vices are.”
“Practical exigencies of existence are usually aesthetic crises in disguise.”
“We should bring back the algonquin round table.”
“We all own the rights to Shakespeare.”
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
Re-read old letters.
We have made plenty of mistakes. Too many to count.
Missing someone is a good feeling to sit with.
Go see a movie.
Once I went to IFC and after the movie I noticed that the food truck on West Third and Sixth Ave has fried calamari. I noticed this because I overheard somebody on the corner say "nobody in their right mind should eat calamari that's sold out of a truck.”
Accept that things are the way that they are, at least enough to want to stay alive.
‘Directionless’ is its own direction, in a way. Sometimes a bad way, sometimes a great way.
I embrace the extremes of things, I enjoy bouncing and floating and flying back and forth between extreme pain and pleasure, extreme awakeness and exhaustion—would I be better off settling into a consistent in-between? (I don’t think so)
Me too.
I may feel a bit directionless but at least I know not to eat fried calamari from a food truck.
This year I wrote a play
I was also in some plays
I acted in 6 different plays this past year, which is of crazy to think about. Lots of lines in my head.
It’s funny, when I wrote and directed my own play I was asked if I felt more power as a creator than a performer. I didn’t really think about it like that at all. But when I thought about it I realized I don’t feel more powerful at all. If anything, in live performance, it is unavoidably the performers’ show in that moment. But I think it is a flawed premise anyways, to think about roles in a creative process in terms of power. None of it is power anyways, none of it is important enough to involve power (which is what makes it beautiful).
Matt & I made a Kickstarter for our 2023 season. You can support here.
Imagine how good life would feel if we experienced a moment as it is happening in the same way that we cherish it as a memory
Out: Exclusive events, microwaves, not responding to peoples’ texts (I’m sorry), french fries, guilt, online chess, iced coffee, squealing, tote bags, not finishing things, irreverence, being boring
In: Wearing white, me, slippers, raw dairy, maximalism, peaches, gowns, embroidering, card games, being cozy, buying people flowers, gratitude, wicker baskets, ceviche, irreverence, embracing boredom
Some of my favorite reads of 2022 were Proust (first 2 volumes) (need not be said, kind of annoying, I’m sorry), Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse, Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, The Garden of Eden by Hemingway, Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe, and Mad Love by Andre Breton.
The first three books I plan to read in 2023 are The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer (I started this one), In Search of Lost Time Vol. 3, and A Sentimental Education by Flaubert.
Stagnation is bland.
Sensuality is rich.
There’s so much more than an end at the end of things.
Time flies when you’re chewing gum.
Photos in this post are by Matt Wineberger, Mark Sommerfeld, Elias Altman, Vasco Sousa, Christian Stevenson, and myself.