It’s quiet and good here and I’m listening to Bjork and thinkin thoughts and wanted to write to my friends.
This Adam J. Kurtz quote should be at least as famous as that one from Ira Glass
Nobody cares, so the pressure is off.
The average American scrolls through five miles of content per year. Real talk. We’re in New York and it’s a room of media professionals. We are probably scrolling like 20 miles. Someone out there is living their best life and we are pulling them into the average. The pressure is officially off. There’s a lot of shit on the internet and you can just put some stuff on social media. They let you do that. And just put it up. And if people like it, they like it. And if they don’t like it, they keep on scrolling. It’s doesn’t fucking matter.
(…)
To review: be honest, good does not equal better, and nobody fucking cares. I embrace not knowing and I let myself create and share as I grow. I am working on my own definitions of success. Get out of your fucking head. Just make something. Just figure out what you want to say and fucking say it. That’s allowed. The only constant is that everyone is this room is going to die.
—from his actually life-changing 99U talk “Perfection is a myth”
Speaking of perfection,
My passion for the Spotify app looks like sponcon at this point
…but unfortunately it’s just earnest ;_;
ARE YOU AWARE of this new playlist from our generous Spotify overlords??? It’s a mix of short news updates and music and it updates MULLLLTIPLE TIMES A DAY. I’ve listened to it the past few days while writing or drawing and it’s a good companion. I mean obviously it’s just… RADIO, RIGHT?? You’re listening to the new radio!!! At least I hope you are, because I am and it rules!!!
Oh speaking of Spotify
A moment for Anais Mitchell plz
At some point in 2011 I heard about the folk opera Hadestown, probably because I was in a production of Eurydice, and they share a myth. The play I was in was this trippy lush take by Sarah Ruhl, in which Eurydice reunites with her long-dead father in the Underworld and has to decide to leave him.
(I mean the script is right here on my bookshelf and I have a Flickr account soooo I’d like to share some gorge stage directions, HEY YOU SUBSCRIBED TO THIS OK)
The Underworld.
There is no set change.
Strange watery noises.
Drip, drip, drip.
The movement to the Underworld is marked by the entrance of stones.
An elevator door opens.
Inside the elevator, it is raining.
Eurydice gets rained on inside the elevator…
The sound of an elevator ding.
Eurydice steps out of the elevator.
The elevator door closes.
She walks toward the audience and opens her mouth, trying to speak.
There is a great humming noise.
She closes her mouth.
The humming noise stops.
In the string room,
the father teaches Eurydice to read.
She looks over his shoulder as he reads out loud from King Lear.
It was February, winter. I was marrying a musician in June and the monologues about Orpheus felt familiar and easy. We cancelled one performance because I got a bit of a cold, the worst symptom being FUCKING LARYNGITIS at the tail end, and on the final night of the three-week run, I called the director and said “So, this is my voice” and he said “What?” because there was no voice to hear, so the pre-show hour wasn’t spent warming up and taking selfies in the dressing room; instead it was spent walking our assistant director-turned-Eurydice through my blocking: the leap onto the platform that was a sandy sunny beach, the careful steps in a satin wedding dress toward Hades disguised as a child, the trip and tumble to the Underworld. The walk back to life, away from her father, following her husband, in a straight line, with the focus of a tight-rope walker, until he startles and turns back to her and the stage directions say, in all caps, THE WORLD FALLS AWAY.
I listened to Anais Mitchell then because she saw something in the myth, too, some likeness. I listened to her other albums after, weird romantic folk songs in her raspy baby voice, a voice I can feel in my throat when I listen.
We saw Hadestown in New York a couple weeks ago and my eyes just leaked tears the whole time, constant river. ART! Being alive. Earnestness. Theater. Baby voice. Familiar personal things actually being public and huge. All of it.
Find a quiet space for like 20 minutes to look at this
My little brother Brandon, my only sibling, died of a heroin overdose three years ago this month. It took me a couple years before I was able to read about heroin at all because grief is huge and so are opioids, but now I find myself at least wanting to better understand it all.
(There’s a behind the scenes look here, too.)
And finally,
I do like taking showers it’s true
I love you,
Lindsey