Relax Baby Be Cool
plus Naomi Jackson on bipolar disorder, Yo La Tengo on songwriting, an interview with Kelly Link, and much more
This week has been busy. Between work at the bookstore, Largehearted Boy, and my own writing projects, there has been little time for relaxation. This made me realize (yet again) that I have never been good at unwinding.
For a long time, I poured myself into jobs that consumed me. 100 hours a week in the election industry? That was me. Need someone to work the weekend on a rush prepress assignment? I would volunteer. My website’s database was corrupted and needed to be rebuilt on Christmas morning? Sounded like a great challenge.
Reading was once a refuge, an instant vacation to different worlds. Then I started writing. Attending workshops. Every book is now both instructional (How is it put together? Why does it work/not work?) as well as entertaining and/or fulfilling. I’m not complaining, literature is infinitely more interesting now, but I need to figure out how to turn off the analytic part of my mind, at least part of the time.
My partner, now a year older after her birthday this week and still wiser than I will ever be, understands how to relax. She gets home, changes out of her schoolteacher uniform into “comfy pants” and a sweatshirt. and reads something fun and/or watches reality television to “turn off her brain.”
I’m learning from her. Upon getting home from the bookstore I often put on some sweatpants or shorts (depending on the season) and swap my shoes for slippers or sandals, before I get to work on the website or some writing project. Baby steps, but it is progress…
How do you relax?
Largehearted Likes
My partner and I stopped by Little Rascal last night to celebrate her birthday. The food was as impressive (halloumi croquettes were the highlight) as the creative drink menu. I had the Turin & Tonka shown above (Michter's rye, housemade tonka-infused cocchi torino, housemade curacao, aromatic bitters). Highly recommended if you find yourself hungry and/or thirsty in Greenpoint, Brooklyn any time soon. If you do go, remember to stop by WORD Bookstore just down the street!
Artist Ashwini Bhat’s interview with Sarah Rose Etter
SRE: What are the main philosophical questions your work is interrogating?
BH: I’m drawn to philosophical thought that challenges the privileging of human existence over the non-human. In my current work, I’m addressing the phenomenon of transformation— of material, and self. How is identity sharpened by its relationships? How can art cross cultural and habitual divides? In a world of technology and spectacle, how do we articulate deep feeling?
Naomi Jackson’s essay on living with bipolar disorder
This was only one of the many friendships I lost. Even as I mourn the loss of these friendships, I also know what it’s like to be on the other side of mental illness. Having watched my mother and grandmother come undone by their illnesses, I know what it’s like to feel helpless, angry, and sad in the face of what often looks like self-sabotage and narcissism. I know that self-preservation can require setting boundaries, keeping distance, looking away.
The truffle-flavored food industry is a scam
Liters of this petroleum-derived product, the colorless 2,4-dithiapentane liquid, are sourced for a few euros from Italy, Germany, or China, and then they end on your plates and refrigerators, in pasta, tartufata, oils, cheeses, and sausages, but also in expensive delicacies with a prostituted label "truffles."
Edible Inland Northwest’s guide to non-alcoholic wines, beers, apertifs, and spirits
This New York Times word game is addictive and clever.
When a Cardi B fan asked if the video will decrease prices, the rapper said: “Not necessarily cause of me, but if we bring enough awareness to inflation you never know.”
Anne Helen Peterson’s interview with associate editor Rachel Kambury about the Harper Collins strike
Underpaid employees can’t focus on work if they’re anxious about affording rent and bills and food. (For context, my first publishing paycheck in July 2016 was $980.) Underrepresented employees who experience daily microaggressions can’t function if their nervous systems are constantly going haywire.
Largehearted Links
Dale Peck on The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
The casts of every other edition of the franchise have ethnicities and religions, of course, but Salt Lake was the first installment to build identity into the show’s foundational ethos. The moment Shah says, “In Utah I’m Black because people don’t know any better,” you feel you’re in for a new experience, no less massaged than previous installments, but with something besides the cast members’ personal brands at stake.
Writer Brooklyn White lost her home in a house fire, you can help
As a writer of relatively chatty stories, I feel mostly concerned with trying to use pages and panel sequences to serve the dialogue’s advantage. A single frame could be a whole busy vignette, a single intake of breath, or more of a fluid roll into the following panel. This awareness of the rhythm between the panel gutters and the page-turning has built up over time for me.
Members of Yo La Tengo discussed the band’s new album and songwriting with Pitchfork
Ira Kaplan: The phrase “fall out of time,” from “Fallout,” came about while we were practicing the song. Not necessarily to be used in the future, just kind of out of desperation—surely there must be something there to hang a song on. It’s a struggle for us to make the words appear, hopefully, to be part of that organic process. It’s not the part that comes most naturally to any of us.
Stream new music from Lonnie Holley
My art and my music are always closely tied to what is happening around me, and the last few years have given me a lot to thoughtsmith about.
Brooklyn Magazine interviewed author Mike Sacks
When I grew up in D.C., to me, the only creative hero I had in the area was Ian MacKaye of Fugazi and Minor Threat. Local guy who put out his own records, which was just unheard of in the D.C. area. Put him out the way he wanted to. He owned the rights, sold them for $10, had $5 ticket shows for all age audiences, and he created the career he wanted for himself. And that was a huge lesson for me.
Publisher Weekly’s interview with Kelly Link
Like many people who love books, fairy tales were my introduction to the fantastic. They’re a genre I come back to, whether reading Angela Carter or anthologies of retold fairy tales. I think what seemed useful to me when I began to think about the kind of stories I wanted to write was that I could use fairy tales in a way that was not a direct retelling but could retain some of the extraordinary qualities of colors, food, or animals.
Last Week’s Largehearted Boy Features:
E.B. Bartels' playlist for her essay collection Good Grief
Jen Michalski's playlist for her story collection The Company of Strangers
Jerry McGill's playlist for his novel The Color of Family
Oindrila Mukherjee's playlist for her novel The Dream Builders