Hello lovers,
I hope you’re all enjoying this weekend of love, whether it’s with a significant other, your family, a friend or two, or just yourself (oh, if only! I long for a weekend alone).
Some exciting news! Voice Notes is now on Youtube, where I’ll be updating it from now on. I’m excited and nervous about this little change, which was made on the fly — Soundcloud began notifying me of my decreasing storage space late last year, and at first I compensated by deleting old tracks, but the other week I ran out of things I could Delete Forever™️ without guilt or sadness. I realized Youtube would be the next best option. Instead of audio-only recordings, I will (for the most part, at least) be sharing my voice notes in video form. First up is a cover of Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, as requested by my friend J.
Here’s my Youtube channel, if you’d like to subscribe for more music (and maybe even poetry) and whatever other rough recordings that make up Voice Notes! The complete Youtube playlist for all the previous Voice Notes is here.
If you have any song requests, or ideas, or even prompts (!) you’d like for me to write songs about, leave a comment or reply to this email! I’d love to know what you want to hear.
Lovely little things
I’m like a magpie, except with links (or anything I can access on my phone/computer screen!) In lieu of little chocolate Valentines, here are some virtual morsels I’ve come across that have sparked something in me.
A manifesto on accepting yourself by Alain de Botton. (If you know the artist please tell me because I am dying to follow their work. Look at those beautiful colors! The whimsical shapes!)
This Jenny Slate tweet a friend sent to me after I vented about feeling distraught over another person’s aggression towards me (it had been a sour interaction, and caught me off-guard). “I feel that this quote has helped me to kinda fine tune the energy I have around me,” she texted:
She also sent me this, and said “I hope you’re able to take good care of your own energy” (I try when I can).
And also, while we’re talking about tweets—this tweet about the movie Soul, which I referenced in a previous newsletter (Voice Note #10!). It’s a little cheesy, but like most cheesy things, it’s also incredibly profound. As a person who’s always been so deeply emotionally invested in her work, this has been on my mind a lot lately. I’m trying to detach my understanding of meaningfulness from productivity or even creative merit. After a lifetime of being told we’re put on this Earth to “follow our dreams,” it’s a mindset that’s challenging to even begin untangling:
This quote about sports on Griefbacon reminded me about my fascination with live sports, as a completely ignorant non-sports fan who hardly watched or participated in any team sports growing up, but fell enrapt with the blaring, triumphant energy of my first live basketball game in my junior year of college. That one line captures exactly the way I feel about it: “Nothing is more sincere, or closer to religion in the secular realm, than sports feelings.” I’ve always had this weird little dream of one day writing poetry about sports, but it looks like Helena Fitzpatrick has done that already:
Ted Lasso: Ted Lasso is sincerity as a high-wire act, as the Hail-Mary final play in the hold-your-breath end of a sports movie. Nothing is more sincere, or closer to religion in the secular realm, than sports feelings, and Ted Lasso is the purest dose of sports feelings available in television form. Ted Lasso is like if a whole TV show were that one moment early in the first episode of Friday Night Lights when a little kid asks the high school football star “does Jesus love football?” and the football star says “I think everybody loves football” and it makes my husband, who has never played a sport in his life, cry if I even mention it. I sometimes think about what my relationship with my dad, a former basketball coach, would have been like if I had been good at basketball, and I think it probably would have felt a lot like an episode of Ted Lasso. Anyway I would die for at least six characters on this show, probably more. Roy Kent.
An old newsletter from Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me called “Summer Ghost” (do yourself a favor and subscribe — the archive is a gold mine). This one struck such a deep chord. I frequently find myself in a mode of giving. It isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, but it feels draining for sure, and it’s taken a toll.
“I’m trying to find peace in my time spent alone this year. Every time I’m in a good mood (which is increasingly hard to access), I don’t need to spend it texting a friend or jumping through hoops to set up a plan in someone else’s neighborhood. I don’t know how to do this yet but I’m figuring it out. My mom told me last week that just because we have a good thing, doesn’t mean we have to immediately give it away to other people — a mood, a moment, an introduction. Lately I don’t want to answer to anyone. I want to be a summer ghost.”
This Instagram post about being a slow texter by @regajha made me feel seen. Somewhat relevant to the above quote. I’ve noticed that I tend to fill up all my free time responding to messages or checking to see what people are up to on social media, or catching up on group chats. Lately it’s been difficult for me to relax alone without feeling guilty — for some reason, it’s much easier for me to spend long stretches of free time (virtually) connecting with other people. I don’t know why. Hours chatting with a friend feels more “productive” or “fruitful” than the same stretch of time watching a movie or reading a book or just doing nothing. I’m aware this is perhaps not healthy, though I have yet to figure out where this disposition comes from. (If you’re similar, please please please let me know! Drop a comment or respond to this email, I’m so curious about other people’s texting habits and how others spend their free time in general)
Max from Love & Anarchy lifting his drink from across the room. There is something so deeply romantic about this gesture, about the restraint and longing that mingle in that glance, which cuts through all the other people in the crowded party. The slightness of the movement, how little space it takes up, how much it says. It reminds me of that scene in Anastasia where Dmitri blows a kiss to Anya’s window as a small goodbye she’ll never see, before he turns away and walks down the cold, wet street alone. I could write pages and pages about this one scene, and one day I will, but for now, enjoy this image.
One of Mari Andrew’s most recent Instagram posts. Read all three slides! It’s beautiful and true and it touched me immediately. I don’t normally comment on popular accounts’ posts, but I was moved to do so in this instance. I wrote that it reminded me of something a friend once told me, that sometimes “you’re letting go of old things to make space for newer, better ones.” Even if that means being lonely for a little while. The room fills up.
This line from Neon in Daylight, the last novel I read last year:
“You know, loving, feeling love, is a… is kind of like a human privilege? It’s never a waste. I think. I mean, the thing is feeling it, not whether it’s reciprocated. You know?”
Happy Valentine’s, folks! See you next week. <3