#73 - The Answer Is Always Love

I moved my apartment around again.

As previously mentioned, I used to move my room around all the time when I was a kid, especially after we stopped moving all the time. There was something that was so fun about going to bed in a room that felt new.

Recently, I had to shift my room around because of the locations of the radiators in my apartment (sweet sweet New York City stuff, we don’t ever get to control our heat AND it’s so hot that you also have to keep the windows cracked to regulate the temperature—which we all used to complain about and then found out it was an intentional design choice borne of the Spanish Influenza in the 20’s and you know what, they really figured out how to mitigate that pandemic and I think about it all the fucking time whenever Covid news pops up for me. My apartment came pre-ventilated because pre-war buildings were built so incredibly well that all my landlord needs to do is slap another coat of paint on top for the next tenant!) and that really threw off the lovely vibe I had established in there. My desk suddenly wasn’t in its own area, and working from home is definitely my preferred office, but having my bed within Zoom frame felt tacky and offputting.

My apartment is a railroad, which means it’s one straight line and basically a big hallway with room divides along the way. The middle two rooms have frames cut into their walls in order to allow natural light to flow in. At one end sits my kitchen, and at the other, my bedroom. No room completely manages to fit my queen size bed comfortably, and I truly cannot comprehend how many tenements used to squeeze inside this place. Like my neighbors are all raising families inside of these homes and my spoiled ass can’t figure out how to fit a bed anywhere else?? Feels fake but, is in fact, very very real.

Anyway, my kitchen table has been used exactly twice, both times by friends coming into town who were unaware that literally no one had ever sat there before. I guess that’s a lie, I hosted a Thanksgiving one year that everyone who was invited was super late to so I was in a mostly terrible mood and then everyone also left before dessert which was probably for the best because I made an apple crumble that caused me to sprint to the bathroom in the dead of night.

Anyway, the kitchen table is now in the living room with some stuff on top of it. Any notion I have that this table will be used has completely vanished from my life but it CAN hold my record player so, that’s what it’ll be doing from now on. I had to make the living room horizontal again which is fiiiiine but I liked it the other way better. Can’t always get what you want!

My desk is now in the kitchen.

I really wanted to have a space that was just utilitarian in nature. And for work, I wanted to make sure I got natural light, and honestly, I want to drink more tea throughout the day instead of continuing my ever-growing addiction to soda (which I allowed so casually back into my life as if unaware that I cannot be trusted to consume normal amounts, I love shit that fizzes!!!) so being closer to the kettle AND bathroom feel like real boons.

The separation of places where I relax and places where I work has been really important to me recently. I want to professionalize myself again and have more focus and be at work when I’m at work. I’m really lucky to have a job where it feels like the things I help contribute to and put out into the world are really aligned with my soul and heart and spirit but it’s also been incredibly easy to develop habits that never would have occurred in an office. I think laying down on my bed for a five-minute break actually is not restful at’tall, it just makes me resent having to “go back” to a space that I never should have yanked myself out of.

Work balance stuff always feels hokey to me, I’m not someone who is so overwhelmed by tasks (anymore, shoutout to the incredibly demanding jobs I powered through in my 20s) so I don’t need to “cut back” or “optimize my calendar” but I do need to allow myself to get into my headspace where I am being paid to pay attention, contribute ideas, and not derail the conversation with my political rants whenever they strike. (Sometimes they’re relevant but I also know that I am an incredible time-waster when given the chance and that just feels like…not the point anymore. I don’t just have to waste time between certain hours, I’m trying to get through everything thoroughly so that during my down time I’m not having thoughts about how I have to make sure when the task will get done later since I fucked around online for like 30 minutes instead of just finishing it during the time I had already allotted in my day to work on it.) I am a big proponent of working from home, but I also know that in today’s world it’s hard to not have that come across as “there was never anything good about working in an office”. I kind of loved all of my offices, even the ones I worked in that had no windows and nine other people and birds flying around them. It’s fun to have a group of people you hang out near, there are little inside jokes and alliances that get formed over the dumbest things, and you know I liked the moment when everyone got real impressed by how quickly I type and that satisfaction is now only granted through playing typing games online and like, I’m fast but I’m not that fast so those don’t really bring the same glow. Also sometimes people surprised people with coffee or food or sandwiches and I know that pizza parties are not a replacement for actual benefits but you know what? They make an excellent pick-me-up after a weird sales meeting!

Anyway, there were good and fun and fine things about office culture. Do I prefer not to have a commute? Sure! I was taking three trains just to get to my shitty job in March of 2020. For the most part, it’s nice not to have the stress of checking the NYCTSubway Twitter account to see if a fresh hell awaited me that day, but I do miss getting Ready To Go Out in the morning and sometimes I miss the luxury of popping in to get a coffee on the way to a place and discovering new parts of whatever neighborhood I was working in at the time.

I think it’s very funny that I’m well-versed in the streets of SoHo and can find my way around the FiDi just because of office locations. Greenpoint would literally never have been a regularly visited location (it’s off the fucking G train!!) if not for the location of the pet store/warehouse. And Greenpoint is so cute! I worked right next to the waterfront so that made for an excellent break location, I got to text my friend that it was more like “bluepoint” or “greypoint” depending on the weather (and if you think those are hilarious observations now, just imagine getting them texted to you almost every day) (she also worked in Greenpoint and was well fucking aware of what it looked like outside but I am a delight and will run a joke firmly into the ground until it’s totaled), and there were so many ledges upon which to place my overpriced cold brew and bag when taking a lil’ smoke break.

And god, do I love a ledge. I love a little location. I love temporary places that become useful spaces and then fade away again. (Cities are designed for cars instead of people, and it breaks my heart because cars are dumb and ugly and completely unnecessary when it comes to such densely populated places as New York. Like, why live here if you want to have a car??) Smoking is not a great habit, but it definitely allows me a new lens through which to observe the world. You’ll never be more aware of how few trashcans there are in Bushwich than when you’re holding onto your cigarette butt for like ten blocks (because while yeah, you smoke, you don’t litter, because you’re already poisoning the air, no need to double down and poison the earth along with it)! But nooks? Streets to tuck in on? Places with spaces to lean, rest, and pop your bag onto while you rifle through for your lighter because that little fucker never stays where it’s supposed to? Incredible discoveries every single time! I love developing my relationship with a neighborhood via a smoking spot! Gotta find those good places to pause in a city. Not every spot is a spot I’ll return to, sometimes I pick it and then am suddenly in the middle of an endless parade of strollers that are suddenly zipping by as I hold my cig as high in the air as possible and attempt to make my grimace less…sheepish at the caretakers who glare at me.

Glare away! I’m aware of why I deserve it!!

But. As I begin reflecting and understanding what I’ve discovered about myself this year, one refrain keeps popping back into my head.

I’m really trying to live my life rather than perform it.

There was a story that went around about Obama staffers high-fiving after naturally walking & talking through the west wing. They exclaimed, “We just West Winged!”

(It’s far less surprising how little Obama actually accomplished in office when you look at the future careers of the people who made up his staff. Just saying…there sure are a lotta podcasts.)

Bleh, make something new! Stop modeling life after what a series of executives thought would be profitable to place ads between!!

I hate that culture became soaked in irony and references.  We’re going to run out of things to reference if we just keep rehashing the same stories. It’s lame. Let new ideas come in! Bring back romance movies as a genre unto themselves and allow love to be taken seriously as a part of media that people desperately want to consume!! Fashion trends are currently facing the same crisis, nothing new is happening which means in a few years the trend cycle will be wholly referential and there will have been nothing original to define the current era by. There is nothing happening that’s even slightly risky because every single media company falls under one of three major umbrellas and the studios are too scared to make anything that isn’t so generic it appeals to every single possible market at the same time. Art is universal in its specificity.

But life isn’t a performance. We’re not attempting to live out tropes. I don’t actually want my own real-life enemies-to-lovers scenario, athankyou!

Capturing our lives so regularly blurs that line though. The idea that people set up their life to meticulously curate content to the point where they’re not even experiencing life, only pretending to, is deeply sad to me. Doing things “for the memories” isn’t a real sentiment if the places are only constructed for photo ops and the experience itself is…taking the photo. It’s a false memory.

Influencers’ jobs are to make parties and events seem exciting, but is there anything more boring than a bunch of people taking pictures in front of elaborate set decorations? I think humans like demonstrable effort and everything is so polished and flat nowadays because the expectation is a backdrop and nothing more!!!

Also! The idea that by being in public I’m consenting to video discourse has been taken at all seriously is enough to drive me up the wall. Film releases exist for a reason! Do not approach me to ask me how much I pay in rent on the street!! Not everyone wants to be famous, and honestly, I don’t think that people really want to be famous anymore they just know that influencers make money and it feels like no other job offers that kind of cash so everyone is just hoping for their golden ticket. (Fun fact, Bill De Blasio said he just needed “one viral moment” to become president and that’s why he stayed in the primary for as long as he did instead of, you know, running New York City.) (To be generous/fair to him, he did have to deal with serial sexual harasser/overall bully/nepo baby/nursing homes covid deaths cover-upper disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo and he did put an end to stop and drink and pass pre-k for all so Big Bill did some good. He also went on WNYC and did Ask The Mayor on Brian Lehr’s show every single Friday and was good about at least taking criticism directly from his office. Anyway, I hate Eric Adams soooo much and I just had to mention it one more time because I will complain about him whenever given the chance he is an incredibly cruel mayor who is also a giant liar and doesn’t seem to want to solve the root of any problem but rather favors policy that makes it less obvious just how few resources New York offers the houseless citizens who live here. And he doesn’t even go on Ask The Mayor!)

Anyway, I think it’s funny that the former Mayor of NYC and most sixteen-year-olds had the same plan in terms of just needing one video to go viral in order to succeed.

But I think we’re severely underestimating the damage of seeing our lives through cameras and not only capturing but sharing so much of ourselves. (Side note: AI art is an abomination?? Stop paying for portraits you’re just helping train a thing that has scraped data from actual artists all over the internet??! Don’t feed the AI!!! Stop typing to that chatbot thing, do we all miss SmarterChild that badly??)

There are compulsions being developed. There are people expanding their families for more hits in the algorithm. Imagine the damage of your parents also being your bosses, of your home not being a private place to retreat to. There are content babies being born. And there are no regulations, and no one is protecting these kids, and we’re just starting to see the tip of the iceberg in terms of long-term effects.

But I do think that wanting to capture everything, explain actions as tutorials, and assign importance to regular occurrences as if they’re part of a larger narrative in which we’re the Main Character (of…course people are the center of their own lives but life is not a series of plot beats we’re supposed to hit—and right now we’re between major guiding narratives anyway so everyone is grinding through the grief of what we thought the world was supposed to be, and we can’t become adults because we’ll never stop being renters, and we can’t enjoy things because they’re all somehow run or associated with corrupt bodies, and no one can just make an observation online anymore without incredible amounts of whataboutism and the saddest part is I think those people think they’re asking sincere questions when they’re really just crying out “Pain! Pain! I’m in so much pain! Won’t someone witness and validate that what I went through was bad??” And the thing is, I wish I could, I wish that being witnessed would be enough to heal. Healing from anything can’t be forced. And it’s not that simple. An addict who does not voluntarily get sober is much more likely to relapse. We have to be ready, healing is not easy and it takes repetition and growth and it takes feeling feelings instead of caveating them by the end of the sentence and it’s well worth it but I think that when online communities have formed around their ~terrible experiences~ and you get genuine friendship from relating to other people about how you experience the world, it’s hard to grow and change and admit that you got sucked too far into the dogma. On all sides! It’s always hard to grow, even harder if you build a lot of your life around one viewpoint.) and pathologizing all of our actions through the armchair expertise of [checks notes] TikTok comments, is probably not and never will be the healthiest choice. Or even, helpful.

VC funding is a scam. They demand infinite growth so they can compound investments. These programs and social media sites are free because our data is the product. We provide the value. What are we looking at? For how long? Where were we when we did it? How many times did we visit the page before becoming a conversion? Did the ad work? Did I pause when it was a video? They’re built to be addictive. Addicts will go on the apps more and generate more data to sell. Everything is marketing now—and we’re reaching a saturation point. And I get that I grew up online—but when I was a kid, there were kid websites. Video games were mostly couch multiplayer. There was access, but there wasn’t actually that much to DO online. You had to discover things and go to specific blogs. I feel like everyone used to run out of shit to check and just use StumbleUpon for hours in hopes of finding anything interesting. It was always a bummer when you started looping on that thing—really ruined the illusion of the infiniteness/randomness of the site. Now the app for teens is also the app for adults and everyone is saying “unalive” instead of “dead” because TikTok wants to claim it’s “family friendly” for their advertisers.

And yes, connectivity is good, but not without nuance. And when outrage is more likely to create engagement, that’s what algorithms reward. Sites without algorithms are suffering with younger audiences because people don’t know how to search and discover, they have only been exposed to a hyper-catered internet. Curiosity is absent and somewhat dangerous. Critical Thinking has never been less popular. And part of that must just be how much it hurts as soon as you start, how much suffering we have to ignore in order to continue on. How heartbreaking it is that the corruptions run so deep, that the robber barons don’t even build beautiful universities and performance halls. The billionaires are so self-serving and they’re dull and dumb to top it all off. I don’t care that they’re going to space!! Build me a new museum and patronize some actual artists it’s what rich people used to be good for until they got SO greedy and SO rich and SO unregulated in the 80s that they stopped accumulating physical objects and “invested in assets” which caused artificial inflation and that’s why everything is so goddamn prohibitively priced now.

(Between 1880 and 1980 houses didn’t actually raise in price when adjusted for inflation. We have Ronald Reagan to thank for the fact that houses started ever costing over $100,000. McMansions have no soul, everyone hates open floor plans because their house has no privacy or spirit or unique little nooks. We didn’t move to the suburbs that long ago—maybe it’s okay to admit the 60-year experiment was bad and spaces built for cars instead of people make everyone sad and they were racist in the first place and it’s okay to redesign things and invest in walkability because being outside makes people happy!!)

There is so much that I love about living in New York, but my neighborhood and the accessibility of everything I need really are at the top of the list. I’m spoiled by choice, there’s never a time I can’t get something, I can always go out and know that I can get back home for the low low price of $2.75 (all public transportation should be free though), and when I want for anything it’s very possible I can get one of the absolute best versions of it. There are walking tours of the graffiti in my neighborhood, which I find endlessly endearing in some ways. The tourists love to pose in front of them—and while the cynical side of me wants to mock the idea that art is reduced to the background of instagram photos…there is always something to be gained by people paying attention to the art that occupies the world around them.

And it made me pay more attention! (That and the fact that one of the more prolific taggers has been a thing I text my friends about for a decade because any new $wampy sightings must immediately be reported.)

My apartment is old. It was built before indoor plumbing which is why all railroads have awkward bathrooms wedged into the kitchen somehow. The backyards were not the uh, green spaces they are now. There used to be a fireplace (can you imagine!!!) (it’s so easy to actually, it’s been shoddily covered by a hollow wall) in here and the insulation and structure of the building have remained intact because brick can really stand the test of time it turns out! Anytime I panic about smoking weed I laugh and remember the fact that people used to smoke cigarettes in this apartment within the last 20 years. No doubt about it.

Buildings used to be built to last. How could we have constructed the subway system over a century ago but not be able to improve it with all the tech and know-how we have nowadays?

Anyway, I don’t want to be addicted to stimulus that is being created by people who are desperate for some modicum of fame because it feels like that’s the only financially viable option for so many. I think the reason that celebrity culture has become so fawning and fans are so protective is because they all kind of think they’re going to be famous someday.

Bo Burnham once said that social media was the internet’s answer to everyone wanting to be famous/perform. “Here! Perform! All the time! For each other!!”

But now communication is ruptured. It’s not a conversation between two people, it’s two people projecting their own thoughts and opinions at (@) each other. And once you’ve made a claim online about Something You Believe (and in writing! or with your face! in public spaces!), it’s incredibly hard to grow/learn/change your mind in front of an audience. Learning is vulnerable (especially for adults) because it forces you to admit that you don’t know. And I think in a world where it feels like there are a million memos of This Is How We Do Things Now floating around, there is a very real anxiety that by being offline or not aware of the conversation, I will get left behind. I will be deemed a bad person, or irredeemable, and I will be thrown overboard.

Overall I think a lot of what’s motivating people to “better” themselves and actively reject a lot of the structures that were handed down (and, remind me again if the societal bullshit that we were raised in is supposed to be the fault of the individual or the institution again because if it’s the institution, we need to dismantle it and liberate ourselves & each other, but there’s been a big shift towards blaming/shaming the individuals. Probably because it’s easier get to yell at them on twitter and that feels better/more immediate but ultimately does unfathomable amounts of harm and is anti-coalition building but hey, most online activists seem to be really interested in cultivating a group of people who LOVE to talk about how they’ve been involved in the cause for longer and are therefore better. And then they wonder why people don’t feel welcome/motivated to join their movements!) (You DO have to be the bigger person when you’re saying your way of life and your views on the world will make it a better place! I’m not following an unhealed leader into a more beautiful future!! I want someone who is so centered in their justness that they radiate a calm and peace that feels otherwordly and makes me believe a better world is possible and so much closer than we can even conceive!) and rejecting those structures and creating a new less-rotten culture is hard work and we may have to be the worms in the compost for a while but eventually, the soil will sprout a beautiful bounty filled with nitrates and b-12 vitamins.

So, I’ve uh, decided I’m leaning into the ~woo. I’m going to be unapologetically loving and open and I’m going to absolutely know that it’s the harder one. I’ve been cynical for a long time, and that shit’s easy. It’s nice to be nihilistic, it certainly makes all the crimes against humanity that we see committed every single day hurt less. And I feel too much and that’s always been true, but maybe that’s my role. Maybe I’m supposed to feel and take in the pain and wail for those who can’t. I would have been a great wailer!! (I would have also probably made a decent town cryer back in the day. I’m just very loud!) There’s so much pain, and people are begging, so desperately and earnestly and with absolutely no ability to communicate to us or themselves that they need love and healing and attention and to feel like the world is not indifferent to their suffering. And the need for love, for each other, for communities, for understanding—that’s what makes us human. And I think in the absence of that, depravity grows.

The inability to express is deadly. It traps us. I used to think that people were aware of how they felt and actively withholding it, but in the last few years, I’ve really come to understand how few tools most people are working with in terms of how to understand themselves. My emotions are so big and bold and clear to me that it felt incomprehensible that for other people, their emotions show up in sunglasses and stand in the corner asking you riddles before they’ll deign to identify themselves. My emotions are in like primary color sweaters that have their name emblazoned on the front like the original broadway cast of Merrily We Roll Along. (Ooooh did I manage to actually reach a point of too niche in that last example?)

And it’s great that therapy seems abundant, but the act of actually Getting Better isn’t something that we can pay to experience once a week. It’s a discipline. It’s active. And it can feel hokey and lame and it will absolutely get uncomfortable at times to know yourself so thoroughly and to process the emotions and to get to know how and why we react the way we do. Not just for the sake of controlling our actions, but because it’s impossible to just suppress one emotion. If we’re avoiding even small things, we strike up residency in the state of denial and that address trumps every other one ever listed. And a dulled life that is absent of big pain will also be absent of big pleasures.

And life is for living. Not consuming, not avoiding, not anything besides the experience. It’s random, and it’s chaos, and the systems we inherited are broken by greed and unfair labor extortion and stupid fucking ~rugged individualism, but we’re still here, and we can still choose to love in the face of all of that. And love is the only thing bigger than hate. It’s there, all the time. Even in objects. Ceramics that used to be live clay shaped into use & denoted by the thumbmark impressions left behind when they were being taken off the wheel. Gifts that were bought because someone thought of us, was reminded of us, cared enough to bring us something that says “hey, you exist!”. Food really does taste better when love is an ingredient. Nothing makes me cry like ugly Christmas ornaments that were brought home in the second grade but still remain on the tree decades later.

Love isn’t easy, but it’s the only option that leaves me feeling more whole and hopeful. It’s the only emotion that I know can actually heal a wound rather than act as a bandaid. And it’s everywhere. We don’t even have to look that hard to see it. And it’s everything. The world is in crisis. We need healers. (I don’t like Biden’s actual policies, but I think one of the major reasons he resonates with so many people is that he is a deeply humanistic politician who has shared his grief and recovery with so many. I don’t know what the Republicans thought was going to happen when they released the voicemails of him supporting Hunter during a relapse. All I hear is a Father who loves his kid so much.)

Marianne Williamson was a unique person to have in the last Democratic Primary because she acknowledged the amount of grief and rightfully called out that the country cannot be united again until we do some major healing. And that will require listening to people who we want to outright reject the idea that they’ve ever suffered or been in pain—because everyone’s suffering is their own. We only can understand the world through our individual experiences. It’s weird to want others to have suffered more. It’s not only cruel, it’s functionless. It will never negate or buffer the suffering that has been experienced by someone else. More love is more love. It’s exponential. It’s never subtractive. I may not remain in an active state of love with everyone I have ever given love to, but it’s only broadened my capacity to experience it, to hold more of it, and to give it away because I trust it will come back.

Love is fucking great. Feels great to love, feels even more great to receive it. It’s vulnerable, but I think the idea that being sincere is cringe is one of the largest and most effective psyops wedge tools ever introduced to the public psyche.

So I reject the premise!!

Love in general is wonderful, but specificity is where it feels transformative.

I love that regardless of my past experiences I still chose to develop a language of love to speak to myself with this year because I was tired of not loving myself.

It was on purpose, I chose to love myself on purpose. It’s vital, it’s protective, it’s all of those things, but it’s also made me a more fun and loving person who doesn’t see myself as the problem in any given situation—rather a factor, one part of the community. It’s kind of like how I love New York City for the anonymity, I love the idea that I am not the end all be all of a situation, I’m not responsible for the entire conversation, I’m just there as myself and I’m trying my best, and that’s good enough!!

Anyway. I love that you read this piece, I love that I’ve gotten to spend asynchronous time with people this year through writing and podcasting, and I really do think that love is the answer and while it’s an unimaginably complex answer to everything, it is at the same time startlingly simple.

❤️