Happy Sunday, friends and enemies!

My life is pure chaos rn. Whenever I think I've established a good routine in my new living situation, a curveball flies in my face. Unexpected moving admin, reshuffled appointments, derailments (general).

Looking at this list of disruptions, I wish I had something poetic to say about living amid disarray. Maybe how chaos is like quicksand, the more you fight against it the faster you sink so it's better to just stand still. But the truth is I have a complicated relationship with uncertainty. My anxious inclination makes me averse to the unknown. And yet a not insignificant part of me thrives in disorder. Some of my most expansive periods were also the most chaotic. Losing my job, moving abroad … this moment right now.

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LINKS

• Sean Combs, Neil Gaiman, and the terrible power of secrets. I’m still unsure what to make of this piece by Mikal Gilmore in Rolling Stone. The connective tissue between the two stories he tells about working with Combs and befriending Gaiman is that he spent time with two high-profile abusers and never knew their secrets. The writing is compelling, yet I was left feeling the piece was unfinished somehow. But then maybe that’s the point? Sometimes things happen that we can’t make sense of and even a writer can’t turn it into a narrative.

• Is capitalism broken? I’m always on the hunt for economic writing I can actually understand. I’ve definitely been guilty of using the refrain “capitalism is broken!” in response to our fraught cultural and economic climate without really knowing what I mean by it. This overview is really helpful in understanding the main critiques of capitalism, which ones still hold up and how to understand today's situation in that context.

• The recovery house that Demon Copperhead built. When I read epics like Barbara Kingslover’s Demon Copperhead, I still think about what happens to the characters long after I’ve finished the book. So this full circle moment feels special – Kingsolver used the profits from the book’s sales (over 3 million copies sold and a Pulitzer Prize for fiction) to open a recovery centre for women suffering from addiction in the county where the novel is set.

• Why voice notes are a small act of love. I loved this lil ode to the voice note by Rainesford Stauffer in Time. Working for myself, from home and living in a new city, my days tend to be quiet. Friends’ voices piercing that silence is precious to me. I think voice notes are more intimate than a phone call because you can say things without the pressure of immediate feedback - confessional almost. Also, I’m a monster who plays my own voice notes back because a) hearing myself say something aloud helps me clarify my thoughts and b) I love the sound of my own voice.

• How to price art. Léo Hamelin sent me this cartoon by Edith Zimmerman that perfectly and painfully captures the struggle of asking for money for your creative work.

• Inside the blurb-industrial complex. “I think it’s a lazy tactic made popular by publishers who can’t be arsed to fairly distribute and creatively employ a marketing budget to anyone who isn’t Sally Rooney or Richard Osman.” As someone humbled and horrified by the blurb-acquisition part of writing her book, I enjoyed Imogen West-Knight’s piece immensely.

• A post-cringe theory of psychedelic spirituality in the rave scene. I used to write about nightlife professionally and can tell you it’s nearly impossible to capture club culture on paper. It's like trying to describe a dream without sounding boring. That's why I love this essay by my friend and former co-worker, Michelle Lhooq, for Harvard; she embraces the inherent awkwardness and examines today's rave scene through that very lens. “There cannot be change without cringe”!

RECS

• Tim Hecker’s Haunt Me. My relationship with music remains complicated since my music journalism days. Spotify's suggestions have only made things worse, turning me into a passive listener. Lately, I've been pushing back against the convenience of pre-made playlists, deliberately making time to listen to albums in their entirety again. Tim Hecker's 2001 Haunt Me is a quiet, beautiful ambient record, but I'll spare myself the music critic flashbacks and leave it at that.

  Haunt Me Tim Hecker Album

• Schitt’s Creek. As a serial re-watcher, I pay attention to what kind of shows I'm drawn back into at any given point in my life. Unexpectedly moving to a funky little place and finding the loving embrace of the community you never had? Stick it in my veins.

• Ira Glass teaches you how to make money. When This American Life launched a paid membership, I immediately subscribed. Their recent mini-episode is worth the entire year’s sub. It starts with that familiar stat that only 1 in 10 listeners contribute financially (as someone whose newsletter has an even worse paid-subscriber ratio, I felt this one). But instead of pleading with the other nine listeners, Ira has a novel solution. He calls vendors trying to apply "audience math" to their services, including a butt-clenching attempt to convince a phone company they should install ten lines but only charge for one. As someone who regularly gets asked to work for free/exposure, listening to Ira apply that same tortured logic to utility companies had me howling!

MINUTIAE

• The haunting weather reports of 16th century Transylvania. This was sent to me by a longtime friend and newsletter reader. Researchers have cross-referenced historical weather records with diary entries to reconstruct a freak climate phenomenon that happened in Transylvania in the 1500s. “Large floods washed the walls of the fortress, demolished the main gate, and the fish also got caught in the big church”. Good to know that just Eastern European things date back millennia.

• “Life is precious and it’s not all about you.” One for my Gilmore Girl heads. An analysis of the Rory Gilmore to Midge Maisel success pipeline. I’m not sure I entirely agree that achievement is portrayed as hollowly in Maisel as it was in GG because Midge doesn’t end up alone, she’s got her one true love: Susie.

JUST FOR LAUGHS

• And lastly, Joanna Lumley has no inner monologue?!

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