I couldn't figure out why John Wilson's success annoyed me so much. I devoured the first season of his HBO show, How To With John Wilson, which is a bonanza of footage he's assiduously accumulated from around New York City. Each episode strings together that footage with narrated observations and a loose thesis to create a kind of visual essay. This is very much my shit! I should be cheering for him! I love collage. I love editing. I love art that's hard to categorize.

And yet. 

The profiles, which are coming hard and fast now that Season 2 has premiered, rarely ask the question that I suspected was at the heart of my annoyance: How did this man get the budget and buy-in to make something so weird?

The answer—thank you, CBS news—is he made YouTube videos that HBO got interested in. But this is only a sort-of answer, because the internet is full of brilliant short-form work. Work that creates its own vernacular, its own atmosphere. Work that is funny-haha and funny-strange at the same time, without genre but instantly understandable. Work made for free, for a niche audience. Work that does not get snapped up by HBO.

Maybe my frustration at John Wilson is this: Here we are, in the third decade of the 21st century with countless "reckonings" in the rearview, and a glaring demographic gap remains between people who get paid to stay true to their vision and those whose ideas are stolen. Or maybe I'm just jealous. John Wilson is living the artistic dream. Who doesn't want to find wild success as the creator of the "weirdest" thing in their particular medium? To get paid to make exactly what they want to make? 

Art without precedent was never an easy sell, but we are firmly in an era of "make it til you make it," as my brilliant friend Sarah recently remarked to me. Create something for free, prove that lots of people like it, and only then will a big institution (a publisher, a production company, a record label) consider the possibility of paying you to stay true to that vision. If you're lucky, they'll pay you to water it down with changes based on a potent combo of data and assumptions about what will or won't appeal to audiences.

If you're really lucky—like, lighting-strike lucky—you are John Wilson. You get to keep your singular vision intact. You get to sidestep the reigning assumptions of your industry. You get paid and supported and invited to talk to the late-night Jimmies about it. I just want so many more artists to have what John Wilson has. I don't want the upshot of his success to be "let's get this guy to direct a Marvel movie." I want every profile of him to absorbed by executives as a lesson about the power and potential of the unexpected. I want singular visions to stay singular.

"The future that debt chose for me included a lot of shame, confusion, and pain." Shoplifting is prosecuted but people who steal billions go scot-free. In Sinaloa, women recover the bodies of missing loved ones and cook to keep their memories alive. Redesigning the OB/GYN experience. On Alice Sebold and the instinct to "conflate individual responsibility with systematic responsibility." A Black father, his white son, and what they deal with when they leave the house. A year of listening to Joe Rogan. A profile in which Keanu Reeves slaps himself in the face. RIP Greg Tate, who made criticism an art. A stroll through the Met with Min Jin Lee. The power of queer mentors. On "a day in the life" videos on TikTok. The sublime spectacle of Yoko Ono disrupting the Beatles. On-screen lesbian romances are finally complex. Is an elephant a person? On Birds Aren't Real, a parody conspiracy theory with a purpose. In praise of generalism. Why are we so awful to our spouses? Is it always going to be like this now?

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On Monday I saw Baby Bushka, a live interpretation of Kate Bush's work by eight virtuosic women from San Diego. There was over-the-top choreography. There were glitter masks. I am not sure I've ever seen this many women occupy a stage together in person (though I loved seeing Olivia Rodrigo's Tiny Desk Concert clock in at five), and I've certainly never witnessed this level of collaborative joy as such a large ensemble passed the mic and various instruments. It wasn't impersonation, it was channeling. And it was so, so good. 

Timely and related: The Kate Bush 1980 Christmas single, "December Will Be Magic Again."

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Tell me about your 2021. I love hearing about what has kept you going, thinking, feeling—and what you're thinking about headed into next year. This collective reflection is one of my favorite annual newsletter traditions. (Here's last year's.)

And on another calendar-flipping note...

I'm now accepting applications for the 2022 AF WKLY Fellowship. I'm excited to head into year two of this experiment in structured mentorship.

If you're a nonfiction writer who is not yet established in your career, find all the details here.

If you're a creator who already has an established career, I encourage you to think about sharing your skills and platform in a more structured way. I would love to share what I've learned about creating this fellowship on my own, without institutional support. Please email me if you want to chat about it!

If you're neither of these things but want to support my small-scale effort to create new pathways and opportunities in media, you can become a paying member or stuff a little cash in the tip jar. I also recommend following 2021 writing fellows Nereya Otieno and Shanti Escalante-De Mattei.