HELLO FROM THE MIGRAINE CAVE!
yes it’s going very well thank you for asking
Anyway! Mitch McConnell is refusing to go through the gates of hell, a guy with a trash bin on his face is running for Parliament and might actually win, and people are somehow shocked that a white guy with a Nazi tattoo also abused women, which should honestly be the least surprising thing on the planet at this point.
All that being said: Shit’s a nightmare! Let’s take one newsletter’s worth of time to look at some things that aren’t. 💜
your friday four!
this week’s highlights on creating for good
1. “Welcome to the Whistle Rebellion” (s.e. smith for The Conversationalist)
Across the country, whistling has become an ever-present background noise in communities invaded by ICE, a low-cost, instant-alert system that anyone can participate in. Everyone from crusty gutter punks to activist grandparents have been blowing whistles to alert people to immigration raids; as well as gathering outside hotels and other spaces used by immigration enforcement to ensure they cannot rest, eat, or move without being accompanied by a cacophony. It prevents abductions, saves lives, and makes ICE agents absolutely miserable.
10/10 stage-setting, zero notes.
This piece focuses not on the whistle movement itself (though that obviously gets some attention) but the people behind it — and how they’re bringing something into their work that goes beyond community care: Play.
There’s an interesting undercurrent to this incredibly rapid mobilization: It’s rising to meet a need, but has also at times been surprisingly whimsical. There are sparkly whistles. Transparent ones in a range of hues. Whistles in metallic rainbow tones. Fun shapes like fish and cats, and designs intended to be beautiful and sometimes silly as well as functional. A whistle is a whistle is a whistle.
[…]
This is not just about finding joy for those involved in the herculean whistle distribution effort, but also making whistle use more accessible for people who are new to mutual aid and direct action. Anyone can carry and blow a whistle. But whistles are only effective if you wear them, and if you’re a person who loves fun and whimsy, you may be more likely to consistently carry a purple sparkly whistle than a plain one. That approachability is very much by design, allowing people to be more comfortable getting involved. For some, this might start and end with whistles, but it can also turn into more engagement with community organizing.
There’s a ton of depth to this piece that I can’t cover here (except to say that s.e. smith is a brilliant cultural critic and you should absolutely be following them), including the role of anti-patriarchal organizing practices being put into play in this movement, but this idea of playfulness as a point of access is why I pulled this article today.
Back in October, I wrote about learning the term tactical frivolity: “a form of protest that uses comedy, absurdity, and carnival-like antics to challenge authority and expose injustice,” to quote historian Diane Irby. It would be easy to consider play as falling under this umbrella, but I think it’s actually something quite different.
Where tactical frivolity is about spectacle, drawing attention and making the powerful the butt of a joke, play is something much quieter. It happens in connection and community, but the experience of playing is internal. Play is about process, about imagination, about engagement in a moment. Playing is protective — it gives us the good-feelings chemicals we need to keep moving, it helps our brains stay elastic, it reminds us to take a moment, even just the single instant when you smile at your glittery whistle, to feel free.
source: unsplash
When was the last time you played? Consider the widest possible definition: play as in experimentation with a new form of writing or art, play as in sitting on the floor and doing a puzzle, play as in reorganizing your books by color, play as in hopping over a crack in the sidewalk because of a playground superstition, play as in making a silly face at a baby in the grocery store. How far back do you have to reach? What do you remember about what that moment felt like? How does play — or the lack of it — appear in your creative work? In your day-to-day life? In the ways you show up?
Prompt: In the article above, s.e. smith interviews Zoe Quinn, one of the printers in this movement. Quinn tells them, “We’re printing whistles to fight back against people with guns and immunity. If that’s all you have, it’s going to be really hard to sustain that. Play matters. It allows people to engage in ways they wouldn’t otherwise. It allows us to get through the shitshow.”
This week, find some time to play — whatever that looks like for you. Sit with the experience. How does it feel? Create about it.
2. “The Unexpected Joy of a Geriatric Debut” (Donovan McAbee for Literary Hub)
You may or may not have noticed, but we live in a culture that’s obsessed with youth. People spend billions of dollars each year to look younger, feel younger, dress younger. Being young is about potentiality, it’s about all the things you might possibly do, all the goals you might achieve.
This attitude shows up in creative communities all the time. Authors who write a bestseller while they’re still in college go viral, and there’s a ripple of self-deprecating envy. I’m not an exception — I started doing National Novel Writing Month (RIP) in high school, and went as far as trying to figure out how to query agents before realizing that none of those books should ever see the light of day. I look back at Baby Shelly with amusement now, but I also feel a pang of heartbreak for her heartbreak. People believe they need to hit this milestone or that milestone before they hit 25, 30, or (god forbid) 40, or they’ll be too far “behind” to really achieve anything.
That feeling is exactly what Donovan McAbee writes in this essay.
I’ve taken to calling my poetry collection, Holy the Body, my “geriatric debut.” The phrase has helped me enjoy the happiness I feel at my book’s publication, while mitigating the haunting sense that this is something I should have accomplished earlier in my life.
[…]
Maybe I’m not so geriatric as I sometimes feel, but as I see much younger poets coming out with debuts, and I see the grey in my hair and the white in my beard, I do feel old to only have a debut collection. For years, uncertainty about my work was connected to uncertainty about myself. Who am I to call myself a poet? Who am I to suggest my work might be worth someone’s time and energy to read or for them to show up at some venue to hear me read?
Like so many of us, McAbee is a lifelong creative, and like so many of us, he’s experienced rejection after rejection, almost after almost. But just as there’s something to be gained through experiencing rejection (creative or not), there’s equally as much to be gained by something taking a long time to arrive. McAbee writes,
Something shifted in me in the last few years. It started before the book came out. I found myself more fully able to embrace the notion of making literature as a legitimate way to spend a life. I have been saved at times by other people’s poems and stories. Why then was it hard for me to believe that my words could have real and lasting value for a reader? To believe not just in the power of words or the importance of the arts but to believe that this was a legitimate pursuit for me, that I could take part in this way of life without feeling like an imposter.
[…]
Had I published my first collection earlier, I would have had imposter syndrome to wrestle with much more vigorously. Instead, I’m in a better place now to own the value of writing as a way of life and accept and celebrate that this is how I choose to spend a significant part of my days.
In its way, patience is as much a tool critical to living a creative life as play. Mary Oliver, famous for her long walks in the woods, long hours simply taking in the movement of the world, published her first work of poetry at the age of 28 — but it took another 20 years before she published in a way that caught significant attention. For every one of those years (and many before and after) she was still writing, submitting, getting rejected.
Your moment will arrive when it arrives; there’s nothing that can be done to force it. Living a life of creativity isn’t about publishing that first book before 30, getting that gallery exhibition by 25, becoming an executive chef at 20. It’s about taking joy in the process of creating the work, for the love of the work, for the sake of the work. Because the work itself is enough.
What creative goals in your life took longer than you wanted, or that you are still waiting to achieve? How much of that goal is within your control, and how much of it relies on others? 10-90? 60-40? 50-50? How are you working toward that goal? What does that work look like? Would you be doing that work if you didn’t want to reach that goal? What would achieving the goal give you that the work itself doesn’t? What are you learning?
Prompt: Think of the greatest possible honor or achievement available in your creative field. Imagine what it would feel like to achieve it tomorrow. In a year. In five, ten, twenty years. Imagine working toward it, but never quite getting there. Would the work you did be worth it anyway? Take five minutes to journal on this. Read back what you wrote. What comes up for you? Create about it.
3. “Searching for Acts of Love in a World Wracked by Crisis” (Anagha Subhash Nair for Inkstick Media)
Sally Hayden’s new book, This is Also a Love Story: A Reporter’s Search for Goodness in a Cruel World, took her on something of an odyssey. She began working on the book in 2022, and ended up traveling around the world to collect what ultimately became what reviewer Anagha Subhash Nair described as “nine real-life love stories from places that have experienced myriad forms of tragedy and pain — political instability, natural disasters, exclusionary societies, war.” She continues,
From queer Ghanian Ed Hanson navigating the norms of his society with his community, to Ukrainian couple Sergei and Irina’s journey through marriage in the bleak fog of war, Hayden transports her readers into the beating hearts of her protagonists through vivid storytelling and reporting with intent to understand.
[…]
Her eye for detail introduces readers into the minutiae of how love is expressed in different parts of the world; from the Arabic phrase ya’aborni, which means “I hope you outlive me,” to how Irish, her own native tongue, has no direct translation for the simple phrase I love you. Yet, she noticed a uniting factor: Almost everyone wanted to talk about their experiences of love.
[…]
Today, news reporting is often constrained by the news cycle, preconceived expectations of what stories come out of what part of the world, and our ever-shrinking attention spans. Most journalists, including me, are guilty of shrinking our protagonists — humans who open up to us despite often barely knowing who we are — into narrative tools that help lend a shred of humanity to a vague geopolitical development or social phenomenon that would be “uninteresting” on its own to a detached news consumer.
The book has both a prologue and an epilogue. The epilogue frames the entire book as her “atonement for more than a decade in the journalistic world, which can strip detail, remove agency, and flatten emotion.”
But the prologue is a question. An important one.
Would the world be different if the news built their stories on a foundation — and shared them to the world through a framework — of love?
How do you show love, and where does that come from? Are your expressions of love something you learned? Something you discovered? Are they cultural, familial, individual? Are there rituals you practice that fill you with or allow you to express love? What are they, and what makes them special? How does the way you express love show up in what you create?
Prompt: For one day, make note of everything you do that feels like an act of love: scratching your dog’s ears, pouring your partner a cup of coffee, sending a text to check in on a friend, watching a video to learn how to braid your child’s hair or make your best friend’s favorite dessert. At the end of the day, look through your list, and pick one action. Imagine trying to explain it to an extraterrestrial who has just arrived on Earth and doesn’t know anything about human love. What would that be like? Create about it.
4. “Six months after Renee Good was killed, memorial lives on along south Minneapolis street” (Estelle Timar-Wilcox for MPR)
Ending this week’s newsletter with this short, bittersweet story about the memorial for Renee Nicole Good, who was murdered by ICE this past January. There’s been a constant memorial along the street where she was killed, and people have come from across the country to visit it.
But the reason I pulled this story is because of Fabiola Rodriguez, who has become something of a caretaker for the memorial — in fact, that’s exactly how the article refers to her.
Memorial caretaker Fabiola Rodriguez says she still meets many visitors from other states and countries. She hopes preserving Good’s memory shows that the neighbors still care — and still want change.
“This is an example of teaching our kids that we don’t want the same thing in the future for them,” she said.
She’s been visiting frequently since Good’s death, and this spring, she used her own money to plant a garden there — not just making it clear that the memorial is there to stay, but making the space more welcoming in order to encourage people to stay longer, not just briefly pay their respects. She’s already seen it happen.
“I had a lady that — she just came out, sat down, and started crying,” Rodriguez recounted. A minute later, “a very beautiful butterfly started flying in front of her. I saw her, how she smiled to the butterfly. I was like: See, my way of bringing flowers over here — I feel like it does help people to get them to smile, or to at least feel a little bit better.”
Rodriguez said she plans to maintain the memorial to Renee Good for the long term. She made sure to plant perennials — so the garden will grow back next year.
When I write in this newsletter about the way creativity can really mean anything you want it to mean, that we are all creatives, this is what I mean. The planting of that garden was a process of imagination, intention, and creation, and now, something beautiful exists that didn’t before. And that’s something any of us can do.
What are the gardens — literal or metaphorical — that you are tending in this moment? What is it that draws you to plant those particular seeds, care for that particular patch of earth, to offer it your time and your effort and your hopes? What do you hope will grow out of this work?
Prompt: Find a local garden, and take some time to learn about what is planted there. What do those plants need in order to grow? Who cares for them? What made that garden possible? What is the most interesting thing you’ve learned? Create about it.
