So here is an extremely fun fact: When you send your kids to summer camp, the “little cold” they bring home from their friends will in fact knock you on your ass for an entire week! Did you know that? I didn’t know that!!!!
(I did in fact know that. And yet! Here I am!)
there may come a day when i do not send this newsletter from under a pile of blankets, but it is not this day 🥲
Sick days for me usually translate into comfort media, and since I have extremely weird taste in that, I’ve spent this week binge-listening to early seasons of Welcome to Night Vale, otherwise known as the original weird queer fiction podcast. (If you’ve never listened to it, you should! If you have, do it again!)
Night Vale straddles the middle of an extremely blurry venn diagram of horror, humor, speculative fiction, and the kind of literary punches that make you want to lay down on the floor and contemplate yourself, your life, and the nature of the universe. This week’s Friday Four is a collection of some of my favorite lines — and then some.
Let’s get started. 💜
your friday four!
four quotes to creep you out, make you think, and inspire your work
1.
How much attention do you pay to the people around you? How old do you remember being the first time you realized that other people had the same complex, messy, wondrous interiority as you do yourself? Have you ever found yourself thinking about someone you noticed only in passing, long after they disappeared? What made them stand out to you? Are you capable of recognizing the sparks of beauty even in people different from you in ideology, who might wish you harm? What does it cost to search for that recognition? What do you gain?
Prompt: This week, spend some time people-watching. Make an effort to see one beautiful thing about each person you notice. What is it like to watch the world around you through that lens? Create about it.
2.
How do you feel about change? How much of the life you live and the creative work you do a reflection of who you are right now, as opposed to the you of the past or the you of the future? How much time do you spend missing the person you used to be, or waiting to become the person you’ll be tomorrow? How do you feel about the person you are right now — not the milestones you’ve achieved or the money in your bank account, but your values, your beliefs, the way you treat others, the way you treat yourself? How is that reflected in your art?
Prompt: Write a letter to yourself from the perspective of someone doing the people-watching exercise above. What are the beautiful things about the you of this exact moment? What is it like to notice them? Create about it.
3.
What does the idea of perspective mean to you? How do you see yourself and your role in relationship to others — your loved ones, your community, the world? Does the importance of what you do depend on the influence you have? When you imagine the ripple effect of the actions you’ve taken and the works you’ve created throughout your life, how do you feel? Conversely: What is the smallest thing that has ever changed your life?
Prompt: Carl Sagan once said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” What universes had to come into existence in order for your creative works to exist? Create about it.
4.
What are the greatest factors limiting your creative abilities right now? Are there ways to work within them to find tiny moments of creative energy — writing a sentence instead of a page, sketching on a napkin instead of a canvas, singing in the car instead of onstage? How might those tiny moments add up to something magical? Do you believe creativity can exist independent of our awareness of the limited time we have in the world, or is that awareness part of what makes creative work so important? Does your work need to be permanent in order to matter?
Prompt: Imagine that you wake up tomorrow morning to discover you’ve become immortal. How would that change your life? Your goals? The work you do? What you find important in the world? Create about it.
