Unfinished Things

The every day and the experimental

Jul 28, 2024

Dear Reader

In the spirit of loosening up a bit with getting my newsletters out I am leaning into the notebook feeling that appeals to me about having a newsletter.

The jotting down of thoughts, even incomplete ones.

The noting of ideas, the things I’ve seen and liked and will come back to.

The bits and pieces, the fragments. The moments that caught my attention, but without getting my full analysis, yet. The things I am half-starting, half-thinking and using without finishing.

It is still pretty hectic here, but life is getting more manageable as the bulk of my work milestones are now being reached. To everything there is a season. And, the season of slowing down is finally coming to me. Some other things in my life look a little closer to resolution and I feel kind of hopeful again. With winter, the heat has eased, and I am out walking more and for longer distances. The garden has slowed down. Books I ordered long ago have finally arrived and I have read them. Medical check-ups have been faced and cleared. I have caught my emotions better and been less reactive in hostile moments. Household budgets have been made; responsibilities better shared. Streaming services and subscriptions have been pared back to those which we have the time to give our attention. I have spoken up better for what I need. I have tried less, waited more. And, I have practiced the art of letting go. More and more, less and less.

To live long, live slowly - Cicero.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

I wish more people posted 
every day. 
Stuff from their writing
projects or art in process
or just ordinary, experimental,
unfinished 
things they're doing, obsessed with,
or into or thinking about.
I LOVE seeing how people
do life. The messy + the specific to them.
Way more than I like seeing only
the perfect or final or finished
thing.
These are the people I look forward to +
excited about when they post -
it doesn't have to knock
my socks off every day.
I like seeing their process + where they're at 
                                                             with it in life. 

- Allyson Dinnen, author of Notes From Your Therapist

“Fun is as complex as misery”

In the mood for something silly, but also, really interesting? I recommend this episode of The Blindboy Podcast, which is known for being an eclectic show of short fiction, interviews and comedy, and all with that lovely Irish accent. In this episode he has Grayson Perry (a favourite of mine) on for a conversation about class, culture and taste.

Notes From My Journal

I have a close friend who looks like Tilda Swinton. She must be a wonderful person to date. She is so good at romance, even with friends.

Tilda will text me and spontaneously invite me for a glass of whiskey on a picnic rug in a field at night. She will walk into an ordinary suburban pub and say look at that view of those trees, I bet the full moon looks good out there. She will say, maybe that can be our thing, we meet here every month for a drink on the full moon, so we don’t ever lose touch with one another.

Me to my fifteen-year-old son: You are all energy and no help.

Me: If the bins aren’t done when I get back, I am turning the internet off!

Husband: He won’t care, he’s reading a book.

Me: …..

Husband (laughing): We’ll have to burn his books. Teach him a lesson.

Me, on our holiday in South Australia and searching my phone for a bar: God, nothing opens until 5 o’clock.

Husband: There must be something.

Son (rolling his eyes): Won’t someone think of the tourists.

My nineteen-year-old daughter returned from her solo trip to Vietnam talking about a new dish she had tried and loved. It is called dậu sốt cà chua. She was supposed to cook it for us one evening, but lying stretched out on my couch, she told me she was “just too tired to cook”. I had a go making it. Apparently, I didn’t get it quite right, but everyone ate the whole thing.

My daughter visited my father overseas. They got on famously. As she was leaving, he said to her, “bring your mother back, please”.

What If We Started Economic Policy Making with an Acceptance of People’s Attachment to Place?

I have been thinking a lot about politics lately. Mostly, because of the American election, but also one closer to home coming up shortly. What will it take to have urgently necessary progressive policy embraced in a time when the population is so incredibly polarised? And in exploring this, do we understand the nature of our differences enough?

Note the contrast with the small cohort of upper-class Americans with college degrees and the highest incomes, who see the American dream more in terms of going as far as their talents and hard work take them than as either supporting a family or even getting married and raising children. They prefer having both parents work full-time and using paid child care full-time, and regard the chance for their children to pursue postsecondary education that would offer “the best possible career options but was far from home” as more desirable than one that would offer “good career options close to home.” All other groups said they preferred the latter.
The same pattern repeats itself on issue after issue. While policy initiatives so often seek to maximize efficiency and growth, move people to opportunity and redistribute from the economy’s winners to the losers, the typical American has an attachment to place, a focus on family, a commitment to making things, and would accept economic trade-offs in pursuit of those priorities.
Public education devotes disproportionate resources to getting students into and through college as compared to the other pathways most ultimately take. But an American Compass survey found that American parents say nearly three to one that the more important task should be to “help students develop the skills and values needed to build decent lives in the communities where they live,” compared with helping students “maximize their academic potential and pursue admission to colleges and universities with the best possible reputations.” Most would prefer to have their children offered three-year apprenticeships that lead to good jobs over full college scholarships.

This is a challenging article for me (“This is What Elite Failure Looks Like” in The New York Times) because I don’t share many of Oren Cass’ very conservative views, but I am interested in questioning my own assumptions. What really stood out for me in his essay was the significance of community to people - something I relate to deeply.

More about this is my next newsletter….

This House

Oh god, I love the Whitlam House (1957) in Cabramatta! Seen here at The Modernista:

“Gough Whitlam's home was intrinsically linked to his political life. As the Member of the Australian Parliament for Werriwa from 1952 to 1978, the home served as the backdrop to his service – constituents, seen approaching through the kitchen window as they walked up the driveway, were invited into the living or dining rooms to talk about their matters of concern. The home was a frequent host to political functions, celebrations of electoral victories, and sombre reflections on losses.”

What a nice description of accessibility as a politician.

Care, as in Long, Intense Periods of Connection

I really like this definition of ‘care’. Somehow, both liberating and honouring of the activity.

(My friend Andrea O’Reilly is, as usual, wonderful in her quotes). This excerpt below from “Scientists think they know why humans live so long: Moms” by Natalie Stechyson in CBC News.

Care, in this case, refers to the long, intense period of connection between mother and child that can influence the offspring's survival to have kids of their own.
Not the "hyper-vigilant, helicopter, enrol your kids in three programs by age six months kinds of stuff" that so many mothers already feel pressured to perform, said O'Reilly, who is known for establishing the academic discipline of motherhood studies and maternal theory.
"A lot of what we do in Western culture, at least in the last 30 or 40 years, is designated as care. Things mothers should and must do. But I would suggest that a lot of that has nothing to do with the care of children. It's all about performing good motherhood to mark you as a good mother," O'Reilly told CBC News.

Laurie Anderson’s 3 Rules to Live By

Don’t be afraid of anyone
Develop a good bullshit-detector.
Be really tender.

The second two I have been implementing for a very long time, but I am stopped in my tracks by the first rule. I keep thinking about what it would be like to live without fear of people. I really want to achieve this. Because, how much of my fear is genuine fear and how much is just anxiety1? (If you want to hear Laurie’s soothing voice saying these rules, then go here).

Worrying

Worrying is a thief of joy.

Worrying is a thief of time.

Worrying is a thief of peace.

Worrying is a thief of productivity.

Worrying is a waste of your imagination.

From We the Urban.

Photogenic

Christine Buzan on posing tips for how to get better photos of yourself. And, she is a middle-aged woman, so her tips are actually useful.

Relax I

Women celebrities who haven’t shaved their pits.

Relax II

The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself.

- Bill Murray

Relax III

Comedian, Marc Maron on not preparing.

How to Visit a Place

I am trying to learn much more about the places I visit before I arrive, particularly in relation to the kinds of pressures those places are facing, and how to be a better tourist to them. Here’s a starter for that conversation about tourism-phobia at the ABC.

How to See a Place

Most of us are lucky to see Paris once in a lifetime. Make the most of it by doing as little as possible. Walk a little, get lost a bit, eat, catch a breakfast buzz, have a nap, try and have sex if you can, just not with a mime. Eat again. Lounge around drinking coffee. Maybe read a book. Drink some wine, walk around a bit more, eat, repeat. See? It’s easy.

- Anthony Bourdain

Shit Cafes

I started avoiding beautiful places

as they attracted people.

Too many people:

The seaside

Botanic gardens

Quaint country towns…

So, I started going to shit cafes,

sat in back alleyways.

Until the shit cafes closed down

because no one was going

- Darby Hudson

Diaristic

From Pamela Adlon (creator of Better Things) in conversation with Lena Dunham (creator of Girls) at The Interview:

DUNHAM: People often mistake things that are personal for things that are diaristic and don’t realize the intensity of the structure and cinema. I know this because I know you. The level of structure and vigor and specificity and vigilance that you put into it is next level. But what made you want this to be the one?
ADLON: Well, I so appreciate that word “diaristic” because it felt so authentic and natural and my style.
DUNHAM: Cassavetes if he could nail a punchline.
ADLON: There you go. Better Things sometimes would get overlooked or just relegated to a place where it’s like, “Oh, but that’s your life.” I’m like, “Do you know how fucking hard it is to put this nuance and these layers and to create–”
DUNHAM: And to structure it.
ADLON: Like, this is not a reality show, bro. This is fucking hard work.
DUNHAM: It’s not The Osbournes. You’re making these incredibly specific choices and you’re building it. I think you and I both experienced it. Before I started making movies after Girls, people would say to me, “Have you ever directed before?” Because people were so focused on the idea that Girls was some direct reflection of what was happening in my bedroom that they forgot that that was actually my work as a person who cares about cinema.

Naked While Ageing

What was your aim in these works?
I was interested in showing and creating an image that women could respond to as an erotic image without raising issues of shame and dismay like pornography does or did.
Don’t you think that some women also enjoyed being fetishized?
There wasn’t a woman that didn’t look in the mirror and say, oh, I’m too big here, or too small. They wouldn’t say that if they were the Barbie doll image that was given to us. When I took pictures of myself, it wasn’t that I felt that I was a beautiful woman that wanted to have my beauty displayed as a seductive image; just the reverse. I wanted a real person to be seen, a body that was imperfect, a body that was still sensual, even though it was imperfect; it was not a fetishized object that men made of a woman’s body but rather a human person that they could love. They only saw it as that other kind of thing, which I found offensive and also demoralizing to women. The reason that I used my own body was because I did not want to objectify another woman, especially since I was going to be doing women with all their imperfections. And that it would be unfair to somebody else without their permission. Also, I couldn’t afford models at the time, so I was always available.

From “I Wanted a Real Person to Be Seen”: Joan Semmel on Her 60 Year Career Painting the Female Form - For the Female Gaze in artnet by Marta Gnyp.

Semmel’s paintings of herself as an older woman are definitely my favourite of hers. Amazing.

Are you ok with nude art in your newsletters? Let me know, as I can adjust if not.

blue milk

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