3x3: June 7, 2023

road tripping around California & reading modern classics

I spent May putting the fun in funemployment: running around to Utah for a music festival, San Diego to reunite with Nova for the first time after her year in France, then Mammoth for George’s & my annual Memorial Day weekend ski trip. I guess it’s time to get back to work, but goddamn! It’s been a good month. Here’s the best of it.

OLD (>20 years)

Is This It by The Strokes (2001) — I went back for The Strokes’ debut album after watching them play the last set of Saturday night at Kilby Block Party. It was sublime: an hour and a half long rollercoaster through their greatest hits, under stormy skies, in the hallucinatory spring wind of the Salt Lake Valley. George, Stu, and I threw all our stuff into a giant shrine we built with a few new festival friends, and we danced shirtless and freewheeling in the muddy grass, stomachs hot and bodies ferocious with untapped energy. When the Strokes played “Is This It?”, the first song of their entire discography, it felt like they understood so deeply what we were discovering anew — the unbearability of the mundane, the necessity of art to cope with it. Every time since that I’ve gone back for this album, I’ve recaptured some of that wistful and reckless spirit, and it has granted me cathartic release.

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin (1956) — Baldwin’s mastery of tense, teasing dialogue between characters who are pugnaciously flirting (without wanting to admit that they are) is timeless. And the climactic night when narrator David’s two romantic relationships both escalate, threatening to intersect, is so urgent I felt like I was holding my breath the whole time. I would be embarrassed that I hadn’t yet read this book if I weren’t so enthralled by the experience of reading it. 

Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler, edited by Thomas Frank & Matt Weiland (1997) — Whew! The Boston Phoenix already said the best thing I can say about this book in 1997: “Combative and aggressively erudite.” Commodify Your Dissent is the anticonsumerist manifesto I needed, written with the scathing exasperation of writers unimpressed by the passing glamor of cultural trends manufactured by cynical marketers. It’s as brilliantly relevant today as I’m sure it was then; a meticulous, hilarious takedown of every way Americans substitute consumer goods for such vital intangibles as community, identity, philosophy, and politics. 

The Strokes at Kilby Block Party, courtesy of “sicksauce” on Reddit, who apparently was sitting pretty in the Super VIP section. Not pictured, sadly, is the vortex of GA ticketholders running around in a giant, frenzied circle to “Juicebox” — a favorite moment of a phenomenal night.

NEW (<1 month)

KAYTRAMINÉ by KAYTRAMINÉ (May 19) — Summer! Party! Album! Aminé talks a lot of shit for someone who hasn’t been relevant since 2019, but he is clearly having a lot of fun on here. Described by Pitchfork as “a soundtrack for the young, dumb, and full of cum,” the album can certainly get a little corny (I’m sorry, Aminé, but you’re not “one of the few men who know where the clit is”). But it’s also brimming with exciting guest stars, including Big Sean and Snoop Dogg. Amaarae’s presence on “Sossaup” is especially welcome, with her elfin voice and cheeky delivery (“Oh, I think he a slut!”).

Past Lives (June 2) — A mesmerizing, mostly autobiographical story of a Korean playwright living in New York, whose childhood sweetheart comes to visit several years into her marriage to her white American husband. It’s like a rom-com for the emotionally mature, a love triangle that cherishes its component connections and wants them to coexist. But most impressive is the actors’ raw sense of presence. Past Lives is full of scenes of long, intimate looking — two characters taking each other in, teetering on the precipice of saying how they really feel — and in those charged silences lies the film’s nervy soul.

“The Limits of David Foster Wallace” by Isabel, Twitter’s @_unwell (May 25) — A wry and thoroughly considered essay on reading DFW while mentally ill and seeking salvation in literature more broadly. I love reading writers who clearly have much more to say than can be contained in a single piece, and this essay frequently expands beyond its borders, alluding to other versions of itself, other lives unlived. The hyperlinks alone generate a fascinating reading list I’m excited to dig into more deeply, including Sarah Brouilette’s “Neoliberalism and the Demise of the Literary.”

Another critically viable takeaway from Past Lives might be: Greta Lee (right) is really cool, and all I want is to be her.

OFFLINE

La Jolla Cove, San Diego — or any place along the California coast where seals and sea lions congregate on the rocks TO REST! (So says the informational plaque.) It is shockingly engrossing to watch them flop around; Nova and I spent an hour and a half pointing to different funny ones. The harbor seals in particular are gorgeous, velvety creatures, dappled with watery rings in shades of silver and gold. Watching the babies play in shallow water is delightful, as is watching the old farting grandpas croon at the crashing waves. A beautifully unobtrusive alternative to zoos!

Hilltop Hot Springs, Mammoth Lakes — A free, public hot spring built out with concrete walls and a bench, as well as valves with which to adjust the temperature. Plus it comes with panoramic views of the Sierras and the White Mountains, surrounding BLM land you can camp on for up to two weeks, no sulfur smell, and no expectation you will be wearing clothes. One of my favorite haunts in California.

Dinner parties, every week — In an attempt to create a kind of secular sabbath, George and I have been hosting weekly dinner parties of varying size and casualness since March. It’s the ultimate high effort–high reward activity: The daylong ritual of cleaning, shopping, cooking, and gathering, which seemed at first like a lot to squeeze into every week, has become a rich source of solace, a reminder that carving out time for friendship, shared presence, and pure sensory delight is always worthwhile.

The path to Hilltop Hot Spring. This is just the same picture from the 3x3 grid above, but it really can’t be emphasized enough: If you can get your butt to Mammoth, put it in this hot spring.

BONUS: What’s on hold at the library?

Don Quixote, translated by Edith Grossman because someone on r/books who claimed to have "read everything there is to read about Don Quijote on this sub” said that’s the best translation, and Emma Cline’s latest novel, The Guest, which I suspect I’ll never get the chance to read, given that I am currently in hold position #103.

With love,

Izzy