3x3ish: October 22, 2023
music, music writing, one single movie; also, a museum, a mountain, a very silly moon
Hello! Truly hilarious that I started this “monthly” column, wrote it for two months, and then got lost in the chaos of life and haven’t posted since. But happy to be back—it’s been a tremendously fulfilling summer, and I have lots to share with you.
First up: as of this weekend, the essay I have been working on for two whole months is live! It’s about trying to quit Spotify in pursuit of a more deliberate listening life: chafing at algorithms, chasing CDs, and ultimately getting swept away by two sources of unexpected joy: online radio and bootleg live performances. I’ve spent more time writing this year than I ever have, in many different mediums (some more thrilling than others), but writing this essay was a real dream come true.
Clownable as the form is, I care a lot about the braided critical-lyrical-personal essay, and I also really fucking love writing it. A bottomless well of gratitude goes out to
for being the Platonic ideal of an editor. Having such hands-on support (Jay devoted hours to talking me through my pitch & my revisions over the phone!) combined with complete creative autonomy (Who else would let me spend 1000 words on YouTube ekphrasis?) was … unprecedented.I’ve been thinking a lot about Issa Rae’s 2021 commencement speech, where she talked about how Insecure was “made possible not by any mentors or connections to the industry; it was made by tapping into the people sitting next to me at one point.” Working with Jay has been such thrilling evidence that the most driven & interesting work will come out of collaborating with peers who are thinking expansively about the potential of art & writing, whose editorial visions are not limited by tradition but instead keen to build new niches. Can’t stop gushing about how it feels to write this way—not to a media formula, but toward my own specific interests, as refined through long debates and discussions with my dear friends. Thank you to
& too! Amazing to work with an outlet with such omnivorous interests & dedicated readers; I’ve never had so many kind comments to respond to!Since June, I’ve also moved to Brooklyn, written about Barbenheimer for the Wall Street Journal, talked about my Gen Z sex lives feature on CNN, and started working at The Paris Review, which has been such a literary utopia I can’t even get started here, otherwise I’ll never get around to recommendations. In short, I’m very happy & thankful to be hard at work on art & ideas I care deeply about. And now excited to share a few of those with you!
I’ll keep the blurbs brief (mostly) since the intro was long, but admittedly these categories (mostly) have more than 3 recs…it’s been a big summer with no shortage of art & culture to consume! Heeeeeere goes:
OLD (≥20 years)
“Fruits of My Labor” by Lucinda Williams (2003) & the cover by Margaret Glaspy: Margaret is maybe the artist of my life, the musician I most associate with growing into myself. She covered the soulful “Fruits of My Labor” as her encore at the Bowery Ballroom the other night & I proceeded to loop the original song (& the cover by Waxahatchee) the whole half-hour journey home.
Do the Right Thing, directed by Spike Lee (1989): As brilliant now as it was then, as it was four years ago when it turned thirty, if not more pressing now that Bed-Stuy is overrun by Airbnbs. Elegant in its balance of moral clarity & ambiguity; full of striking tableaux & sharp side characters.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937): A novel I felt fine about until the last 30 pages, when I realized it was perfect. A story that gathers into a thrilling, devastating, inevitable climax that makes you realize why it mattered all along? Impossible to find these days, & therefore especially enriching.
Oh, Inverted World by The Shins (2001): Scratchy yearning all the way through, kooky titles like “Know Your Onion!”, swells of autoharp & harmonica—my secret favorite of all my new CDs.
NEW (≤4 months, aka since the last time I wrote this column, lol)
“California Gothic” by Andrew Marzoni at The Baffler (August 22): This has everything I care about … California cultural history, literary criticism about music, alt pop stars’ constructed personas, latent noir inside the sunshine. Also deep, deep props to my beloved Baffler for allowing Andrew to write whole paragraphs of Lana Del Rey-themed lists; I hope he got paid at least $1/word.
The Window by Ratboys (August 25): Now this is a fucking rock album, except also it’s got this gorgeous country twang? Plus a lead singer that sounds like Adrianne Lenker & an endless supply of orgiastic, ecstatic guitar. So mad I missed them in New York in September.
“Supportive Husband” by Liam Sherwin-Murray (September 12): From the latest issue of The Paris Review. I wanted to hate the narrator but couldn’t because the story is just too compelling. Love/hate when that happens. Let it happen to you!
OFFLINE
The International (?) Sea Glass Museum in Fort Bragg, CA: I was so moved by this little museum, a donation-based array of sea glass & other marine debris with display cases sorting sea glass by color (purple is the rarest!) and source (Coke bottles, wine stoppers, etc.). Most of it comes from nearby Glass Beach, which used to be a landfill/local informal dump site that was “perpetually on fire,” until the tumbling power of the ocean transformed it into a beach comprised of more sea glass than sand. There’s a strangely lovely interplay between human industrial activity and natural adaptation happening here—sea glass is the beautiful result of their mutually destructive collaboration. But on top of that, there is the community that has sprung up around glass hunting: Captain Cass Forrington, who owns the museum, features his friends’ books on beachcombing, as well as parts of their own sea glass collections, around the gallery, and it feels like what a museum should be—not a colonial archive built on cultural ransacking, but a pooling of beauty not meant to be privately hoarded. And what is more poignant than people reveling in the byproducts of their ecosystem, altered as it is? I love people who bring their love of nature to whatever wedge of the world they live in, however urbanized it has become: sea glass, park grass, peppers growing on the fire escape; our thirst for gorgeousness ever unquenched.
Speaking of beauty! Pinot gris poetry at Fog Bottle Shop & Wine Bar in Mendocino:
Speaking of urban enjoyment of activities we think of as better suited to the wild: Biking in New York is the best thing that has ever happened to me? Serotonin injection every single time. Thank you Dad for my $100 bike from 2009.
Mt. Motherfucking Whitney! A magical, magical mountain that made me shit twice on its trail (and pack them both out in the same wag bag … don’t text). Every time I relearn the resilience of putting one foot in front of the other, I feel my most alive, sucking up every second for all it’s worth. Hike this baby & bring sugar <3
CRIT with Tony Tulathimutte: If you miss being in workshop, apply to this!! Aimed at fiction/nonfiction; Tony’s taking apps for a January in-person (Brooklyn) session until November 30 & a March online (Zoom) session until January 31. It’s been awesome. Had a happy hour with my new fiction friends yesterday and I’m still basking in it—how revitalizing to talk books with the unencumbered passion of the as-yet-unpublished :)
With lots & lots of love,
Izzy