New Mess, Old Mess, Messy Mess Mess [#159]

Is it just me or did March also feel endless, like January? I think I'm approximately 117 years old now.

Hello from LA,

There are so many reasons to despair. I am frazzled and frightened. I’m calling my reps nonstop, feeling like it’s futile, but trying anyway. I also haven’t written a dispatch in a bit, so I have lots of links piled up to share.

I spoke with the designer and podcaster Debbie Millman earlier this week, and she said something about how we have to hold onto one more unit of hope than shame, one more unit of hope than despair, and that’s historically been the only way humans have gotten through extremely difficult times. I learned just yesterday that Debbie and her partner, Roxane Gay, have acquired The Rumpus and will be taking it over soon, which is exciting, as I know they will be excellent stewards.

We passed the five year anniversary of the day everything shut down for COVID. What a panicked, confused time. I read this 2020 interview with Jia Tolentino from back then, and it holds up. It seems like we’re just as panicked and confused and fearful as we were then, only, now we don’t have public health officials left who believe in vaccines.

A letter I wrote to a stranger in Nebraska in the early days of COVID.

Early on in the that COVID vortex, I had extra postage stamps. And I decided to put a callout on social media for anyone who wanted a handwritten letter. So many responded that I wound up writing to strangers in almost all 50 states. Even a postman requested a letter! And they each wrote me back. I had forgotten about this episode until a few days ago, when my friend Eric mentioned it on his Instagram. It warmed my heart to go back and read the essay about those letters, and that time period. So I’m sharing it with you as we try to cling onto each other during our latest historic trauma: What I learned from writing letters to strangers across America, from May 2020.

Reading

Explaining the mystifying surrender of Americans and universities, law firms, businesses just going along with the Great Dismantling. The utter disregard for human life on display in that Signal chat leak. The flailing Democrats and their nonexistent online strategy.

Charley Johnson

on how the online manosphere is a demand side problem, and how demand side problems have longer staying power.

Kate Manne

on how the way Trump has treated Columbia University is straight out of the domestic abuse playbook.

Futurepolis

is a new free Substack about how democracy would look if we were inventing it today, featuring essays such as this one, on how ordinary Americans are going to have to lead the opposition to this regime. A deep dive on the brutal aesthetics of MAGA makeup. A surge of young people are interested in lavender marriages, and a TikToker even created an app for finding your lavender marriage partner. In this fraught time, Texans have HEB flour tortillas to cling to, and I want to try this cottage cheese pancake recipe.

Book on my nightstand: Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, by Sophie Gilbert. This is the book I wish I was a clear enough thinker and reporter to have written; it is extraordinary.

Werk Werk Werk

I’m continuing to pitch potential financiers and streamers on Windswept, the name of the fire aftermath documentary that I’m co-directing with Rufus Lusk at Cowboy Bear Ninja. It has a name! And we’ve been shooting on-and-off consistently with our “kids,” the four teens we’re following for this film. I’m grateful for those kids for giving my 2025 a sense of hope and meaning and purpose.

On TED Talks Daily, I had a really lovely conversation with author and anthropologist Rich Benjamin on forgiveness, storytelling and mining his own family’s trauma (his grandfather was briefly Haiti’s president). On Forever 35, I recommend our interviews with Nichole Hill on the lasting power of written gossip, and with Dr. Marissa Franco on how to be a better friend and how to strengthen our friendships by dealing with our own baggage.

My other news on this front is my producers have spiked my Flawless screenplay draft, because they didn’t like it and don’t want to do the work of revising it to get it to a place they like. Ugh. All in all, a very Hollywood experience in that you write a lot and put a bunch of energy into something and it doesn’t see the light of day. I have experienced the most common path for entertainment industry projects. But I get paid anyway, and the project lives on. What happens next is a search for another writer to try and adapt (or work from my outline for adaptation, which the producers DID like). So we’ll see!

Watch and/or Listen

Adolescence (Netflix): You are probably among the 25 million people who watched this gripping British four-part drama within its first week. But if you somehow missed it, I was at first disinclined to watch based on its logline (13-year old kid accused of murdering another kid), but when I did based on all the buzz, it astonished me. It is the best, most riveting TV I’ve seen in years, and it will stick with me, and likely stick with you.

Running Point (Netflix): For when you need a breather from the intensity and depth of feeling and nuance after watching Adolescence.

Our Ancestors Were Messy: A must listen podcast! Nichole Hill, a seasoned audio creative, made these episodes sound like old timey radio dramas, plucked from the gossip and personal pages of 100+ year old Black newspapers. True stories, juicy gossip, from ages ago.

What are you reading? What should I read? What are you doing to get through? Write me or leave a comment!

Until next time,

E