Be Useless and Love Other People
On Art, Writing, and Interdependence
Hi y’all,
I hope you’ve been holding up all right. Like many people I know, I feel like I’ve been dealing with the election results in a steadier, less stricken way than in 2016. Something down the line is bound to wreck me, and when that happens I plan on letting myself be a mess. So if you happen to be a mess now, that’s probably what you need to be.
As for myself, I’m finding the need for more counter-culture, less popular culture. Current events are not helping with my own deep-seated mistrust of popular opinion and so-called common wisdom. What I’ve been gravitating to do feels in many ways antithetical to what many of us have been told to do. I just want to be useless and love other people.
Yes, I’m donating. Yes, I’m pissed and sad. But unlike last time, I’m not in a hurry to read anything serious. Back in 2017, I was invited to a panel at a local bookstore in Chicago about what we should be reading given the circumstances of those times. I brought with me my copy of Laila Lalami’s novel The Moor’s Account—a novel about the contagion and madness of imperialism—and Nell Irving Painter’s The History of White People—a work about the inherent fallacy of whitenesss.
Both of these excellent books helped me find a framework to more clearly understand the ascendance of my country’s right-wing populism. However, as I was on the panel, I noticed that nearly everyone on it (myself included) was recommending serious books. Like: deadly serious, sad, tragic books that will make you weep. Books that are grappling with some of the ugliest parts of the human experience. Books that are said to be necessary.
And that is true. These books are needed.
What felt left out of the conversation, in retrospect, was our collective need for levity, joy, humor, and solace. Those qualities give us nourishment in a time that is facing an avalanche of crises. It is those unserious qualities that have aided and nurtured people throughout incredible difficulty and suffering.
I was thinking about this before the election when, in the midst of collective anxiety, I kept hearing highly accomplished and successful writers downplay the power of