A birthday and strolling through some reviews
A birthday happened and also, some panic. I write reviews for books and other things when the creative well is low. But first, cake.
My daughter turned thirty-three on Sunday. These are the events that grabs you and pulls you down to earth, strangles and demands to know what you’ve done with your life as everything around you got older.
“I’ve done stuff! Important stuff!”
Yeah? Prove it, old man.
I point to my daughter and her brother and their kids.
Not good enough. It’s never good enough, so I start scrolling through my phone and project files, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of moments lived that don’t amount to anything of commercial value. Has this much time already passed? Why is it so hard to build a portfolio of all these important moments?
I stop trying to reconstruct and justify my life for a moment, to catch my breath, then decide I’m going to focus on one thing to center myself. Here is my attempt before the house got all noisy with grandkids, laughter, food and cake.
It seems you can’t buy anything these days without the retailer hounding you for a review, even mundane things like a bag of potato chips. Most people see these requests as an annoyance, but I see them as an opportunity to sharpen the writing chops! And to mix a metaphor or two…
Go ahead, review that bag of chips from a different POV. How did your mouth taste the chips? How did your blood vessels react from the infusion of salt? Did your tummy welcome the chips or did it show them the door in the rudest way possible?
Write that review.
But these are not that. These are a few reviews I’ve written for books and one music LP I re-discovered in a rabbit hole I went down on Sunday morning in a house that was still too quiet.
The Modern Salonniére by Saxon Henry
A map will take you far, but a story will take you farther. Pair a story with a map and you will get lost in the most delightful places. In her latest collection of essays, The Modern Salonnière, Saxon Henry leads you beyond the places pinned on the maps, into stories and places that were always there for you to discover, hidden in plain sight. Henry has a flair for description that plunges the reader into a visceral experience — the rolling motion of a train as it lumbers upstate, the wafting scent of baking bread and brewing coffee just inside the door of a cafe in Paris, the hot nights of an African plain, the thrill of discovery from a stolen dalliance — you literarily feel these on your skin, in the recesses of your chest and the swelling of your veins. As you turn the last page, you’ll realize you got lost in time and space, having walked forty leagues through literary history without leaving your chair. You will be exhausted, but ache to board Henry’s next book.
Heavy Traffic by Sarah Wilson-Blackwell
Sarah’s book, is as funny as it is informative. She delivers what promises to be a dry, boring, mundane, pedantic subject in a delightfully light, deadpan cadence.
Her irreverent, snarky tone is a delight with every turn of the page, leading the reader further down the rabbit hole of her brain.
If her goal was to merely sell a book, she would have already succeeded. Once the reader has turned the first page, however, she has further succeeded in dragging them into a world she views a little off-kilter from the obvious and into the subtle shadows the light creates. There is no option for the reader to escape other than to power through to the end.
The reward is a curiosity, not simply about SEO, but about the connection of disparate things. You will emerge with odd questions you need to know the answer to, like the wheelbase of a cat.
I googled “what is the wheelbase of a cat” and oddly, I got no results. There are other things people measure on their cat, like neck size, chest girth, etc, but in the entirety of the existence of the human race, it appears nobody has ever measured the wheelbase of a cat.
And the SEO keyword “wheelbase of a cat” has not been indexed in Google.
Until now.
Buy her book. Keep the curiosity about your world alive. (Sarah also has a Substack. I’ve also had wayyyy too much fun with this review 😀)
Sometimes I review music. I’m not very good at it mostly because I don’t have the vocabulary of music theory, so I feel like an imposter. But I try for my friends.
I want to do your hair, an LP by Geino Äotsch
“Come, sit in my chair,” he beckons with his sexy baritone voice, accompanied by the not-so-subtle techno beats that hit on the accentuated, drawn out request.
“I want to do your hair.”
You comply. He has already enthralled you with a sound you’ll never be able to wash out of your hair. But you don’t care; it’s an aural salve you want to soak into your follicles, beyond your bones and grip your heart.
As he lowers your ears, he lowers your pulse. You start to dream and sway, but not above your waist; he needs you to keep that still as he does your hair.
But still, you move.
I want to do your hair contains exactly one song, but you wouldn’t know it as there is an English version, then it’s sung in French and even more remixes to remind you that your hair — as you believe you know it and have worn it for years — is simply a canvass, a malleable medium in his hands. He can take the image you see in the mirror and remake you.
You can become anything just by remixing your own familiar song.
Bart’s New Home by Sarah Woodard
This is a short children’s book and on the surface, it is a story of a cute donkey who finds a new home. Hidden just underneath the “cute” though, are layers of existentialism; why do we exist? Who decides when we’re no longer useful? Who decides what useful is? Who decides normal? and a big one — at least for me — is normal ever static?
Bart’s story is a simple one, but it is an incredibly powerful one that forces an examination of what “normal” is and how we should view normal in others. It also prompts a deep examination of the value of an individual life and how easily we can throw it away when it is perceived less than optimal.
Embedded in this story is a deep subtext of how we are all connected, that we owe each other the ability and willingness to see each other — truly see each other — and champion those who may not be being heard. In Bart’s case, being heard by the smallest among us saved his life and gave him a new purpose.
While you are browsing Sarah’s books, check out Callie’s Change.
These are my favorite reviews to write, when I casually mention something and it inspires someone to create a whole piece of art! (Not to mention drawing me as a handsome guy. ☺️) This work reminds me of the poem, The Arrow and the Song by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow which I have hanging above my desk.
I thought writing this newsletter would help get me out of the deep well I have fallen into, but it didn’t. Thank you for strolling along with me for a few moments. I hope it helped you, though, at least perhaps with a moment of distraction or inspiration.
I’d like to know how you pull yourself out of the well. Share with me. I’m also dying to read about your latest potato chip purchase.
Happy belated Birthday to your daughter!
You win in the description of a potato chip hands down.