Signs of Life

If you hate change, try moving

Welcome to the last Friday of 2024, and the first Surfacing.

I was about to say that I’m terrible with change, then I thought about it and decided I’m good with change. Then I thought about it again and realized the changes I’ve struggled with the most have been ones I was forced into, or lacked the resources to adapt to, or reinforced hierarchies that I find cruel and despair-inducing. I hate those!

So anyway, I moved from New York to Los Angeles and I’m living with my mom. That’s the short version of the 22 drafts of this newsletter sitting on my hard drive from the last few months. I’m very lucky and grateful to have had a place for a crash landing, but hooboy there is a lot to unpack, in all senses of the term. I feel like a completely different person—which may not be a bad thing, because I very much did not like the person I was towards the end of my time in New York—who is also in an alien landscape where the damn sun insists on shining.

Yes the weather is this ridiculous, and yes, that is my finger.

My old tools and habits and coping mechanisms mostly don’t work here, and there are some very big challenges alongside the hefty set of problems I brought with me. But I’m being forced into thoughtfulness and self-kindness about how I address these challenges, a mode of being that’s very new to me.

This is a sort-of pat analogy, but there is that thing about how moving your body can cause changes in your brain. People who make themselves smile become cheerful*, people who go for walks and realize that they are capable of forming a plan and then executing it. In the aftermath of a terrible breakup, a therapist once suggested I watch some mainstream Hollywood movies, so I could experience closure, even at a superficial level. My brain definitely needs to change, so this move is an act of self-belief as much as it is a reaction to despair. There’s also some belief in brain neuroplasticity, modern medicine, outdoor gyms, and various flavors of woo-woo shit, which I claim proudly as an Angeleno.

*I realize there are horrendous things about being forced to smile. I believe the studies are in reference to people choosing to smile without coercion.

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The Basquiat wheel in 1987

I went to see Luna Luna, the partial recreation of a 1987 art amusement park I mentioned in a previous newsletter. Absolutely stunning, and I know it’s expensive, but if you’re in LA or it comes to your town, go, if only to see the exquisitely pointed racial realities that make up Basquiat’s Ferris Wheel, Arik Brauer’s cheerfully weird carousel, and Rebecca Horn’s Love Thermometer.

If you can’t go, or even if you can, I highly recommend Tamra Davis’s Basquiat film, “Radiant Child.” It’s not a fancy biopic or an art history explainer on his life, but a deeply personal portrait made by a filmmaker who knew and loved the artist.

The other amazing thing about Luna Luna is that its Los Angeles location is right by the 6th street bridge, site of THEE iconic chase scene in To Live and Die in LA!!!!!!!!

Bill Peterson driving his undercover cop car into the LA River with the old 6th Street viaduct in the background

There are many movies that really depict LA, but this one…. You’ve really got to see it to believe it. I emailed my friend Anna approximately twenty ecstatic paragraphs about it when I realized we were going to be in the area.

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Crenshaw Dairy Mart opening

In and out lists are ridiculous but I kind of love them. The imperiousness! I belatedly read Alexis Wilson’s list for 2022, which is incredible, and felt inspired, so here’s mine.

IN

Cease-fires

Seeking fertile ground

The Pacific Ocean

Mending your clothes and wearing them until they fall apart

Caring about movies

Hunter Schafer as Elsa Schiaparelli

Art spaces grounded in community

Working with friends

Saying “Let’s hang out” and then actually doing it

Listening to the radio

Consistency

Hobbies that do not result in personal growth

OUT

Activism practices grounded in social hierarchies

Movies about dolls

Investment in white women achieving what white men have

Trying to look wealthy and calling it personal style

Founders

Upgrades

Perfection

Comparison

Avoiding instead of apologizing

“I didn’t want to say anything” in situations where you absolutely should have said something and you know it

Playlists

Talking about exercise

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“Baba in Picture Album,” Farah Al Qasimi, 2017

There is so much more to say. Israel committing genocide. There are Nazis on Substack. And the usual art, movies, and trying to be a good person. I’m eternally grateful to all of you who subscribe and read and sometimes even respond. Until next week, here are some links. Post your ins and outs in the comments!

• Reading Fariha Roisin’s unflinching daily anger and sorrow as a Palestinian living in the United States is one of the great privileges and deepest senses of shame any of us can feel.

• Anna Fusco recently wrote in her incredible newsletter Unsupervised“I wonder if the very idea that we should be able to pick and choose when we give our attention to atrocity stems from the same sense of separation that makes us feel helpless to stop it.” We continue to pretend that some life is more important than others, when Never Again, should mean Never Again for anybody.

• The British seaside simulator.

• I’ve been thinking a lot about Faith Wilding’s Crocheted Environment.

• I take a burner to most protesty things I go to, but this digital self defense piece is really good.

I cannot bring myself to proofread or edit it any further so I am hitting send, take as it comes, with love :)