Something New For Me

And for you?

I feel like “I made a thing!” is one of those solidly cringey millennial phrases that get you cancelled these days by the youths (RIP “adulting,” not that I actually ever said that), so let me say instead that I am thrilled to unveil a new, first-of-its-kind-for-me collaboration with the great Anastasio Home. To wit: we have made a collection of marble vessels. They are substantive, and sense-oriented (in that they all feel really good in your hands, with real heft and body to them), and they happened because Gabbi, the lovely AH founder, asked me, and rather than talking myself out of it, I just said yes, actually, I’m looking for something I can go over the top with. Literally. I love an abundant arrangement, and I am perpetually annoyed at vases that get too crowded at the neck (injuring the flowers), but still look skimpy if they’re not stuffed-to-the-brim, or which require you to create a wasteful tape grid thing to arrange stems how you want. These help splay stems and stalks in a way that feels artful and intentional, which in my house is always a plus. And they look great empty, too. (Because who among us has not had one of those days where they absolutely can’t be bothered to go and buy flowers?)

The big tulip vase has eight inflections around the mouth, because eight has always felt like an important number to me, as well as in lots of different cultures and various numerological discussions, and because they help disperse stems and branches in a really fetching way. And then as a result, once carved, the whole thing came out looking like a giant tulip itself. Don’t you love when something you make surprsies you? It reminds you how important it is to surrender.

Anyways, I’m really thoroughly thrilled with them, and you can find them on ModaOperandi for the next month or so and here for the long haul. But in the meantime, we can say that I brought you flowers either way.

Hopefully not for the last time.

Onward! To the rest of the recommendations!

Here is a heart-wrenchingly beautiful essay: ‘We Were Hungry’ by Chris Dennis (Astra). Whatever you think about McDonalds—it’s been awhile since I really had it, but the Happy Meal of my childhood holds a place in my heart, as does that tall striped waxy cup full of Diet Coke and ice cubes beading sweat on a road trip—after this essay you’ll consider the golden arches in an entirely new way. I know I have. But don’t take my word for it, here’s how it begins:

Dear McDonald’s—

When I called my friend Amy to try to explain why I was writing this letter to you, she asked, “Are you trying to say that a marginal life will always unfold in a marginal place?” To which I responded, “God, Amy, yes.” So then I called my friend Heather, who knows more about the design of commercial spaces, and she said, “Have you heard about the third place theory?” She said, “A third place is a place that is not home and not work but still wants us to stay awhile, to feel, even, a sense of belonging while we are there. It can be a library or a coffee shop or a bookstore or even a McDonald’s.” And I had to ask, “What is a third place when a person has no first or second place?”

McDonald’s — when my sister and I were homeless and addicted to methamphetamines and difficult to love, you let us in. Or rather your employees let us in. When we lied and said you’d gotten our order wrong, even though no order had actually been placed, you knew we were lying and fed us anyway. Was this a strategy devised in a boardroom, an attempt at warm brand association? We lied to you over and over, but it was your policy to believe us even when no one else would. You did ask, once, to see a receipt when we wanted too much. You looked at us, exhausted, from behind the black touch screen and said, “We can give you the ten McChickens but not the three Big Mac Meals.” You were setting boundaries with love. Is this what love looks like? we wondered. Neither of us was able to recognize it. But we felt the truth in our hardly there bodies and said, “Okay.” We took the food with desperate gratitude and walked along the highway, passing the paper bag between us. Later, while my sister waited outside with her new boyfriend, I injected drugs in your bathroom. One of your employees came and knocked on the stall door and I said I’d be out soon. “Thank you,” he said. “You’re welcome,” I said. Afterward, too high to even speak, I cupped my hands under the ice machine. The cubes dripped between the gaps of my fingers as I walked — annihilated — out the door into the parking lot, where the sun bounced off the hoods of a dozen Ford Focuses.

Also good for you: some gummy vitamins/supplements that are delicious, minority owned, and I think are helping? Do we even know with gummy vitamins? I’m not a doctor. YET. But it’s these: Do Try Well gummies. I was influenced by my friend’s IG story and bought in bulk. I’ve been loving the Immunity, Omega 3, and Ashwaganda, but they’ve got all sorts of things going. They taste like fruit snacks. Heaven.

A strange, lyrical, lovely, funny, surprisingly moving television show you probably missed (because I nearly did too): Mrs Davis. This show is both nearly impossible to explain in a way that will make it sound appealing and one of my favorite things that I’ve watched in months. Betty Gilpin stars as a nun on a mission in a not-so-distant future/present in which everyone is quite happily operating at the whim of an all-knowing A.I. named Mrs. Davis. (In the U.K. she’s called “Mum,” in Italy, “Madonna,” you get the drift.) As the NYT put it: “It’s got swashbuckling nuns; rogue magicians; the pope (and certain higher-ranking religious figures); a “Hands on a Hardbody” contest involving a giant model of Excalibur; a secret society of bankers; a plan that requires getting a whale to swallow a human being; a falafel restaurant in another dimension; and an island castaway named Schrodinger who, of course, has a cat.”

Does that sound like there’s too much going on? I swear it’s wonderful. (Damon Lindelof, of Lost, is one of the creators, in case that helps. If it hurts, he’s only the Executive Producer and co-writer, the showrunner was Tara Hernandez.) I laughed a lot, and found it really unexpectedly moving about matters of faith and Christianity, too. (Not least because it’s a literal grail quest.) And it’s got a really charming actor, Jake McDermott, who I hadn’t seen since Greek (! This either means a lot to you or nothing at all), who is among the deep and layered cast (David Arquette! Chris Diamantopoulos [from Silicon Valley]! Margo Martindale! It goes on!).

If you’re looking for something more engaging than Love Is Blind (and no judgment if you’re not, I know everyone has been sick lately and I am all caught up…) or RHOSLC (and who are we kidding, that show is firing on all cylinders right now and I would love to talk about it): try it! I think you’ll be glad you did.

And SPEAKING of A.I.! Two years ago, Vauhini Vara used A.I. to help write a beautiful essay about processing grief for The Believer. It’s since been held up of proof of A.I.’s possibility in creative enterprises. She’s written a recent follow-up piece for Wired about what, exactly, that’s meant, and what it means for her going forward:

When the essay, called “Ghosts,” came out in The Believer in the summer of 2021, it quickly went viral. I started hearing from others who had lost loved ones and felt that the piece captured grief better than anything they’d ever read. I waited for the backlash, expecting people to criticize the publication of an AI-assisted piece of writing. It never came. Instead the essay was adapted for This American Life and anthologized in Best American Essays. It was better received, by far, than anything else I’d ever written.

I thought I should feel proud, and to an extent I did. But I worried that “Ghosts” would be interpreted as my stake in the ground, and that people would use it to make a case for AI-produced literature. And soon, that happened. One writer cited it in a hot take with the headline “Rather Than Fear AI, Writers Should Learn to Collaborate With It.” Teachers assigned it in writing classes, then prompted students to produce their own AI collaborations. I was contacted by a filmmaker and a venture capitalist wanting to know how artists might use AI. I feared I’d become some kind of AI-literature evangelist in people’s eyes.

I knew I wasn’t that—and told the filmmaker and the VC as much—but then what did I think about all this, exactly? I wasn’t as dismissive of AI’s abilities as other people seemed to be, either.

Some readers told me “Ghosts” had convinced them that computers wouldn’t be replacing human writers anytime soon, since the parts I’d written were inarguably better than the AI-generated parts. This was probably the easiest anti-AI argument to make: AI could not replace human writers because it was no good at writing. Case closed.

The problem, for me, was that I disagreed.

And here’s one more good essay, for good measure: This one’s about how Jeffrey Eugenides unlocked his creative potential, and The Virgin Suicides, in honor of its 20th anniversary.  

Okay. That’s all for now. I hope you have the most wonderful weekend, and let me know what you think, of the vessels, or anything else. I always love to hear from you. xo