What the money is for
Hello, friends!
I've just had a wonderful weekend, and I think it was almost entirely accidental that it was so terrific. Maybe that isn't what I mean; maybe what I mean is that I didn't—none of us had to—try to make it wonderful. It just sort of effortlessly was nice.
I've been somewhat circumspect about the turbulence of this year, and I don't plan on sharing any more specific detail about it, but things didn't feel effortlessly nice for a while there. So a weekend like this...there's literally nothing I want more than a life filled with days like these.
As I'm beginning to write this post Sunday evening, I went prowling through my library of notes, and I came across a line I saved from a Mad Men episode:
There's a way out of this room we don't know about.
The episode is the exact midpoint of the entire series. Season 4, episode 7, "The Suitcase," written by Matthew Weiner and directed by Jennifer Getzinger. If you've heard of the show, or seen it mentioned on any best-of lists, there's a decent chance it's because of episodes like this one. "The Suitcase" is considered by many to be the best episode of the series, if not one of the best episodes of television ever.
The episode centers around Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), the creative director and the copywriter who pull an all-nighter, trying to crack a difficult ad idea. It's Peggy's birthday; she's supposed to be meeting her boyfriend for a special dinner. Don's already rejected every idea she and the rest of his team have pitched; he's intent that he and Peggy will solve this no matter how long it takes.
The resulting all-nighter tests and deepens the bonds between the two characters. After they've argued, yelled, stormed off and returned, tried in vain to come up with taglines and ad concepts, and gasped and giggled over one of the co-founder's freshly uncovered secrets, they're interrupted by a mouse. Peggy shrieks; Don chases it. The mouse disappears beneath a piece of furniture, never to be seen again.
Breathing hard, Don says to Peggy, "You know what? There's a way out of this room we don't know about."
Most of the episode takes place in Don's office. Even when the characters escape—to a diner for a middle-of-the-night meal, to a bar to listen to the Ali/Liston fight—they're driven back to the office (they spot bugs in the diner; the fight is over in no time at all).
There's a way out of this room we don't know about.
They're literally stuck in Don's office, two characters tethered to work. That dialogue almost certainly doesn't refer to the office, but to the box Don has found himself in. He's middle-aged, adrift, alcoholic—and across the country, the one person he believes knows his true self has died. Don feels utterly trapped in his circumstances, incapable of finding a way back to the person he was, or toward the person he wants to be.
There's a way out of this room we don't know about.
I'd seen the show multiple times through; it's one of my favorites. But when I watched it last year, that line of dialogue hit me differently. In my own way, I felt similarly: Forty-four years old. Shackled to work, with no clear purpose but to earn. I felt like any downtime I had could only be used for recuperation, not for my own creative fire. My projects weren't going well. I didn't believe in myself. I didn't think anyone else believed in me much, either. I felt simultaneously adrift and stuck. I couldn't see a way to ground myself, to unstick myself.
I want to relocate my fire, I wrote in my notes.
Nearly a year later, I've just come across that note, and I can hardly believe the difference between now and then. I think I've found my fire. Felicia notes that I'm happier than she's ever seen me, and I think that's true. There's something about surviving a hard thing—discovering you can, that you're able to do the necessary work—and then finding something greater on the other side that just sets you ablaze.
In the episode, of course, Don and Peggy really, truly need to get out of the room. The night wears on. There's a break-in; there's a fight. Don is brought low in front of Peggy, who mothers him through the remainder of the night. When the sun rises and Don faces his own hard moment, it wrings the last of his resistance out of him. He sends an exhausted Peggy home to change for work, but she doesn't go; she collapses on the couch in her office. Neither of them manages to get out of the room—well, the building—and that's maybe one of the core struggles of the show.
I think I found the way out of my room this year.
There's another line from the show that I jotted down. In the episode "The Gypsy and the Hobo," the eleventh of the third season, Don Draper, still wearing his business attire, takes his two children—dressed as the titular characters—trick-or-treating. A neighbor opens the door and praises the children for their costumes, then looks up at Don, standing there in his suit and hat, for a moment looking like a child playing dress-up, and says, "And who are you supposed to be?"
That's a question for another newsletter, I think, but a no less important one.
✏️Until next time,
Jg
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