SCALES #57: plantain handoff
Hello!
I defended last week! The defense itself was pretty painless but its reality hasn’t quite sunk in. My life has been structured around my PhD research for so long that since then I haven’t known how to organize my days differently. Writing this is one helpful bit of continuity.
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I’ve been scrolling through my “small observations” note on my phone. The idea is entirely indebted to the dear, departed Bureau of Small Observation. But, unlike that newsletter, which tended to be all about describing the appearance and behavior of surrounding people (with special attention to picking out fine details of how people interact with their phones), I’ve tended to record snippets of overheard speech—honestly, it’s a lot easier than crafting actual descriptive prose. Still, I’ve liked how it’s a way to access the speech patterns of other people—like copying out what somewhat else has written, or sketching out a reproduction of a painting. It’s an act of attention that puts me in the moment but at the same time gives me a pseudo-anthropological external perspective. And then after the initial act of recording, I like that it serves as a time capsule of the kind of 2018-2019 culture that I’ve been embedded in, which could be loosely described as Camberville-coffee-shops-and-adjacent. A reminder of the texture of this time and place, for my future self. (And I guess now for you, too, dear newsletter reader!)
A sampling:
Barista chatter, May 2018: “They called it an ‘expresso’. At Blue Bottle. ‘Your single origin expresso is ready.’ I could see one of the other baristas cringe.”
Cambridge coffee shop sidewalk seating, June 2018: “Steve wrote a book about Charles Ives. […] He’s written books about sheep shearing … He and I built harpsichords in high school.”
Old-timer Medford donut shop, June 2018: “My father had a tree in Italy, white cherries. Everyone would wait for them to get ripe.”
Pizza line at a job info session, August 2018: “Duluth: there’s peat moss, there’s fresh water, so it’s actually a really, really good place.”
National Portrait Gallery, December 2018: “So did you know Logan proposed to Laura here… in front of Lincoln’s portrait?”
Route 89 bus, near Magoun Square, December 2018: [Plantain handoff from one person's bag to another. Smiles.]
St. Paul coffee shop, December 2018: “She was recently divorced and now she is all, ‘I’m alive again’. Who is that albino white guy with the bald head with Atmosphere? Brother Ali. She’s like, ‘I have VIP tickets for Brother Ali. Momma can get out.’”
Cambridge coffee shop, January 2019: “Remind me how you guys met?” “Kind of Tinder, kind of Instagram, kind of real life.”
Cambridge bakery, January 2019: “Echo is the machine, Alexa is the person inside the machine… Me and my roommates have so many we need a different name for each one.”
Somerville coffee shop, February 2019: “Britain’s good at sitting down things: rowing, sailing, horse jumping, bobsled, skeleton. If you’re sitting down while doing it, Britain does a good job.”
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Reading
Essayism by Brian Dillon.
griefbacon on The Mountain Goats and possums and memes and poetry.
Vinson Cunningham profiles Tracy Morgan.
The underground DIY culture of “looping” with hackable insulin pumps.
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Flower season.
Thanks for reading! You can always forward to a friend/reply and say hi/subscribe.
—Adam