TPO#1: Doorstops as a life philosophy, and... wait, deodorant?
I think my life would be significantly improved were I to buy a doorstop. For a series of inane reasons that involve a dehumidifier, a squeaky hinge, and some WD-40, my bedroom door now refuses to stay open. And in the five or ten times a day that I walk in there every day, having it close on me every time is getting annoying. So: a doorstop.
I know, you're thinking, "uhh... great start to this newsletter thing, Nav." But it occurs to me as I get older that part of a well-lived life is finally dealing with niggling little annoyances — to simply say I am no longer going to put up with this.
Sometimes, that means buying some small trinket that makes things better. It frequently involves a trip to Ikea, or maybe a new app, or sometimes a piece of clothing. Sometimes it means not buying something, but instead, discarding something to simplify or clarify life. But there is in each, I think, a kind of freedom in facing up to the minutiae of both habit and objects that make up life.
Naturally, there is a risk in this. After all, addressing one's problems through a slow agglomeration of stuff involves... well, a slow agglomeration of stuff — much of it plastic, disposable, or frivolous. The 21st century is no time for wastefulness.
But: part of accepting oneself as worthy of being alive and happy is also to switch from a reactive life to something closer to an ideal of purposefulness: to live a life focused on both the broader notion of purpose itself, but also to think through the purpose of the stuff that populates our lives — what the objects, art, and pop culture we immerse ourselves in actually do, and what they or we might in turn do to make ourselves feel more satisfied, at peace, or fulfilled. So what we need to figure out is what separates the useful from the merely alluring, the practical from the falsely pragmatic. And that, friends, is why we're here.
Welcome to The Purposeful Object.
Of course, this wouldn't be very me if we didn't start by thinking about the purpose of written forms, would it? At The Outline, Joanna Mang writes about the mid-2000's feminist blog community Shakesville, and the miasma of infighting and ego that accompanied the site's eventual demise.
Here's what I like about this piece: It seems like a fitting first link for TPO because it is, in essence, a rebuke to those of us who think that the blog era (or its newsletter redux) represent the idea of a neat pre- and post-lapsarian internet, the former a utopian idyll, and the latter a corrupted shadow. That's nonsense, and it's important to remember that.
Here's what I don't like about this: I think the ending line — "It’s not particularly useful to think in terms of golden eras. The Internet was always awful, and I’m never leaving." — is not only hand-wavy in the bad way, it also allows people to gloss over the very real, formal dimensions of how different outlets and social networks are shaped. To say "human beings will always suck" feels like a copout that also lets the Valley off the hook in a way that I think, in 2019, borders on the irresponsible. I don't think answer here is to say "well, things have always sucked and they always will." Instead, it seems much more healthy to say, oh I dunno, "there are both inherent and contextual aspects to interpersonal relations, and to be happier, you need to find online spaces that take that into account and fit who you are and what you want" So, you know, one example is maybe turning to a newsletter rather than the ever-present misery and cacophany of Twitter. Ahem.
Speaking of looking back to the early Web: The always solid April Glaser takes a break from Slate to write at Logic Magazine in a piece promisingly titled "Another Network is Possible." Glaser's aim here is to think through Indy Media, a loose network of lefty sites that emerged around Occupy. The problem we face now (and why the piece above is troubling to me) is that the tech giants control so much of online discourse that thinking about what an anti-capitalist internet might look like... oh you know how that Jameson quote goes. Here's the nugget of the argument, and I think that sometimes, even if someone doesn't give us a programme or a politics, we need statements like this just to give us a bit of hope:
When social movements share infrastructure that they own, it’s easier to support each other. When we share space, we can begin to build the type of world we’re striving towards. That may mean online communication channels that ban racism and forums that respect privacy from the start. It could mean building archives to store photos and videos of social movements in such a way that facial recognition is prohibited, the files can be deleted at any time, and nobody is profiting off of every view. If there’s ever a future where we can begin to re-imagine the internet as a commons, rather than a shopping mall with a handful of big-box platforms that extract our data and our time, building our own network may be a good start.
...Right?
Ok, enough wanking on about forms and capitalism and so on. Time for some joy and beauty.
I watch a lot of standup, and I watch specials I like repeatedly. When I was going through a rough patch a few years back I watched Katherine Ryan's In Trouble about 20 times. I've watched John Mulaney's three specials on Netflix over and over again, and in another era I listened to an Aziz Ansari show more times than I could count. Someday, I'll write about how it's the rhythm and cadence of comedy that I like above all else, and why I return to the same shows for the same reason I return to songs or albums.
But Simon Astell's recent Netflix special Set Free feels... well, special. Astell is quite famous in England, but I had no idea who he was. The show took a while to get going, but taken as a whole it is delightful: wry, funny, filthy, poignant, and lovely. Pick an evening, crack open a bottle of wine — for this time of year, I'd highly recommend some Pinot Noir, very slightly chilled — and settle in with this one. You won't be disappointed.
Ephemera:
This is how they created the shot of Tom Cruise jumping out of an airplane to chase down Henry Cavill in Mission Impossible Fallout, which was a fun film.
Years back, I bought my mum Brain Age for the Nintendo DS, mostly because of the idea that, especially as you age, you need to exercise your brain. Mum has sinced moved on to an iPad and Sudoku etc. But you know what you should do if you want to flex your grey matter? Play videogames. Specifically: Portal 2. People who played showed improved spatial reasoning and solving problems, while Lumosity users showed no improvement at all.
Listening:
To be quite honest, most of the new music I listen to these days comes from TikTok. I'm not alone; this has become a thing, and it makes total sense to me. TikToks tend to focus on catchy refrains or funny lyrics and so they tend to get stuck in your ear.
But now that I've given up returning to Tool's discography after learning of --deep sigh-- a credible sexual assault claim against MJK, I've had to find other things to reinvigorate my soul that aren't, uh, Hot Girl Bummer.
For autumn, I've always enjoyed the mostly instrumental Message to Bears. It's twinkly, acoustic, and just the sort of thing you want to listen to while walking under trees filled with drying, deeply orange leaves.
TPO Recommends: (Almost) every newsletter, I'll recommend a product or thing I think is, uh, good... almost like an informericial? That's what you signed up for right? * cough * Anyway, this issue: Nuud. I know, it's super weird for me to be recommending a deodorant. But Nuud is one of those rare things I saw on an Instagram ad that actually works: you put it on once every 3 or 4 days, and even for a, uh, robust fellow like myself, it is genuinely effective. Plus it's vegan? Or something? I mean they claim it has "no harmful chemicals." It's expensive, but a tiny tube can last months, so imo: worth it.