simmer
Various things have happened recently that made me think: that could be a Tinyletter. I've been boxing again for the first time since March of 2020, and mostly it's fine and then sometimes I get teary-eyed about it, one more pulled-tight thing inside of me slipping loose, letting go. I gave out Halloween candy to children and got a tweet-sized anecdote out of it. At the same gathering, a girl was looking for funny breakup stories for a project she's working on and I told her mine, and then, later, had to be like actually, I'm sorry, I don't want to be part of your project because, upon consideration, I never want to speak to the person this story is about again. Not because it will hurt, but because I supremely, pristinely don't care about him anymore, and why would I mess with that? Then the other night S and I ended up watching the first two episodes of Friday Night Lights-- speaking of pristine, my god, they are perfect every time.
The first time I watched those episodes centers around a different breakup-- not a funny one. In fact, very sad. I've done the details to death elsewhere so for our purposes, let's just say that it was January in Connecticut, it was becoming increasingly clear that the Great Recession was going to fuck my chances of getting a job upon my rapidly approaching college graduation, and the details of the breakup had made me a (well-deserved) social pariah. So I made a deal with myself that, as long as I didn't fail out of school, I could watch as much FNL as I wanted until I ran out, at which point, I would have to return to my real life, such as it was.
So for some number of days, of weeks, I got up and went to class. I did my reading; I wrote my essays. I cooked scrambled eggs and topped them with goat cheese and salsa. And then, when all of that was done, I lay in my bed under the covers and absorbed myself into the wide flat blank blue of the Texas skies.
What did I think of the show then? Hard to remember. What I recall now is so fragmented, and mostly from the later seasons, which aired after the writers' strike, after I graduated. I mean I loved it, but why? I think in part because, especially those first two episodes, even just the pilot by itself, are a perfect, perfect YA novel. This was when I was still reading a lot of theory and pretending I liked it. I finally had some bubblegum in my mouth again-- indie soundtracked, indie aesthetic, but bubblegum nonetheless-- and I loved its chew between my teeth.
But more than that, it was the seething. Friday Night Lights is beautifully shot, and its cast includes some of the most beautiful people who've ever walked this earth-- the sheen on Connie Britton ALONE, forget about pairing her with Kyle Chandler, forget about Zach Guilford's big lost sad eyes, I can't even talk about Taylor Kitsch, I truly can't-- but what animates the show is what bubbles up from underneath those facades. Especially the kids'. They want things they can't have, and that all that longing doesn't make them noble. It makes them animal, often, flashing teeth, getting into fights, taking things that don't belong to them. My helpless identification with Lyla Garrity, who is faultlessly good until she can't take it anymore, until she finds something she wants more than goodness, and takes it, and breaks herself open in the process-- it seems now almost too obvious.
Watching it now, I feel all of it still inside of me, long-dormant but ready to rise. That part of my life was too formative to ever really get all the way past, I think. These days, often when I watch things I think about the kinds of stories I want to make, and that's what S and I talked about while we watched: genre and world-building. But I watched this show before I knew I wanted to make things, or before I understood that I could. And so it still opens a portal to a moment when all I could do in response to art was feel, feel, feel. When I myself felt like nothing more than facade over friction, bones and ooze, anger and hurt and spite. God, I had no idea what to do with myself at twenty, twenty-two, twenty-four. It's easy to forget how much older I am now, until I really remember.
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Anyway, as you might have guessed, I have links for you. One is an interview with TikTok star Celina Myers, aka @CelinaSpookyBoo, about the literal ghosts she sees. The other is also an interview, this one with Jessica Dore, about her excellent new book, Tarot for Change.