A Big Dumb Man's Reference Library

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Knowledge is stasis and the enemy of meaning.

Karl Ove Knausgård

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I’m so wary of the trad-wife designation at this point because I can’t really tell what it means to any given person at any given moment. Some people call any woman who centers her work in the home a trad wife. Sometimes just writing about work in the home is enough to earn the title. I just had a piece published in Harper’s Bazaar about care work and capitalism. I argue that capitalism extracts value from care work. I think it’s the opposite argument of what a trad wife would make. But I did have a woman email me to accuse me of promoting the trad wife life. I guess because my piece was anti-capitalist but also pro care work? I wanted to ask her why we must concede care work and the home to traditional narratives, but deleted her email instead. Still, there was an instagram post on the Ballerina Farm account awhile ago that kind of sums up what I think you’re getting at here. Hannah and Daniel did some challenge that involved making art from things they found in a field. She made a kind of very intricate wheel of grass, flowers, stones, weeds. It was pretty. He made a nest, just a pile of grass with three stones that looked like eggs. The caption is totally benign. But there’s a comment from a follower under it that’s not. It says, “Ugh this is so beautiful ‘it is a man’s purpose to make a home. It is a woman’s to make the home beautiful.’” I have no idea who they’re quoting, but that’s really just another way of saying “It is a man’s purpose to have authority. It is a woman’s purpose to influence.” So how much of that interpretation of an art project is on Hannah? I don’t really have an answer. I do think that if we always see depictions of homemaking and beauty as reinforcing a traditional narrative, then some of that interpretation is on us.

Meg Conley

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“Anti-urbanism is an American religion, practiced widely and frequently in ordinary times, and passionately when cities are actually in trouble,” wrote Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at N.Y.U.

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“Brick and mortar bookstores hold the possibility of the unexpected.”

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“I made her laugh one time at dinner,” she sings. “She said I’m funny and then I thanked her/But I know I’m funny haha.” You see the whole spectrum of her personality in that one line—polite, sensitive, arrogant, actually funny—especially in the staccato way she sings “haha.” She elevates a forgettable phrase we all type all of the time into a moment that defines her character as a songwriter.

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It’s a song that’s speechless, trepidatious, almost incredulous about falling in love, and still it stretches out as if she never wants whatever feeling this is to end.

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Laughter and tears, boredom and loneliness, scummy landlords and Linkin Park, they all have the same density in her songs. Every moment on her fourth album, I Know I’m Funny haha, floats by at the same meaningless speed, the air so thick and humid that lines don’t land, they just slowly disappear. In the world of Webster’s lolling indie country and twangy R&B, comedy and tragedy are indistinguishable. Saying “I’m crying” out loud could scan as a wry adoption of online argot, winking at a feeling but a little afraid of it, how if you text a friend something really honest you might take out a little “haha” as an insurance policy.

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Youthquake moments tend to emerge from austere and dark periods in history. Think of Paris in the 1920s, as the Lost Generation cast off the trauma of the First World War, or swinging London in the ’60s, an explosion of new music, fashion and art following the second.

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Any randomly picked moment from "Yoo Doo Right" or "Halleluwah" is as powerful now as when it was released. You can use them as make-out music, a drug soundtrack, or just stuff to listen to while driving. You can use them to blast off or come down.

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Gian was the coolest and truest. He was so much fun he was irresistible. He was beautiful in mind and body and voice. Big-hearted, bold, authentic, and effortlessly cool. He had conviction, curiosity, an open mind, and a great sense of humor. His determination and naked honesty were a super power. He influenced us in ways we'll be feeling for the rest of our lives.

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It's tough to accept that he's gone. I was driving with my daughter when I got the news, and we pulled over. She's 12. I didn't accept it - Bullshit. I got out of the car, searched his name.. hang on, hang on. I kept reading it again, trying to rework it, like I was seeing it out of order. Another article. Oh, wait it's April 1st, this is a joke. I saw somewhere that other people thought it was a joke. But that it wasn't. I did that for a few more minutes and put the phone down. I was sitting on a curb and looked up at my daughter looking at me through the window. I got back in the car and my hands were shaking. I said it was alright and we talked. She'd met him a few times but was too young to remember. Wait, is it a joke? Maybe for a release of some kind? I could not face it. We drove home, and I was scared to tell my wife, Naima. It was tough to say. She loved him too. He'd grab her and kiss her and tell her she was gorgeous, walking with his arm around her and talking shit about me. A day passed and I thought of a mutual friend who probably didn't know, but I didn't wanna call him. I didn't wanna say the words to him, didn't want to hear him say "what the fuck," and I didn't want to be a part of any conversation afterwards. It's been 1 month today as I write this, and the grief is I guess better, and I feel a little guilty. A wave will come in, like a taunt, and Death will say, "You thought you wouldn't think about it for 2 hours huh? Well, good job dummy, I'm back." Fuck you, and your empty goddamned voids. What are we supposed to do? Just carry on and go buy a shirt? Post a photo of some clouds? Watch Moonrise Kingdom? What a drag.

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Hale is considered to be the missing piece in the story behind some of Eliot’s most celebrated verses, such as “Burnt Norton” (1936), the first poem of “The Four Quartets” (1943): What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind.

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We were the same age, but at some point I started looking up to him. It would have been nice to tell him that. We were walking once and talking about that. The idea of telling people what they mean to you while you can. I don't remember the context exactly, but his sentiment was: There's really no time for it, because we're constantly in the process of being what we are to one another. It's an unnecessary interruption. If you love them they know it. It's actually not cool to say all that, cuz then they have to be flattered, or they're forced to say something nice back. It's rude actually, laughing at his own conclusion.

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One reason we became friends was that we could joke about addiction and death. Other reasons: we had dark senses of humor, were hard to offend, liked being online, valued weirdness, and felt like outsiders.

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When I think of happiness, I see myself chasing ass, or being newly fascinated with a friend. I see myself either by their side, or constantly texting. A lot of those times I'm drinking too much and eating too much or I'm in the back of a cab at five A.M. with a friend jawing on about something too much. There is often music. That's some of the time. Other times I'm somewhere alone, with nothing. It's quiet, and I can see myself happy and thinking. I just can't see what it is that I'm thinking about. But, when I think of happiness, I mostly see myself with others.

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I know he accidentally kept my set of keys in his pocket when he flew back to Italy, and I know I always think it's sweet when people keep useless keys. I know that I cried for days, weeks when I heard; am still crying. I know that I loved him and never really stopped. Fiery rage of a falling out, getting too close without any idea how to be a person myself let alone with someone else in any type of friendship. I know I grew up to embrace angry chaos and reconcile later, to assume we will always have the opportunity, the time. I know I did the best I could, and it sucked.

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Innocence is, in a way, the ability to be found by the world. It’s not a state of naïveté. It’s the ability to be found by the world you’re now inhabiting. Part of what we find is, we’re just supposed to give ourselves away, actually.