Hot take: it's okay to disagree with someone because they suck
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You know about this Harper's letter? A bunch of your most obnoxious, intellectual-in-a-vacuum college professors plus the woman who wrote the wizard book that raised you got together to proclaim "cancel culture" an attack on free speech (quick reminder: cancel culture is fake). These are the fucking fuckfaces who talk about everyone under the age of 25 as if they are a monolithic threat to intellectual inquiry (quick reminder: they've been saying this exact same thing since time immemorial).
The surface-meaning of the letter is pretty uncontroversial. "No one should be defined by a single opinion."
Right.
"People should be allowed to change and grow."
For sure!
"We should be able to disagree intellectually without attacking each other."
Yeah, man, no one is arguing this!!!
Where the letter gets tricky is the subtext. If "let's have civil debate" is code for "I wanna be snide about nonbinary people on Twitter without contradiction," then maybe fully fuck off? Other people have expressed this more eloquently.
I'm not internet or academic enough to add much to this dialogue. What I can offer is a pragmatic approach to ideological conflicts.
I get this approach from addiction recovery, which, by the numbers, is wildly unsuccessful. But for me, the shit works. I've maintained sobriety from various addictions for a few years. I straight-up don't care about the philosophical or psychological soundness of the work I do because it makes me who I want to be.
When presented with an issue, we often start by parsing what we believe. What is being said? Okay, but what is really being said? What are the sides, and which is right?
My suggestion is to side-step this thinking for a second. Instead, look at who’s talking. If you compare "Black Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter" folks and notice one group seems a lot more humane and they look like they're having more fun, that's a good guidepost! It's not foolproof, but it's functional.
I'm not advocating groupthink or turning off our critical faculties, but ideas don’t exist in vacuums. You can form opinions based on who you want to be.
Wamp Wamp (What to Do)
Listen to a rough cut of the first episode of my new podcast, This Is Your Afterlife! This is the new project I've been promising the past two weeks, and I'm excited to launch it properly in the next couple weeks. The concept is me talking to cool artists and activists about the afterlife, using some of the questions I explore with audiences in Feed Wolf Ice Cream. This episode's guest is Shantira Jackson, an alum of the Second City mainstage who wrote for the late-night talk show "Busy Tonight." Shantira appeared in a live show I produced in 2016 called "Actual Afterlives," and there's a straight line from that show to Feed Wolf Ice Cream to This Is Your Afterlife. She's the perfect first guest.
This Is Your Afterlife, Shantira Jackson (Rough Cut)
Order your books from Semicolon, a Black woman-owned bookstore in my hometown, Chicago. It has felt very nice to bypass Amazon by getting my books from their Bookshop.org store. Want a rec? I finished Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown recently, and it's changing the way I think about taking social and political action, how I pursue my career, and how I want to live my life.
Engage with this question: Does it contradict abolition to call for the arrest of the cops who killed Breonna Taylor, as opposed to firing them, cutting their pensions, stripping them of the right to touch a gun or hold a job even tangential to law enforcement ever again, bringing them into a restorative justice process to make amends, and holding them responsible for providing financial restitution to her family?
Read this profile of Julianna Barwick, who just released a breathtaking new album, Healing Is a Miracle. I first heard the record lying in bed while baking in my first (and hopefully only) sunburn this year. I look for albums that create lush, absorbing worlds. DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, The-Dream's Love/Hate, Sigur Ros' Agaetis Byrjun, Sam Wilkes' WILKES, and Julie Byrne's Not Even Happiness are a few that pop to mind. Healing is another, and its dreamy billow was heightened by that particular exhaustion that follows a thorough sunburning.
Try out Radiooooo! It's an app and website that bills itself as "The Musical Time Machine." You pick a country and a decade from the 1900s up to now, and it plays tunes that match your picks. I've been playing with it, and it's a fun wrench in my usual methods of finding new music. My favorite discovery so far? This synth-stomp earworm from 1980s Yemen.
I Want to Make a Mix for You
This past weekend was supposed to be the Pitchfork Music Festival. There are few stronger memories I have of summers in my 20s than using my VIP privileges to order Goose Island 312s two-at-a-time to sneak to friends in the general admission area.
I was able to swing VIP passes for a few years after I got laid off from Pitchfork, but my last year working there was also the year I got to DJ 30 minutes of an afterparty. I crafted a set of songs by Polow Da Don, still one of my favorite producers ever (look at this resume!). After my set, I saw Julia Stiles on the patio. That's the story.
Here's the playlist. I know I found the 8 songs I played, but I'm not sure I recreated their exact order. I also added 2 bonus tracks to the end, both of which are strong contenders for Greatest Polow Track of All Time. Enjoy!
Polow Da Don Set for 2008 Pitchfork Music Festival Afterparty Where I Saw Julia Stiles
See you next week!