Moving Out

Hi! So, I know it’s a new year and all, but I’m still processing 2022, and part of how I do that is through writing. So, here we are. This is an ode to my old apartment that’s been a long time coming!

Last year I realized just how much spaces can become a part of you—and also support or hinder your growth. At the end of July, I moved out of my apartment of five years. It was my first solo place in L.A—a small, partitioned studio in a plain 1920s building with no a/c, plenty of sunlight, and charm in spades. Meaning drawers lined in vintage floral paper and cabinet doors that didn’t close all the way. I was immediately sold on the huge built-in bookshelf and open hallway closet. What the place lacked in square footage, it made up for in designated spaces for the important things: my books and clothes. Also, proximity to secret stairways, steep hills, and quiet residential streets, which I could probably write an entire blog post about alone, but for now I’ll just say, I LOVE WALKING. The apartment quickly became my haven from L.A. when L.A. was too much (or not enough), and for dancing it out to Robyn at all hours. I lived the second half of my twenties there.

For a while the studio was a perfect fit. I would wake up giddy because it felt like a dream—to have a place of my own and be surrounded by all my favorite things. Change happened, but I always made it work. When I went freelance, I put a desk in my kitchen and it actually felt like a mini office, even though I was convinced that everyone on Zoom could hear the insanely loud buzz of the fridge. To clear my head and feel like I was part of the world again, I went for long walks and hikes in the neighborhood. When the pandemic hit and we were confined to our homes, I pushed furniture around in my living room slash bedroom to take Ryan Heffington’s Sweat Fest class on Instagram every week. Not exactly ideal but worth it (seriously, try doing his signature “used car lot inflatable” move and NOT cracking up). Somehow I never got a noise complaint.

I think I prided myself on being flexible, but at some point I started getting really tired of always making it work. Squeezing my life into a small room or apartment and sacrificing extra breathing room or peace for a prime location. It was probably around the same time I noticed a huge crack in the bathroom ceiling. Then more cracks. A window that wouldn’t stay open. Termites. Constant construction in the apartments next to and below me. Unresolved maintenance requests. Blah blah blah.

It felt like the place was caving in on me and I craved S P A C E like cold water. In July. In an apartment with no a/c. So, I put all my stuff in storage, moved out, and became kind of a nomad, all in the name of expansion. (Btw the word “nomad” is so cringe to me. Can we think of a new one? Flying onion? Idk.) Living month to month has had its ups and downs, mostly ups, and a lot of times I feel like a sponge. Sometimes floating. I miss some things about having a more permanent place and definitely don’t miss others. It’s made me think a lot about the concept of home and the feeling of home. Also uncertainty. But more on that later.

Before I moved out, I asked my photographer friend Sunny to help me commemorate my apartment and everything I loved about it by taking some photos of me in the space. We obviously had a lot of fun, but it also solidified just how much that place and time in my life had shaped me, even if it didn’t quite fit anymore. (Growth is cooooool.)

Highly recommend doing this for any kind of milestone (photoshoots aren’t just for weddings lol).

✌️

Photos by Sunny Strader

This Is Fall

Recently I had a dream that I was flipping through a book my teacher had assigned us, and I came across a collage reminiscent of one of my favorite artists—Peter Beard. I felt GIDDY and took it as a sign that I needed to get back into collaging.

So, here we are. A mood board, brought to you by one rainy Saturday in L.A.

Discovering the Meaning of Life at Goodwill

One night a couple of years ago, I found myself at Goodwill at 8pm on a Friday. Probably the same night that I spent an hour at Home Depot looking for "jewelry" and sourcing chain for a necklace that I still need to make. Basically, a WILD night. I went to good old will to look for a long-reach stapler (different DIY project), but after a failed search, I wandered over to the bookshelves in the back corner of the store. There's something about treasure hunting for used books that just makes me feel whole. I don't know. I feel a pull and I follow it.

They had a long night.

I scanned the shelves, jam-packed with ‘90s cookbooks, chick-lit novels, and more than a few David Sedaris books, and I was just about to leave when something caught my eye—a book called The Meaning of Life, a collection of interviews from Esquire’s “What I’ve Learned” column, featuring Ray Charles, Snoop Dogg, Lauren Hutton, Gore Vidal, etc etc. I flipped through it and found a letter printed on heavyweight paper stuck inside. The letter was written by Mark Dornfeld, a man who I later learned owned his own visual effects studio in L.A, and it read like a personal epiphany:

“Each year at this time I find myself writing a message to accompany the gift that I will be sending to the friends and associates of CFE. Every year I attempt to tie the gift (which is always a book) to something that is going on in my company or in my life. Distributing a book titled The Meaning of Life may appear to be a giant cop out, but this year has truly been about adding meaning to my own life and to the lives of others.

“I began this year with the news that a long-time friend and ex-boss had climbed into bed on New Year’s Eve, gone to sleep and had his life end before 2004 had begun. Peter Donen had given me a break when I needed one. He gave me an opportunity to work, learn and apply my craft and skill in a medium I loved. This loss tempered my entire year. He was so young and if you knew Peter you knew that the thought of him being motionless is impossible. He never sat still and he was almost always talking.

“I don’t mean to make this a bummer; it’s not. I mean, death is a bummer, but what if it makes you look at your life? What if you realize that the day to arrange to do all the things that you want to do is today? What if every lingering family issue is fixed now because of the uncertainty of tomorrow? These are such easy clichés - we hear this ‘live in the now’ stuff all the time. But it is true. I have done things this year I have always wanted to do. I made a point of it. I fixed a long time rift in my family and was able to see two of my cousins get married. I had not seen them in about 8 years. Two other cousins I hadn’t seen in 30 years. These are first cousins. I had a one man art show of photographs I had been compiling over the past 2 years, remodeled a kitchen and bathroom, opened a design entity for CFE, worked on about 19 or 20 movies, watched my son play drums, my daughter land a few roles in her budding acting career, and still had time to get all fired up about the election and occasionally sleep.

“The meaning of life may be as simple as just living. Do the things you love. Love the things you do and remember to laugh every once in a while. Doing something nice for a stranger is always good, too. I remember the old Yiddish-speaking aunts and uncles in my mom’s family. How they would sit and play cards and watch the kids, the joy in their faces at just watching the young ones. As I watch the younger artists in my company develop into highly skilled professionals I feel this joy. As my son and daughter grow I feel that same joy. This may be the gift of age. As we get older we may indeed get wiser.

“The book is filled with pictures and quotes of famous people. The thing that strikes me is that between the very accomplished and the relatively ordinary, the differences in the experience of being human are few. I have often observed that talent is abundant. Everywhere I go I meet talented musicians, artists, builders, and writers. There is no shortage of talent in the world. I have occasionally been in some small town out in the heartland and run into some incredibly talented artist who has no idea of how brilliant their work is. They are making their art because it is what they do. Famous people just drive nicer cars.”

“The Meaning”

This letter about “The Meaning” is eighteen years old, and while it was clearly not written during a pandemic, it still carries weight. No one knows what the world will look and feel like in a week/month/year’s time, and making plans is sort of a joke because they’ll probably change anyway, so these cringe clichés provide a surprising amount of comfort. “…We hear this ‘live in the now’ stuff all the time. But it is true.” Is there any other way to live at this point? And not necessarily in a better get cracking on that bucket list kind of way, more like let me just watch this bird for a while and replace that lightbulb in the living room that’s been flickering for days. I’ll go from there when I get there.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot with the New Year—instead of trying to maintain an illusion of control and carve out a clear life trajectory OR wait around for the future, which is a fruitless pastime and kind of a mind trick, I’m surrendering to the idea of LIVING. In all caps. Moment by moment.

What began as a survival instinct now just feels freeing (ask me again tomorrow). It’s like what I imagine doing improv is like, but in life. Maybe forever.

The Art of the Spotify Artist Bio

I have this folder on my desktop filled with screenshots I’ve taken of unconventional Spotify artist bios. The ones that suddenly break you open or send you into a 15-minute internal dialogue about the meaning of life or maybe just make you tilt your head. I got into the habit of clicking on them to investigate weird band names and learn more about new artists I’m into. Most of the descriptions are encyclopedic and boring, taking you through a timeline of the band’s accomplishments, but the great ones go off script. Some are poetry. Others read like the responses you might see on a kid’s test in school, where everything looks normal except for a line in the middle that they slipped in just to see if the teacher would actually read it, like, “Pink elephants rule!” or “Are you reading this???” (That was a thing, right?) Here’s what I mean…

What a beautiful tribute 😢“a powerful joy courses through me” is my exact experience when I listen to Perfume Genius. Watching the devastating pool scene from Booksmart cemented “Slip Away” as my favorite PG song. The feelings!!!

Dancing and thinking about life. Two of my favorite things…

Mysterious!

Perfectly articulates the body’s response to emotional pain. Isn’t that where we store all heartbreak/trauma/etc.? To make art is to surrender.

Tell me more about this hatred toward aliens.

Dwelling in the undefinable is an act of resistance. Can we just sit with that for a minute? Mmmmmm.

Bye, Dan.

The Rush

I love the internet, but it's complicated. Unless I'm somewhere without cell service or dancing around to '90s Robyn like nothing else exists, I feel like I'm constantly trying to keep up. Technology drills this idea into our heads that we need to take in the entire world at once, i.e. the infinite scroll on Instagram, the 10 new newsletters in our inbox every morning, each containing 10 more articles that we'll definitely bookmark and probably never read, the obligatory "sorry" that we have to preface every late returned call or text with because we're expected to be available 24/7, the number of people telling us what we should read, like, watch, and eat, ETC. I know "catching up" is a shiny illusion, but I still fall for it. It's like I keep forgetting I'm not a robot.

Maybe living in a task-obsessed culture has even made content something we feel like we need to check off/like/repost (now I'm realizing that every productivity and “save for later” app is probably contributing to the rewiring of our brains ahhhhewiffhdsfnjke). Also, when did everything become content? How do you create something that lives outside of the infinite scroll? Serious question. (First thing that comes to mind is a zine. )

I've been thinking about this a lot in the context of Black Lives Matter and the wealth of information about anti-racism and abolition, and lists of Black-owned businesses/Black artists/Black activists, and the like sweeping social media recently. It's amazing!! But it's also wiiild how quickly things can start to feel commodified. I stood in a long line outside of a local Black-owned coffeeshop on Blackout Tuesday, waiting to order a lemonade (they were sold out of their signature drinks and pastries), and I had this gross creeping feeling. Like I was participating in some trend, neatly crossing off a task for work that should in no way resemble a to-do list.

I read a great blog post written by the Black artist Jen Hewitt about her discomfort from suddenly receiving so much new attention in recent weeks. Food for thought:

"...Why does this social media “activism” make me and other Black artists very uneasy? It really comes down to that idea of “discovery.” For many of us, the language of discovery smacks of colonialism – the colonialism that has enriched much of the Western world over the last few centuries, and always to the detriment of the colonized. Black artists have always been here. We may not always have the opportunities or capital that our white counterparts do, but there are a lot of us, many of us have strong communities, and a good number of us are thriving. We didn’t need to be “discovered” — especially not in this form. Many of us are seeing our work being co-opted and appropriated for other people’s benefit – maybe not always for profit, but so that non-Black people and brands who hadn’t done anything to highlight or work with Black makers until this week can now feel good about themselves for “helping” Black folks, and signal their own wokeness to themselves, their followers, and their customers. It is crushing to work so hard to build something, only to watch what you’ve built become a tool for someone else’s gain without your permission."

Discovering and engaging with Black people like content (and further, to get a gold star) feels unsettling on multiple levels, even if they may benefit from it on the surface. Because I think, as a white person, why and how you're being an antiracist is just as important as what you're actually doing, especially if you want to make an impact outside the magnificently all-consuming black hole of Instagram.

Plus, if the culture surrounding content has become this tornado where everything needs to be bigger and better and and more more more, and we feel like we need to consume all of it, then when a serious issue like dismantling racism becomes "popular," it takes that much more focus and discipline to digest information, talk about it, and take thoughtful action. Because you always feel like you're falling behind!! (Just me?) I think to truly catch up, consciously, you have to slow down and think. THE IRONY.

But in a lot of ways we shouldn’t slow down. We can't afford to. Sign petitions. Donate to bail funds. Support organizations that are fighting racial inequity. Protest. Turn anger into action!! It’s just… if we’re not internalizing words or acting intentionally, what happens when the adrenaline runs out? How can we create sustainable change within ourselves and then talk about it with the people in our circles/communities? Change is not sexy or instantaneous. It’s not a dopamine hit. And it's definitely not checking off a box.

The rush is real. The rush to do something and immediately, the rush you get from doing that thing, and the rush to prove you’re the best (or the most broken) without acknowledging how you got there. It reminds me of this glorious scene from Work in Progress where King tells Abby that life isn't a competition. Ughh so good.

If this post sounds like one giant paradox, that’s probably because it is one. I don't have a solution. But also, solutions are tidy, and retraining your brain in a sea of listicles and likes is not. I do think one of the most radical things anyone do right now is to resist the temptation for instant gratification.

P.s. I was talking about all of this with a friend recently, and she said something that made me nod vigorously. "I made a list of anti-racist content to consume and I feel better about myself once I've checked something off. The real problem is -- why aren't the things on this list already on my more general lists? I've had a list of books to read and a list of things I want to watch for years. But this new list is separate from those. Isn't that the whole problem?"

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT.

Birthdays

Birthdays are weird. I know they're supposed to be all celebratory and happy, and sometimes they are, but often they just remind me of my mortality (I know, sorry). Instead of focusing on the good parts of getting older, like the ways I've hopefully evolved and how I've learned to care less about trivial things, I think about how I'll never be a certain age again or wonder if I've been living "right," whatever that means.

The other day I stumbled across an old Word document filled with my favorite passages from Diana Vreeland's autobiography. It started out like this:

"I have a terrible time remembering exactly when my birthday is. Age is totally boring…and so many Americans can’t get on with it. They’re haunted by aging, by getting old. I think it’s because of this terrible retirement thing. If you’re through with work, what do you do with yourself?

There’s an excellent profile in Interview in which Jeanne Moreau says: ‘I shall die very young.’

‘How young?’ they ask her.

‘I don’t know, maybe seventy, maybe eighty, maybe ninety. But I shall be very young.’"

Underneath that I had written, "The liver is vital—and don’t forget the gallbladder!" Diana must have been a trip and a half. What I would GIVE to have dinner and dessert and every meal with her.

I'm probably in denial about getting older, but I'm also realizing that maybe the key to feeling okay is to just get back to the person you were when you were a kid. Before you started subconsciously editing your life to impress institutions, parents, friends, strangers, yourself. Lately I've been trying to be more of that person. This past year I started taking more dance classes, writing for myself, and wearing more pink. I also quit my job to see what less structure and more freedom felt like (turns out, pretty great).

We act like we leave certain ages behind when we reach new milestones, but isn't every age that we’ve lived still a part of us in some way? Why can’t we be 29 and also 16 (I mean, within reason)? It’s all just perspective, right? These are the thoughts that knock me over the head as I'm climbing the unreasonably steep hills around LA, a new ritual that's been keeping me sane while in quarantine.

As soon as I'm feeling completely calm about everything though—everything being aging and this new oddly shaped reality we're in—the world is like, just kidding! I started watching this Instagram Live the other day, and the celebrity moderating it looked like a perfect hologram. Her airbrushed makeup, Pantene hair... she had on this cute knit pajama set that probably cost, like, $300. My brain: why don't I own a knit pajama set? Where does one buy a nice knit pajama set? How does anyone look that good right now? I had to put my phone down before I fell into a black hole.

Holograms aside, I've been obsessed with watching Instagram Lives lately because, ironically, they feel real at a time when so many things don't. I get pleasure out of watching people in the public eye try to work technology, accidentally flipping the camera so everyone can see their notes or not realizing the sound isn't working until their roommate appears offscreen to give them an awkward heads up. It's the 2020 version of Celebrities—They're Just Like Us! and it's extremely soothing. There’s a real comfort and relief in watching people figure things out right in front of your eyes. It's a reminder that we're all just fumbling around, fucking up, and trying our best.