Arts life

In lieu of news

When I finally came home from Priscilla Beach, I bought myself 3 books. One was the piano-vocal score for “Sound of Music”, which I’ll be music directing in January. The other two had nothing to do with work. For the first time in an extraordinarily long time I have enough time and bandwidth to do life-activities that aren’t related to a job. I actually only meant to buy one fun-reading book, Evan Puschak’s “Escape into Meaning”, but at the glee of having my library finally returned to me—and having not yet developed the impulse control to pair with my sudden state of no-longer-impoverished—I also decided to finally pick up a copy of a book that carried me through the pandemic, John Green’s “The Anthropocene Reviewed”.

And yes, of course, I bought the hardcover editions. Don’t be silly.

Both of these are books of essays. The problem with novels for me is eventually the busy life will return and I will be annoyed at the thought of an incomplete story from the book I had to put down and didn’t have time to return to. Essays can be read entirely, maybe even twice through, while waiting for the coffee to kick in.

I spent much of the pandemic alone in a thankfully large, though poorly illuminated and decaying barn-house. Originally I had two roommates but they both moved in with their partners. My landlords very kindly allowed me to stay in the house but only pay my portion of the rent (moving during a pandemic wasn’t really an option), and so it was me and the mice. Unfortunately, for health and safety reasons, I had to kick the mice out…by way of death, so then it really was just me.

I had a lot of grad school work to focus on, which kept me distracted much of the time. My other comfort was the podcasts I used to motivate me through meal preparation. One of them was Green’s “The Anthropocene Reviewed”, podcast. You see, the book began as a podcast, and I suppose his pandemic project was converting it into book form.

The name John Green might be familiar as a writer of young-adult fiction but I knew him first as a YouTuber, one of the Brothers 2.0 and a founding member of Complexly, the producers behind Crash Course and SciShow and other educational YouTube Channels. He is also a founding partner of the hilariously named but extraordinarily productive charity foundation: The Foundation to Decrease World Suck, which does some amazing work with “Partners in Health”, to support the growth of healthcare systems in Sierra Leone, which you can support by getting a coffee or sock subscription (all profits go to their work with Partners in Health).

The Brothers Green write YouTube letters to each other multiple times a week in the form of video blogs under 4 minutes and they cover a variety of topics from the silly to the serious and the sentimental. What I’ve liked about John is his knack for quelling the cynical. Though he calls himself a cynic (maybe that’s why he’s so good at it), there are times his writing veers more towards the cheesy, shmaltzy side of things. He has a very romantic obsession with sunsets, for example. Most times, however, he’s able to carve just enough of the outer shell away so tactfully that you don’t realize you’re vulnerable until you’re trying not to cry in front of the ghost-mice while waiting for the curry to reduce.

Through the essays, Green focuses on particular facets of human life, such as air-conditioning or scratch-and-sniff stickers, and reviews these elements on a 5-star scale. What I connect with, however, is that each of the essays also provides a scrap of a memoir from the author’s life. He communicates to us why he cares enough about any of these facets to do research on their origins and impacts and run them through the drafting process to produce 3-5 page reviews on them.

In the arts world we are hyper-aware of the question of “why”. Responsible teachers have typically done their best to frighten aspiring artists out of the lifestyle before they get released into the “real world”. This isn’t out of competitive jealousy, it’s a backwards sort of kindness to spare them from the first—and often only—chapter of many artist’s careers: the starving artist phase. During this time they will scrounge together a semblance of a living, getting by with as little as possible while they search for that step up into the next professional sphere where the work is still hard but life gets a little easier. I’ve watched a lot of my colleagues bow out during this stage and I have nothing but respect for them. I’ve looked at the door more than a few times.

The “why” exists in our every waking moment. For me, it has always been easiest to do the work when I have someone to do the work for. A production gives you something to commit to, students who rely on you; and there are few forces stronger than that to kick your butt into gear. “Why?”, is a question writers and composers will ask whenever they take pen to paper. “Why?”, is a question anyone asks themselves when they think about going to work in the morning or pressing through your master’s degree in the middle of a crushing pandemic and a vitriolic election cycle while staring at the shuttered career field you’re about to be ejected into.

Green’s book is all about the “why”s. In an honest fashion he covers things that have had positive and negative impacts on his life. While there are extraordinarily powerful essays in the book, like his review of “Auld Lang Syne”, which stopped me cold for a good few hours, the most effective might be his reviews of the little things in our lives, like scratch-and-sniff stickers.

I don’t want to spoil anything but there is a profound comfort in the notion that, upon reflection, we can realize these small and seemingly insignificant aspects of our lives were strangely important components of our beings. I’m not sure what taken-for-granted elements of my life I owe surprising debts to, but I hold on to a lot of fragments of past projects that offer similar rewards upon consideration. This laser-engraved slab of wood from a student that reads “death isn’t a good excuse”,—just by completely random example—or box of thank you cards from people I knew for a few weeks and will likely never meet again, are invaluable manifestations of “why” that can keep you barreling towards wherever you’re heading in life…even if you’re not exactly sure of your destination.

I don’t usually read books a second time, but I’m glad I bought this one. It is additionally one of the first books I’ve bought for my library precisely because it was important to me. The others became important after I bought them.

The podcast is still available. And I fully recommend it, especially if you were already a fan of the Moth Radio Hour or This American Life.

Anyway it is now an acceptable time of the morning to start practicing.

Climb every fountain y’all.