constellations #109: ordinary wonder

Hi again.

A few months ago, my friend Chris wrote in his newsletter Having Been There about breaking his foot on a motorcycle while visiting southern Vietnam. Then, he wrote about writing about the experience. Really, that second newsletter was a reflection on what it means to live “within the scaffolding of a life that is extremely easy to slip in and out of,” one that allows him to pick up and leave for months at a time. Traveling this much, he says—which he’s been doing for as long as I’ve known him (a decade and a half?!), visiting basically every corner of this country and the globe—means that, as he put it, “your threshold for certain types of discomfort becomes extremely high while your tolerance for boredom, mundanity, and the unglamorous obligations of life recedes.”

But boredom, he writes, is healthy; it’s important. Being on the move constantly can make it difficult to nurture long-term connections or foster a sense of home. He doesn’t deny the thrill of visiting famous landmarks in foreign cities, or climbing a mountain in a far-off part of the world, or sharing a meal like you’d never find back home with a group of strangers. He has prioritized this ability to travel so freely over amassing material possessions or climbing a corporate ladder, and it has liberated him in many ways that I admire. But lately, as he writes, he’s been craving balance. After all, there’s a lot to be gained from committing to rootedness, too: “Routines, when spun as a ritual, can be beautiful,” he writes. “The ordinary holds a lot of wonder if you remember to look closely.”

I like that Chris connected these ideas to the act of staying put, of being where you are, of being connected to a specific location. It reminded me of the conversations I had with Karly Hartzman of the band Wednesday when I interviewed her last month. We talked about how she grew up in North Carolina, and has never lived anywhere else, and doesn’t want to—how her experiences in North Carolina feel inherent to her music, and how proud she is of that. I talked to her about the pressures that indie musicians—or anyone who dreams of a creative career—face to move to a big, scene-y city like New York in order to “make it.” Certainly I relate to that pressure; certainly that’s part of why I live where I do, even if I know, on some level, that there are other places to which I’m much more temperamentally suited. Karly said she understood that push but didn’t feel moved to yield to it. “I don’t like the feeling of: ‘I’m in the cultural center of the universe and what I do here will pervade the rest of culture,’” she told me. “I like the idea of coming in from the edge and puncturing in an unexpected way.” I think that’s exactly what her music does.

I’ve been away from my home in Brooklyn more days than not this summer, which has also got me thinking about rootedness. In some ways, I’m glad for all the travel—I’ve gotten to see my parents and my siblings, go on that reporting trip, visit a beloved pal who’s going through a tough situation, go on a trip with a friends. But also, I am tired. I am feeling unrooted! And all the running around has meant I’ve missed out on a lot happening in my borough. (Incidentally, I keep missing the chance to see friends who happen to be in places I’ve just left, too.) And on a deeper level, I think, I don’t feel connected to New York the way so many other transplants do, and I guess that contributes to my general feeling of rootlessness. When I’m away, I don’t necessarily ache for the city’s quintessential characteristics: its boisterousness and liveliness and too much-ness. What I have been aching for lately is something smaller, quieter: routine; or, as Chris put it, the wonder inside the ordinary. I suppose I’ve struggled to carve that into my time in New York.

Later, I listened to a long interview with Karly on the new podcast Music Person. She had some advice for bands who are just getting started: engage with your local music scene, be part of it, foster it, nurture it (rather than move your band to, I don’t know, Los Angeles). “There is more worth than you would think, on a grander scale, in staying in your local scene and trying to be the best band from there,” she said. If you live outside a major city, she said, “you have cheap practice space, probably; cheaper living; more time to write; and you’re contributing to your local scene.” Plus, she said, “Your music will have a sense of regionalism.” People in your scene will recognize and love those qualities about your music, and it’ll demonstrate, as she put it, “a sense of self” to people outside your scene. “That’s worth a lot,” she said. I keep thinking about that. A sense of self—that’s worth a lot.

I bookmarked something related I saw on Twitter the other day, the kind of wisdom-disguised-as-mundanity-disguised-as-wisdom from a total stranger that I always fall for while half-consciously scrolling: “turns out life is actually pretty meaningless without a strong connection to the places and people that make up your days, and you can fill the void with a transient ‘scene’ or you can fill it with family and friends and sunsets on the beach.” Maybe it struck me because I am presently yearning for that feeling of connection. Maybe it was just because I saw the post after spending two weeks in a place I know incredibly well, hanging out with my family and friends (and yes, watching sunsets on the beach!), which was by turns gratifying and tedious, as real life always is—not exactly the prescription for immediately filling the void, as the tweet promised. Some of those days I felt I had a “strong connection to the places and people that make up my days” and some days I thought maybe I’d benefit from being part of some “transient ‘scene’” and some days I felt that everything was pretty meaningless. So it goes, I guess.

When I asked Karly in our interview what makes North Carolina so special, she shrugged. It’s where her family and friends are, where she feels comfortable. She wasn’t trying to argue for her hometown’s irreplaceable uniqueness; it’s not necessarily the kind of place she expects transplants to understand. I liked that she didn’t try to convince me that it was the best place—just that it was the best for her. It’s her home, and that is good enough. Even if some might call it ordinary, she sees clearly the wonder within it. I aspire to that. I think it’s worth a lot.

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Here are some other things I have been consuming lately: the joy of Zohran Mamdani’s victory; Titanique, which was hilarious; Headlights by Alex G; Moisturizer by Wet Leg; Midtown 120 Blues by DJ Sprinkles (and not unrelatedly, this Sunday Review on Pitchfork about Aaron-Carl’s Uncloseted); All Dogs at TV Eye (a 10-year reunion show for the classic Kicking Every Day); Downtown Boys at Trans-Pecos; Coolant, also at Trans-Pecos; two shows by Ruby Ibarra featuring feminist rock icon June Millington (!!!!); a very sunny day at Riis Beach and then, immediately upon getting home, my first watch of Josie and the Pussycats, which is—wow!—a perfect movie; a beautiful summer evening at Fort Reno in DC; dinner at Water Street Kitchen in Woods Hole, Mass., perhaps my favorite restaurant on earth; a few books: Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata, Tonight I'm Someone Else by Chelsea Hodson and Theatrics by Maya Martinez

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This time last year I was: reminiscing about a camping trip that changed my life; and, before that: asking my friends for their endorsements, considering limits, thinking about emo, and submitting to art

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Thanks for reading. Please tell me about your ordinary wonders! See you next 24th.

xo,
M