Because I have many different selves, my writing has a tendency to shift, depending on the day, depending on the hour, depending on my mood. Some people might label this as fickle, needlessly ambiguous, or insufficiently confident—though it feels pretty much like the opposite to me. If you are faithful to your perceptions, and truly examine your motivations at the moment when your pen touches the page, then you’ll notice that every sensation is fleeting.
Nobody is surprised to learn that the joke that comes after a sip of wine is different from the joke that comes at the bottom of the bottle, even though, however disappointing it may be, the storyteller is the same. Another analogy might be an album that has some faster and some slower tracks—with the musicians the same despite the changes in melody. Sometimes my writing is whimsical, sometimes it is polemical, occasionally it is philosophical, but it is always, in the end, still me.
So here’s a little review of my writing from the last month, with these essays a transitory, singular portrait of my mind at just this one moment in time.
Issue 151 — Some Notes on Bookstores (🔒 Paid Subscribers)
If you’re American and you happen to stroll into a bookstore while traveling, you might notice a suspicious lack of categories.
Issue 152 — Marble Nudity
On a recent controversy, Renaissance sculpture, and the criticism of specific individuals—with a tone that is probably more strident than usual.
Issue 153 — To be Tantalized
What could be more natural than wanting what you don’t quite have in this moment, than straining to grasp what’s just beyond your reach?
Issue 154 — Underwriting (🔒 Paid Subscribers)
Please stop removing every sliver of swagger, flair, bravado, virtuosity, and elegance from the page.
Issue 155 — Seeing is Believing
To say that truth is stranger than fiction is to say that you don’t read much fiction.
Issue 156 — Some Notes on Notes
Writers writing about writing is a subject that never tires those who aren’t writing.
Thank you, as always, for reading, and have a good Sunday.
Certainly mood and recent experience influence what you write. Especially in the short form world of sub stack.
I think, however, longer forms of writing, express more consistency by the very nature of the aggregation of the experiences and moods in the time they take to write.