Dead Letter Department #86

weather report

I did watch the Super Bowl, kind of accidentally, or at least part of it. I’d sat down intending to watch the half-time show, but I was so early I ended up staring, somewhat slack mouthed, as the commercials rolled over me for about an hour. All of them were so bright & slickly produced, which is a silly thing to say about commercials, but as a resident of the streaming kingdoms, I so rarely see big TV ads like that. It was overwhelming, the way they just kept coming, with shining, pore-less faces, & personalities I remember fondly selling me various items. By the time I surfaced, I was half-convinced I needed to download the Temu app & start shopping.

The football itself was largely impenetrable to me, since I did not grow up in a sports watching household. I could see how it would be fun, if I’d had someone to explain the rules to me (like why those guys run back and forth behind all the other guys? and why you can knock a guy over but not grab his collar? and—), but since I had no idea what was going on, I sort of randomly decided to root for Kansas City since more of the guys had hair I liked, & I thought they were giving each other better hugs.

I kept trying to relate it to hockey, since they’re both violent, head injury causing sports, and I somewhat laboriously learned the rules of that game a couple years ago when I developed an interest in a couple of teams, but other than all of the yelling and hugging, it really didn’t seem that similar.

Usher was great—the roller skating on stage was truly astonishing to me, since I can’t even imagine trying to hold a conversation while balancing on roller skates, let alone singing to a stadium full of tens of thousands of people. At first I thought he was just teasing us with the stripping, but he really did get down to a pants-only look during one song, and if I had that body at 45, I think you would honestly be pressed to get me to ever put clothes on at all. I would simply stand around looking smug and waiting to be admired.

By the time Usher was finished, I was so overwhelmed by the announcers giddily debating various tactics (two of whom I was convinced were clones of each other, cleverly disguised in slightly varying suits, and seated as far apart as possible to throw us off the scent) that I gave up on the whole business, resolving to just check the score afterward & see if the team I had chosen at random won, which they did.

I was expecting more reaction shots of Taylor in the crowd, given the enormous & frankly insane fuss that was made about whether she’d get to the game or not, whether she’s part of some massive deep state conspiracy against what I’m not entirely clear—football? American manhood? Some sort of feminist cultural plant? Even having read a couple of articles about it I don’t feel totally locked in on the concept.

I do like dipping into these massive cultural events, even if I can’t get my hands all the way around them—just watching something so many millions of people were watching, knowing that on either side of me my neighbors were probably doing the exact same thing, has its own satisfaction.

I took a coffee break in the back yard just now, and the daffodils are actually showing their buds, which means the blossoms can’t be far behind. I’m at war with myself every springtime now, paired instincts telling me it’s still too early, too warm for this time of year, with the ensuing spiral of climate despair (heavily, helpfully informed these days by finally finishing The Great Derangement), and then the eager little animal in me that’s just excited to see green, to have a reason to start pawing around in the dirt and anticipating when it’ll finally get warm enough to spend more time outside.

The neighborhood cat has taken to basking under the rosemary again, his plush, striped fur soaking up the occasional sunbeam so he feels nice and warm under my hand. He’s a stout, sturdy, adventurous fellow, who my neighbor calls the mayor of the neighborhood, with the tiniest, most pitiful little meow that he uses to great effect when he’s trying to convince me to come let him in the back gate despite the fact that’s he’s perfectly capable of vaulting over the fence himself. I consider myself well repaid by the way he rolls around on his back and offers me his impossible soft tum to pet, before he goes on about his important cat business.

reading room

I’m about halfway through Gods & Kings: The Rise & Fall of Alexander McQueen & John Galliano, which my fashion podcast had on a long list of must-read industry deep dives. Alexander McQueen has been a star in my fashion firmament for as long as I can remember being interested, which I’m realizing as I read must have been first sparked by his early coverage in Vogue & Vanity Fair. I read both avidly even as an extremely unfashionable teen, slicing out the pictures I loved to make a vast collage on my bedroom wall, poring over the editorials, lingering over the shots of various magazine parties. It wasn’t a world I had any interest in entering—I didn’t want to imagine myself at the party, or even wearing the clothes, which would never fit my body anyway. It was more like getting a glimpse into the Unseelie Court, someplace distant and glamorous and utterly unrelated to my own life.

I think a lot these days about how we all get ground down by the great ever-churning gears of capitalism, no matter where we’re currently clinging to the wheel. Galliano & McQueen, despite the glamour, the talent, the success, were getting pummeled by it too, their genius extracted, like it’s just another exploitable natural resource, turned into profit, by a system perfectly happy to suck it all away & leave only dust behind. I had heard some vague things about the way the series of hostile takeovers and corporate buy-outs had change the fashion world at that time, but it’s interesting to read a book that pulls all the pieces together.

Yesterday I also read this newsletter, by Luke O’Neill, who I love for his ability to give voice to despair, to consistently refuse to look away from the horrors that surround us. If you need a companion for your own feelings of bleak, unspeakable heartbreak, subscribe to him.

Finally, I will offer you these two quotes from Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement, both of which have been circulating in my head since I read them:

“ ‘Money flows towards short term gain,’ writes the geologist David Archer, ‘& towards the over-exploitation of unregulated, common resources. These tendencies are like the invisible hand of fate, guiding the hero in a Greek tragedy toward his inevitable doom.

This is indeed the essence of humanity’s present derangement.”

and also:

“Climate change is often described as a ‘wicked problem.’ One of its wickedest aspects is that it may require us to abandon some of our most treasured ideas about political virtue: for example, ‘be the change you want to see.’ What we need instead is to find a way out of the individualizing imaginary in which we are trapped.”

Thank you, as always, for reading the Dead Letter Department. If you want access to the more personal writing, largely about transition, you can subscribe here. There are currently 13 Secret Dead Letters, with more to come. I'll write you again soon, and in the meantime, may you have at least one opportunity to look smug & be admired.