March was quite the month, and here are my favorite pieces of content from the month. Also tinkering with the style/format with this one, hmu if you hate it!
The Art of Dying | The New Yorker
- This is one of my favorite essays about death and dying. I first read it sometimes last year and stumbled on it again in March. It is a piece by Peter Schjeldahl, one of the New Yorker’s finest critic. Peter tries to make sense of his life and (smoking habit) after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It’s the kind of read that reminds you of the most important things of life, or at least it does me. There’s nothing it said about living that I did not already know. There’s nothing to say about living that has not been searched for or stumbled upon before, but we all need reminding. It also reminds me of the first time I read Ann Patchet’s These Precious Days. (PS: I think you should have some space between reading the two essays)
- After my first reading in March, I did not read or watch anything with attention for a while, courtesy of what I’ve written about here. But amidst all that chaos I finally watched the animation Flow, courtesy of my immobility and it winning the Oscars. It’s everything that’s been said about it.
- This video essay by a Palestinian filmmaker on how to erase a people. She draws an analytical comparison between Israeli occupation and the U.S. destruction of indigenous American people. Occupation and colonization are themes I’ve heard before but this video has me thinking s lot more about identity and indigenity; what does it mean to belong to the land? What does it mean to own the land? Capitalism has effectively built a cut throat world where even when revolutionaries think about land and belonging, they do so in the frame of economic independence. We never think of land as a piece of identity, it’s always a commodity, as an economic wedge.
A Natural History of Beauty – Seeds of Science
- I’m particularly drawn to this essay because it makes sense of something very complex, but also because it is a master class. the author delivers a semester worth of methodical knowledge in an essay.
“The whole point of Beauty is to make something Desire wants, to trigger the oooh-circuits in Desire’s brain. Without Desire, there’d be no audience for Beauty’s performance, and no reason for it to make anything beautiful.”
Avoiding the Automation of your Heart – by Gurwinder
- I know you’ve heard a lot about AI and creatives, perhaps too much. Gurwinder makes a strong case about how agency becomes the defining character in an age where you can outsource intelligence.
The Delirious, Violent, Impossible True Story of the Zizians | WIRED
It’s the storytelling that keeps me up about this one, especially this introduction;
“I know this is unconventional, but I’m going to start by telling you the ending. Or at least, the ending as it stands today. Most of the people involved in this story wind up either dead, maimed, spending months in a mental hospital, languishing in jail, or gone underground. It’s a tragedy from almost any angle, especially because, at the outset, most of these people were idealists committed to doing as much good as possible in a world they saw as beset by existential threats.”
Why Gen Z doesn’t want kids – UnHerd
- I like people who try to understand and analyze where a popular trend stems from. I had to send this to a friend so I caught myself reading it again.
You Can’t Fuck the Sad Away – by Lolo – Vanishing Points
- This is easily among my top three favorites of May and it’s mostly about how we sometimes try to find fulfillment in being sexually wild or “liberated”, but my thing about it is how it explores this man-woman relationship where women become just leverage for men. “There is something particularly bleak about the way some men use women to self-actualize. Not just sexually, but existentially. The girlfriend who teaches him empathy. The wife who teaches him responsibility. The affair that teaches him shame. The daughter who teaches him tenderness. Women, in these narratives, are not people. They are plot devices. They arrive on time, deliver their lesson, and are discarded or destroyed accordingly.”
the gen z resilience drought – Voyeurism by Jordan Stacey
- I think young people, me inclusive, make too many excuses and this essay explores that controversial phrase with so much nuance. Definitely worth a read.
We Hate Testosterone – by Stephen Bradford Long
- I’ve been on and off into some form of fitness for the past eight years of my life, and that comes with the exploration of how testosterone affects masculinity. In this essay, Stephen, who went through a physical body reform, talks about how testosterone affects masculinity and poses questions on what it might mean to accept masculinity in its entirety.
“…are we ok with the natural effects of testosterone and the inevitable, average results of being a healthy male? Because I don’t think we are.“
