Last day of the year, but still time to squeeze in one final newsletter! I kept thinking I would get to it sooner, but between the airplanes, boardgames, babies, families, feasts, partying for 36 straight hours to celebrate turning 36 and everything in between, this installment is hitting your inboxes later than anticipated (but still on the 2023 side of things). I hope you too fell into a vortex of holiday cheer. No resolutions this year, no solutions either, just holding close this quote from Wim Wenders that lies in the title of this post.
I want to know your definition of storytelling.
My definition is: I’d like to know where it starts, and I’d like not to know how it ends. I’d like to know where it wants to take us, and then I’d like to follow it. My ideal story is one that I can tell in chronological order. That’s the reason why I did so many road movies. This genre forces you to tell a thing in chronological order. The road becomes a story, and therefore the itinerary, and therefore the structure. Normally, you’re not allowed to do that. You’re never, ever allowed to tell anything in chronological order. You are always forced to shoot locations out of order. But if you shoot on the road they’ll let you shoot a story. It should be lived and not sort of conceived before.
The movie we’re shooting in 2024 spans a relationship of ten years so will also (hopefully) be shot chronologically as a result… Here’s to time and space forming the structure. In the meantime, a smattering of things that have lodged themselves in my brain during this latter half of December:
Ichi-go ichi-e, a Japanese four-character idiom that literally means "One lifetime, one encounter." It comes from the writings of a 16th century tea ceremony master, Sen no Rikyu, as people would meet to have tea together with the understanding that this exact ceremony would not reoccur in their lifetime. It has also been translated as "In this moment, an opportunity" - nothing happens the same way twice.
Our supper club has never had the same menu twice but the last one to close out the year was maybe my favorite one yet. Cailin whipped up some mezcal dark‘n stormies, Jared made a groundnut chicken stew from Ghana, Kishori was on efo riro with stewed callaloo, I took the jollof rice and fried plantains and Gi still had a bun in the oven. Yewande Komolafe’s recipes do not miss.
I’ve always loved Ramy Youssef’s TV series but his new standup show More Feelings at BAM just about ended me. So much clarity and bite, some real swings and fatherly observations that have made me consider if all dads have a universal template they’re cut from. His friend and fellow actor Steve Way opened for him and his dark humor had everyone shaking in their seats. He would have absolutely killed as the host of a show Sasha and I developed, but alas television is a fickle beast. The best part - 100% of the proceeds of Ramy’s standup special were donated to ANERA, which provides humanitarian assistance to communities in Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan.
Masha Gessen, on whether or not the arc of the moral universe bends: “Over the quarter-century during which the United States extended the franchise to LGBT people, it also built an institution known as DHS, which is fundamentally one of the most immoral institutions that this country has ever created. There’s no morality on the institutional level. Institutions are instruments. Morality happens where there’s politics. And by politics, I mean people actually acting together to figure out how we live together justly. And where it’s not happening, unspeakable evil can take root, not because we’re fundamentally some sort of Hobbesian immoral creature, but because justice requires intention and thoughtfulness.”
introduced me to the work of Andrea Zittel who lives her art in Joshua Tree. A-Z West was her home, studio and compound dedicated to her own experimental living practice for the last 20+ years. She designed twelve A-Z Wagon Stations as individual pods with a communal kitchen and outdoor showers. Guests could come stay in them for free twice a year in exchange for an hour’s work every morning — known as the Hour of Power. She wrote a manifesto of sorts published in 2015 : “Throughout the years, and often in response to the experiments that I described above, I’ve collected small principles called ‘these things I know for sure’. Lately I keep coming back to principle number 12: ‘Ideas seem to gestate best in a void—when that void is filled, it is more difficult to access them. In our consumption-driven society, almost all voids are filled, blocking moments of greater clarity and creativity. Things that block voids are called “avoids”’.I deeply loved
’s interview with Miriam Klein Stahl about identifying as a Diasporist. “I happen to be here now, but I might not always be here and I don't feel a claim to this land. I feel lucky to be on it. I honor the Ohlone people as much as I can, including by paying Shuumi, my land tax. I love living here, but this is not ‘my’ land. And I could just as well live somewhere else. Because I'm a Diasporist!”Meanwhile Congress is seriously considering bargaining away our asylum system in exchange for funding for Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. Here's a toolkit to push back on this horrendous policy proposal. Always a good time to to remember the “migrant crisis” is manufactured and read or re-read NYU Abolition Lab’s zine “The Problem is Borders.”
It’s a beautiful echo to Dan Berger’s essay about dismantling the prison state: “In its most capacious vision, “everyone for everyone” can be read as an abolitionist call—a way to think about safety grounded in solidarity and mutuality, raised in terrifying and precarious circumstances. It is at once a pragmatic demand that meets the moment in securing the release of captives—Israeli and Palestinian together—as well as a capacious call toward a political horizon that does not turn on capture. Everyone for everyone, all for all, reaches instinctively toward a kind of connection that is incommensurate with ethnostate: Only together will we know safety. It validates the long-suffering demands of Palestinian prisoners while insisting liberation is possible in tandem; in fact, it is the only way.”
Nan Goldin on the seeds of change: “Solidarity is the answer. The more of us there are, the more of us there are. And the more of us there are, the safer we are in regards to the pushback. The more of us there are, the harder it gets to obscure the ongoing massacre through intellectual discussion. How can anyone support what Israel is doing to Palestine now? I feel a deep, tactile pain. The more of us there are, the more vocal we all are, the more difficult it becomes for them to justify this genocide.”
was interviewed by for and made me want to shave my head again. “But then I thought: “If I can’t do this—if I can’t be as free as any man my age—what woman can?” Because I have more freedom than almost any woman I know. I have no partner to please, no kids to embarrass, no boss to appease, no asses I have to kiss to make my money — and yet I still have to care about these idiotic beauty standards, that are so random and stupid and boring and played out? No. No more. So I said: fuck it. I bought some clippers and took off all my hair, and I also stopped messing with my face. And I love it. I think I look gorgeous. I think I look more like myself than I have ever looked in my life. Because when I look in the mirror, I see a woman who looks FREE. And I never met any free women, growing up. And that, I believe, is my final destination in this incarnation: True and total freedom.” who writes makes the economic argument. “If women were compensated for the time they spent on grooming, that would equate to $52,416, going by the New York state 2024 minimum wage of $16 an hour, for 3,276 hours spent doing this over the course of one’s life. But there’s also a mental burden associated with getting ready to which assigning a dollar figure is impossible. The burden of figuring out how to fit it in, the burden of feeling like you have to spend so much time on it, the burden of stressing about how you didn’t have as much time to get ready as you would have liked before you faced the world, the burden of the anxieties it brings up about our bodies and appearances in general.” from also tackles the dismantling in her most recent comic post. from on how to crawl out of burnout: “Whatever it is, it takes time for an action to become a practice. After all, it took decades to hone my attitude (I’ll say it: addiction) to work. So it makes sense that it’s taken real time for me to figure out how best to diffuse it. A better or richer or more enlightened person might be able to dismantle it entirely, but right now, I’m settling for diffusion. And I realize, at least for myself, that to truly turn away from work I had to have something to turn towards. I am doing less. I am lowering the bar. I am loosening my schedule. But I also have a fuller life, with so many places to direct my attention and time. It’s both less busy (with work) and more busy (with other life) than ever before.”Thank you for reading these missives. I am borrowing the words of
who writes the great : “I am in awe of how wild life is and how little we’re in control. It will consume you if you let it, so instead I’ll hunker into gratitude. Thank you for being here, too. Your readership and support of my writing and explorations give me motivation to go deeper and keep sharing. You’ve lied up and survived, as poet Philip Booth might say. Love you for it and love it for you.” It’s an honor and a pleasure to keep receiving the gift of your attention. It’s the rocket fuel behind this typing.Till next year,
ASK
Thanks for the mention!
♥️Happy New Year!♥️ can’t wait to see what you cook up in 2024 💫