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Hi guys,
This is Sophie! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving week. I know it was a strange one this year…
Going off of last week’s conversation about alternate realities, I’ve been doing some further thinking about spaces. Specifically, how I occupy the physical spaces that surround me—mainly my own bedroom.
I recently finished a book I’d wholeheartedly recommend to anyone: Uncanny Valley, written by Anne Wiener, a memoir she wrote about her time working for various data companies/startups in Silicon Valley. The book satisfied the part of me that actively wonders what it would really be like to work in a productivity obsessed environment such as Silicon Valley. Reading about it in the media, paired with the fact that I currently pay my bills by working as a remote substitute teacher, my kinda fucked-up interest in the dramatic culture of grueling business/work environments remains. I don’t know what it is about the business world!
Anyhow. After reading the book and hearing about all of the intense office environments Wiener describes, I started looking at images of the massive HQs of companies like Github, etc. I found hospitalitysnapshots.com, a website that catalogs images of different well-designed public spaces and got lost in a black hole of restaurant, hotel, coffee shop and conference center images. Some of the spaces appear to be beautiful, architectural immersive art objects you can walk into, while some lean a little more towards …having that unmarked gentrification - coffee shop feeling, and I know y’all know exactly what I mean by that…
Waiting areas…designated rooms for WAITING! To be back out in the world and wait for something in public!! (Other than the grocery store checkout line.)
Some of them are a little more corporate, boring, predictable. All of the spaces are visually different and empty. Yet, they are somehow eerily the same, with a sleek, modern design, and just enough quirk to mark them as hip or trendy. It’s the exact kind of place I’ll somewhat-shamefully admit I’m drawn to when visiting somewhere new. When I think about it further, these places also just read as a bland you can step into. But, I digress…
Something about looking at these images satisfied the part of me that also watches Youtube videos of someone filming POVs of themselves walking through a city. Looking at the rooms allows me to place myself in a different space and imagine what it might feel like for a second. I started thinking about the transition of occupying space almost exclusively at home. How do I delineate my time working at my desk, to my time writing, reading, writing, stretching my body, teaching a remote PE class to middle schoolers (:-0), making art, talking on the phone? How do I conceptualize the shift that takes place?
I took my LSAT which I guess I mention now in every newsletter…(it’s a constant character in my life which, post receiving my score this morning, I have to say its presence is completely evaporating from my mental space. It took me a roller coaster of emotions obsessively studying, getting lost in reddit and putting soooo meaning into this score to re-affirm for myself that standardized tests are just another random score that doesn’t define the rest of your life, alright)
Anyways, taking that LSAT in my room was the most stark moment of contrast in changing my perspective on my own space. I had to give myself a full pep talk, and I shut myself out of my room by closing my part-bedroom-part-“testing center” door thirty minutes prior, to prepare myself mentally. It’s weird to lie in bed at night and be only a couple feet away from the exact spot you had an emotional experience, much like after a breakup you visit spots that once felt special but are left feeling completely hollow afterwards.
I’m working through the concept that we give our spaces meaning, and we have a semblance of control over our headspace when we approach them. When I’m wasting time or I’m feeling stressed, I clean my room and rearrange my things as a form of keeping control, or attempting feng shui. Does anyone remember when Marie Kondo’s name turned in a verb for clearing up clutter in your space???— theKonMari method. I think I internalized a part of that ideology, or from my mom <3 who never hesitates to throw/give things away when they’re no longer needed in a space. Does anyone else do this? I’m a maximal minimalist. At least, I think that’s how I’d most accurately describe it.
I spend time thinking about how, when, why and where I will be most productive…trying to tweak things in my schedule or motivate myself by lighting a candle, making sure my bed is made, deciding something I’ve hung on my wall doesn’t affect me like it used to. Maybe I just have too much time on my hands? But I think I’m mostly bored. At the end of the day, I take a deep breath, know that I did the best I could and lie down in my bed that’s in my bedroom. A “studio” that’s in my “office” that’s a part of my “study/library” that’s also a “gym” (and all of those labels were quite generous…)
Reply to me in comments please tell me what you’re feeling ! About anything!
Need Something To Read? I Got U:
Alicia Kennedy on prestige explores the concept of prestige, specifically in the publishing realm—alicia kennedy asks some great questions!
The Fatal Flaw of “The Queen’s Gambit” by Sarah Miller, a hot take on Queen’s Gambit that you may not like if you’re a fan, uh oh, which also tipped me off to the Fassbender Scale for hollywood actors! LOL!
The Pandemic Clarified Who The Kardashians Really Are — Again and again I ask myself, why am I still interested in the Kardashians? Why are we obsessed with things + people that represent extreme wealth? Rhetorical question, yeah
The Downward Spiral by Dean Kissick for Spike Art Magazine if you don’t want to read it, then enjoy the following excerpt…
“…Sometimes if I want to read something meaningful, I’ll go on Quora and read posts from strangers with terminal illnesses. They write things like, “Living with a ticking time bomb forces me to live a life of NOW, a life of purpose, and to not sweat the details. I am more adventurous. I am so beyond consumerism and gossip that I feel like I am on another plane – not that I am better, just so beyond those things now. I let the stupid things go more and try to live more in the moment, more in joy.” That’s the kind of sentiment I’d like to see scrawled over a boarded-up Sweetgreen, or finger-painted in the window of the bank.”
Cyberfeminism index - an online catalogue of cyberfeminist texts, for those interested.
Interesting interview with one of my fav writers Lauren Oyler
~To continue a week of thinking about cults (Can’t stop watching The Vow) and the way they seem to lure people in, and to disrupt some of your idyllic visions of your own childhoods (like mine) spent playing Neopets…
Something lighthearted and inspiring! Amazing, kute, kind horoscopes written by em biggs—check out this cool online artist space created by Tiana Dueck. They’re accepting submissions for their next issue!
Lastly, some virtual (click me ) eucalyptus for you :- )
I Luv U Teehee : - o
Hey guys, this is Jess.
I started this week seeking to lavish myself in the glory of time off from work and away from my desk. In this attempt I’ve learned that I don’t know how to exist without the structure and have resultantly parked myself at the kitchen counter where I drink so much coffee that my inner monologue sounds like freeform jazz and I eat plain tostitos scoops until it’s finally time for dinner. buona notte princepessa <3
Love the sites you shared, Soph. Looking at these photos makes me miss the moments of sincerity that come with being in large public spaces. I wish I could telepathize with the babies at the grocery store to say yes I am smiling at you!
I’ve had topic of this newsletter in the back of my mind this week, so during a viewing of All the President’s Men—a good movie that has left me googling careers in investigative journalism and longing for Dustin Hoffman’s snappy little bellbottoms—my interest was peaked by a glimpse of the protagonist’s apartment:
Ah yes, the humble businessman at home. We know he’s a businessman, of course, because of all those papers! Lots of reading to do, huh? Little businessman?
In all sincerity, though, and from a purely outsider perspective, has anyone else noticed that apartments of single adult (business)men usually look something like this? Somewhat sparse, and lacking in excessive or even basic attempts at embellishment? Yeah, it’s a movie so the production designers are actively communicating something about this man—he lives alone and does not have either the time to decorate or an interest in doing so—and that solidifies him as more of a person, and in many ways the sparseness of his home makes us easily recognize him. Of course we know him, this single adult man, because he is our coworker/family friend/brother. He is most likely in need of a hug, because when you are a businessman, you must only wear suits and eat Ritz crackers for snack, and your apartment will have one to two neutral toned lamps. No Antiquing!
I want to clarify: it’s (usually) not untidiness that I notice in the examples that I’ve seen, but when I look at the living quarters of these men—men in their 20s, 30s, 40s, unattached, work-minded—they’re so often impersonal and it feels as though the space itself is waiting for something. There’s evidence of life, and maybe a memento from childhood or college years, but beyond that there are few clues about the resident. This isn’t a roast, and yes I have many male friends with beautiful and/or personalized homes, but I’ve also seen enough Zoom backgrounds to know that the Hollywood image isn’t very far from reality. Looking at that screenshot from Moneyball… I know those sheets are just a little too soft, you know what I mean? To each their own, what the hell do I know anyways, but I’m looking for some crisp. linen.
In thinking about all of this, I also wonder what my room is like without me in it. Does my room feel different in my absence? I feel like, spending as much time in here as I have been, I’ve become just as essential to it’s composition as my bed or my desk. Also, what does my house smell like to someone that doesn’t live with me and instead lives in their own house that has its own unique smell? Questions for another time.
Hey you’re an awesome businessman to me Jess! Also these are great questions to be asking. Have you ever returned to your childhood home after a trip and smelled your own “house” smell??? Wow—S
Other things I’ve been enjoying
✧ The media is out for blood in their critique of Hillbilly Elegy, a movie I haven’t seen and don’t really plan on watching, and my favorite piece on it thus far has been Who Is Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy For? by Sarah Jones.
No hillbilly film is ever made for the people it depicts. They’re intended for people with power and security, people who want to believe that money is the same thing as integrity or intelligence and that, conversely, an absence of money indicates something about a person’s character. Viewers want to look at the hillbilly and reassure themselves they are not that. After all, they’d vote for Obama a third time if they could. Located beyond the reach of reason or society, the hillbilly is pure white id. He’s also a fiction.
✧ A re-released episode of This American Life celebrating its 25th anniversary, reminding me that listening to New Yorkers talk about cars is one of life’s simple pleasures.
✧ Honestly, the new Miley Cyrus album. Bop after bop on this one.
I really hope you have an amazing rest of your week. Getting through it with eyes on the horizon and love in my heart!
~Don’t forget to drink water today! Earlier this week, my dad told me it keeps your joints lubricated. Don’t you want that for yourself??? Glug - Sophie
Love,
Sophie and Jess
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