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Kristin Hersh on the podcast today
Here are some of the things that I talk about with the musician/singer/songwriter Kristin Hersh about in this podcast that I haven’t talked about with other people on the show before:
1. Starting a band when you’re 13 and still playing in that band at 56.
2. Synesthesia. In her case, she saw chords as colors and grew frustrated that her dad would only show her green and blue when she wanted to learn magenta and turquoise.
3. Going to college at 15 and becoming good friends with former Hollywood starlet Betty Hutton who was then in her sixties.
4. Having one’s entire band be aware of one’s trauma triggers and steer one around those provocations.
5. What it’s like to not remember playing your own songs on stage, returning to the world between songs and then dissociating again during the performance as if it was someone else stepping in to play.
Not mentioned: I tried in my kitchen to nail the Stipe vocal here and I just could not do it. Kristin said don’t worry, no one can:
Disappointing Affirmations
That’s the name of a newish but very popular Instagram feed full of not-really-inspirational thoughts. They mirror the dime-a-dozen inspirations you might find on your dentist’s wall but just get a lot more dark.
An article in Vice points out how these memes that would seem to be hopeless about mental health are actually kind of great.
Some might read these and take offense. Certain Instagram users pointed out that a panic attack is not exactly something to laugh about. But Tarnowski, who suffers from panic attacks himself, is neither telling anyone to induce a panic attack, nor that panic attacks are funny. He’s letting people in on the sometimes absurd things that come out of many people’s mouths or minds, and showing them that it might not be all bad to find some humor in them.
For him, many of the disappointing affirmations show those who might not understand what it’s like to struggle with mental health how ludicrous some of the things they say can be—like telling someone to not cry when they are, in fact, already crying.
Maybe it’s not self-care to cancel plans, maybe you’re just being a jerk
The New York Times (the Washington Post of newspapers) has an op-ed on what’s pretty derisively called Instagram Therapy. It’s this sort of go-your-own-way approach to methods of self-care that don’t really square with anything that a clinician would really prescribe.
The idea of self-care, in turn, has been largely divorced from its links to activism and is now often used to frame individual pleasurable actions, like taking a bubble bath or canceling plans, as morally worthy, even necessary. The exhortation to take care of ourselves, to protect our mental well-being at any cost, has become a mantra for a newly dominant ideology.
It’s not just that this Instagram therapy gives its adherents a convenient excuse to bail on dinner parties or silence our phones when friends text us in tears. Rather, it’s that according to this newly prevalent gospel of self-actualization, the pursuit of private happiness has increasingly become culturally celebrated as the ultimate goal. The “authentic” self — to use another common buzzword — is characterized by personal desires and individual longings. Conversely, obligations, including obligations to imperfect and often downright difficult people, are often framed as mere unpleasant circumstance, inimical to the solitary pursuit of our best life. Feelings have become the authoritative guide to what we ought to do, at the expense of our sense of communal obligations.
Perhaps you will be soothed by this unslicing of tomatoes
I don’t know. Maybe. I can’t say. I’m not the boss of your mind.
Behind the scenes with the Traveling Wilburys
Okay, if you’re a rock nerd like me, this is fantastic. If you’re not, well, thanks for stopping by.
It’s a look at the formation and recording process of supergroup the Traveling Wilburys - Roy Orbison, George Harrison, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, and Jeff Lynne. Somehow these guys all got together for an extended period of time to create music. The video looks very homemade but you get stuff like Bob Dylan smiling and Roy Orbison’s eyes being visible. And beyond that, you get a look at what a no-pressure creative process is like with incredibly talented people.
By the way, they were all BABIES:
Love this newsletter—Traveling Wilburies documentary was fab! Thank you, John.