Authenticity

Through both the album itself and her content around it, Charli has been honest and candid about where she’s at. It’s a refreshingly honest contribution amidst a category clogged with insincerity. She’s holding the insecurity of being who she is, online, in the world, in these parties along with the rush of just being a person getting lit with her

... See more

“It seems to me,” the puppeteer Jim Henson (The Muppets, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, etc.) said, “that each of us expressing our own originality is the essence of our art and professionalism.” Don’t hide it. Embrace it. Express it. Manifest it through your discipline. Say it out loud

Where we struggle to imagine a future beyond the contemporary shitshow, nihilism leads the retreat inwards; in art as in politics. “What good is a flourishing poetry market,” Watts asked, “If what we read in poetry books renders us more confused, less appreciative of nuance, less able to engage with ideas, more indignant about the things that annoy

... See more

Someone who is secure is also consistent: they’re the same person in front of everyone because they’re comfortable being authentic. They don’t have to change masks between people because they don’t feel the need to impress others by pretending to be someone they’re not.

That’s my big learning of the year: understanding the way someone’s interior life translates to what they make. When I first started writing this Substack, I was possessed by the sense that I had to figure out “how to do it.” Which other Substacks do I like, which other Substacks are popular, what do they write about, how do they make it work. It’s... See more

Swept up in the Instagramization of the 2010s, the contemporary poetry world saw an exaltation of ‘honesty’ as an aesthetic priority. Poetry not as craft, but as ‘outlet,’ with the goal not of developing ourselves and enriching our understanding of the world, but of sitting more comfortably with how we already were and what we already believed. Wat

... See more