Good morning. Hey ho. Tuesday we go. Jane is home from school. We are upstairs. She is very sad I cannot play with her. Still has a hard time accepting there are days she has off that we don’t have off. I wonder if she has even thought about that there are days we have off that she doesn’t. The secret life of parents.
Allow me, today, a complete naval-gazing of an entry that really belongs in my private journal.
So I think I’m getting dumber. This came to me last night in bed, where I realized some obvious thing that I should have realized, like, six hours earlier. And I have noticed I have a harder time saying anything profound, well, anywhere. I realized that I’ve had separate strands running through my subconscious that were, in fact, all related:
I have a hard time conversing coherently these last few years. Hundreds of thoughts flood through my head at once and I cannot as easily make them into a coherent whole as I used to. Sometimes the logical jumps are just too far for the other person to follow, and sometimes I just say the most banal thing that is of zero help. I’d been sort of viewing this as a communication problem, working from a starting point diametrically opposed to “I’m getting dumber.” That is, that I’m just such a brilliant genius that too many brilliant things are running through my head at once that of course it’s hard to separate them out, of course it’s difficult to communicate with mere plebes.
(See? I never said I don’t have an ego, I just said I’m trying to not have one)
And then parallel to that, for the last several months I’ve also been noticing how utterly impossible it is for me to, like, write a single interesting thing in my separate 750 words that I do every day. Now, I do those 750 words about 30 minutes after these words, so, you know, after having done a rundown of every topic that’s run through my head in the last 24 hours, it is not totally unreasonable that I don’t have a lot more to say. But if I am this brilliant genius with a million things running through my head at any given moment who cannot communicate with mere plebes like everyone else, you’d think I would, oh, I don’t know, communicate with myself or mayhaps use that time to, you know, sort out my shit.
Yesterday I was talking to my neighbor on the street about some neighborhood drama and I could feel myself just not being coherent. It was very frustrating.
And yesterday when I was talking to a coworker and giving some feedback on a project, I could feel myself not communicating properly.
Maybe? Or maybe it made perfect sense. I don’t know! I don’t know!
And then my wife pointed out that about once a month I leave a burner on.
And I swear to god everyone around me is mildly (healthily) hypochondriac and I think through the years it’s been rubbing off on me and now I am convinced I have early onset Alzheimer’s.
Also I literally just had to google the word “hypchondriac” because I couldn’t remember it. Not an encouraging sign.
I mean, sure, maybe I’m just too busy, parenting, holding down two jobs that are both in very busy phases, doing a house remodel, but I swear to god I used to go out and drink till 4 AM every night and I was smarter than I am now.
I had this horrible dream last night I was DJing the upcoming Man Ray kids goth night Real Wild Child (see you there!) and a) I did no prop so I had absolutely no idea what to play that was acceptable for kids and accidentally played Current 93’s “Falling Back in Fields of Rape” but also I had forgotten how to DJ completely. But also it was not my fault because the stupid CD players (they only had CD players) didn’t stay open when you took a disc out so you could never tell which one was the one you were supposed to insert the next disc, so I kept stopping songs mid-song. Also they had no line in for tablets and no phonographs.
(As an aside, I really need to find out what the DJ setup is at the new Man Ray).
Sean kept rolling his eyes at me. BUT I did manage to play the Holier Than Thou Approach remix of “Personal Jesus” and all those little toddlers danced their hearts out and it was so cute Real Wild Child is going to be so cute. I really need to do more promo for that let me know if you have any ideas.
I suppose the most logical explanation for all of this is that I am a writer, and I do not think linearly, and that is why I prefer writing, because I can go back and insert errant thoughts into the proper place and form a coherent narrative whereas with the spoken word, I am losing that ability a bit.
My friend and ex colleague Noah Brier used to say I was the only person he knows who thinks (or was it speaks) in bullet points. Maybe he still says this. But if he met me today, would he still think it? I feel like my thoughts are straying more and more further astray. That every topic has to be examined from ten angles, and getting to the core, to the first principles, to the big bang, to the nature of capitalism, to what it means to be human — is this necessary for everything, even, like, dumpsters?
I do not know. But last night, as I was falling asleep, I thought “maybe it’s as simple as I’m just getting dumber” and it sure felt highly plausible.
Mazzy Star’s been back in the zeitgeist this last week. My old friend Megan asked about the 1993 Strawberries Mazzy Star show in Harvard Square (where I got my prized posession autographed Mazzy Star poster). And they were playing “Into Dust” in the finale Night Country. I used to be absolutely obsessed with that song. And, now, as I convince myself I am getting dumber from early onset Alzheimer’s, the words are stuck on repeat in my head:
I could possibly be fading.
It’s just great lemme tell you.
I feel like they changed the font in the Substack composer window did they change the font? It is distracting. Also Substack introduced DMs come the fuck on, man, who needs DMs in Substack. I turned that shit off. I can quibble about the product design of Threads (threads are broken in Threads!) but props to Mosseri for not implementing yet another DM feature.
The supreme court (they can have caps when they make a decent decision) wrote the most bonkers opinion since Bush v Gore and I am rip shit. I have read words from Clarence Thomas in past opinions that have said, explicitly with no caveats, “A state has the absolute right to decide who appears on its ballots and how it chooses its winner in a presidential election” but now, suddenly, never mind! Can’t be on the ballot! Which, I mean, whatever, is probably the right decision (I am torn) but the part where the 5-justice majority also said “oh, btw, never mind what the fourteenth amendment says, only our broken, paralyzed congress can decide if someone committed insurrection” which is not what the amendment says at all and would obviously say that if that is what it meant. Just breathlessly, shamelessly cynical and bullshit.
Oh and apparently yesterday Jane got frustrated with some doll arms she was trying to attach to a doll and she said “fucking doll arms” so, a) excellent first proper use of the word, good job, but b) Emma certainly doesn’t say fucking around our daughter so, you know, my bad, and c) Emma tried to have the talk about swear words and apparently Jane cried, so, you know, that’s a thing. I’m so annoyed we have to go through this ringmorale, swear words are so milquetoast and it feels like the whole thing is a societal litmus test to weed out “good people” from the bad, and just a dumb, made-up distraction like Santa. We’re not doing Santa so why do we have to do “Swear words are bad” what a hassle.
Why can’t the world world chill out and worry about things that really matter like butter knives and egg cracking techniques.
Today’s Media of the Day is, surprise surprise, “Into Dust.” Listen to it later tonight when its dark and you’re alone. Put a candle on. Stare into the flame.
(53 million streams. Never would have expected “Into Dust” to be the second-most streamed song from that album.)
I’m sure you’re all breathlessly wondering how I did on my country flashcards yesterday and I got 100%. This is rote memorization so we will not use it as evidence that I’m not slowly turning dumb.
My theory is that as smart people get older, we embrace contradiction, uncertainty, dichotomy, and the like as being more the true state of many issues, feelings, etc. Expressing one, confident, ego-derived proclamation, as in youth, is easy compared to explaining that something can simultaneously be this AND that or that there is well-thought-out validity to multiple angles on a thing. And uncertainty — or saying — this is too complex for me to have one declaration about — or even I don’t know — or I am unsettled by my myriad feelings about this… those are the hardest things to say and express.
So, not getting dumber, but just waiting for words (and ego?) to catch up to a new level of mature complexity in thinking.
I still think you’re smart and a preposterous overachiever. As the kids say, goals.