The Pulse: March 2024

“Something broke and something opened.”

This is The Pulse, a monthly pack of things to keep your creative self alive!, sustained, curious, and connected to the real world in the age of the machine. There’s a lot in here to keep you busy fed.

As always (well, always as of the last few issues), we start with 3 things that happened this month: distilled and contextualized for digestion, paired with further reading and poetry for expansion.

The TikTok ban and why it matters—even if you hate TikTok.

On March 13 the U.S. House of Representatives voted 352-65 in favour of a bill to ban TikTok, proposing that Bytedance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, sell the app to a U.S. company within six months or be banned across app stores in the U.S. This isn’t the first time a TikTok ban has been thrown around, but I think it’s the first time it’s felt this serious to a lot of people.

Now the bill is on the way to the U.S. Senate (timeline unclear), and then to President Biden, who has already said he would sign it if passed. Biden, ironically, has a TikTok account, undoubtedly to help him reach younger voters.

My favourite take on the whole thing is unsurprisingly on TikTok itself, by Dellara Gorjian, a UCLA law school graduate who appropriately calls out the hypocrisy of “elderly tech illiterate Ivy League” lawmakers. This whole thing reeks of Sinophobia, a poorly veiled attempt at profit monopolization disguised as data and privacy concern.

In case you couldn’t tell, I like TikTok. One of my favourite sources for poetry and literature finds is Kristen’s account. It’s also how I find new places to eat in my city, learn about quantum physics through micro lectures, and get my daily dose of cat videos. And where so much support for small businesses and artists happens, sometimes of a life-changing kind.

Kate Middleton made a statement after her “disappearance” spawned conspiracy theories for (2.5) months.

The internet loves a good sleuthing mystery and the only thing that beats cats is a princess. Turns out Kate Middleton has cancer, not a conspiracy or cover-up so much as it is personal health crisis that needed, well, personal time.

There have been a lot of discussions around the PR debacle, how “poorly” it was handled, how long it took for a “proper” statement. Although: that length of time is how long it took me to determine I don’t love my bangs after getting them in January, so was it really that long? I think the big question some of us are asking now is: Are we happy now? Still, others are asking: Is it a deepfake?

Okay, and Kate Middleton writes poetry. No, no that one. A Melbourne poet who just came out with a poetry book centred around television.

The mood at SXSW: AI everything, everywhere, all at once.

Let’s recap some highlights from the film, music, and tech conference: AI, AI, AI. Everyone’s talking about, thinking about, worried about, excited about AI. Yeah, that’s basically it.

But here’s the one talk I really enjoyed (recommended viewing for all creatives struggling to find fulfillment), which is also kind of about AI but mostly about why absurdity is so necessary in a world where we try so hard to compress ourselves so we can avoid feeling it all. From the Daniels, directors/writers of Everything Everywhere All At Once:

This is something that I think art can do better than anything else. Poetry, music, film, whatever it is. When you take two things that are opposed to each other, it actually is really a generative, beautiful act of creation.

I.e. "What if we made a very queer celebration that starred a homophobic mother?"

It might feel kinda crazy to think that our little short films or little poems might actually make a dent in the crack, in the system. And sometimes it feels like throwing little rocks at this giant brick wall. But we have to remember that the systems that we have now are just fossilized stories of the past. And as this current fossil is crumbling and showing its crack, we actually have an opportunity to rewrite the stories and rewrite the systems for tomorrow.

Also at SXSW: Ada Limón shared the stage with Dr. Lori Glaze, Director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, to talk poetry and science and share updates on her work as U.S. Poet Laureate.

Other things: X-Men 97 just hit Millennials with a heavy dose of nostalgia, and it’s getting rave reviews - also, their website is fittingly stuck in the 90s. / Spring has sprung and if you’re like most people who enter a bit of a dead zone in January, then feel free to consider this the real start of your 2024. / The Poetry Foundation was boycotted by over 2000 poets and writers in October 2023 over censorship and this month released a statement. / Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow and Nobel-prize winner, has passed. (That’s 3 Daniels in this newsletter.) / My favourite reality show of the moment, Physical 100, is back. How did a Korean show about athleticism capture the zeitgeist? Honestly, maybe watching people get sweaty and compete on a very physical level just makes us feel alive. / The 3 Body Problem, Netflix’s much anticipated show based off of Chinese writer Liu Cixin’s novel, is out. I watched the first ep and I can’t say anything about it yet other than it’s the kind of show that requires full attention. It’s also the first time I’ve seen the cultural revolution depicted in entertainment.

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LOEWE’S CRAFTED WORLD (#18)

MAYA MAN’S GENERATIVE POETRY (#1)

*= paywalled

1. I’m digging Dirt x Are.na’s editorial series on scent, which is how I found Maya Man’s generative poems made using real fragrance notes and product ad copy, fed into code. (View the full collection here.) Related and fascinating: this course on AI and olfaction.

2. Also loving this desk tour series on

   Olivia’s Substack
   featuring workspaces that feel vibrant and full of creative energy: the latest features novelist Iman Hariri-Kia

3. Property poetry: when real estate ads meet literature

4. Also, doctors-in-training are taking poetry courses led by breast cancer surgeon and award-winning poet João Luís Barreto Guimarães. Why? To teach empathy.

5. Profit From Art Isn’t Dirty. It Means: Make More Art.* I disagree with the author that profit = permission. I think we have to give ourselves permission. However, I agree with everything else, that the desire to make a living doing creative work shouldn’t feel dirty.

6. Do you ever think about your own funeral? Actor Cynthia Nixon has, and she knows which poem she wants read at hers.

7. Elle profiles Amanda Gorman who has her sights set on bringing poetry to the Olympics - and reassures us that famous poets struggle with the productivity trap, too.

8. So happy to see The Honey Month mentioned in this article on Falling in Love With Speculative Poetry

9. The greatest and truest irony in tech: Our company is doing so well that you’re all fired (lol)

10. An interesting study found that Song Lyrics Really Getting Simpler and More Repetitive — read to the end.

11. What if tech was soft? Via

    ꧁BURN AFTER READING꧂

12. Have we all misread the meaning of Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken?*

13. Do you buy nice things and wait to save them for very special occasions? Let the roundup of comments from You’re Using Your Good Shit!!! be a reminder to burn that candle, use those plates, spray that perfume (via

    Iridescent Ordinary
    ).

14. Six books that will jolt your senses awake* by

    Celine Nguyen

15. If you’ve ever wondered what a job application for an astronaut looks like, here you go. NASA is hiring and they keep sending me emails about it, ever since I signed my name on the Europa spaceship. Travel required? Yes, extensive. To-outer-space kind of extensive.

16. On multi-layered calendars - how to use your time management system “where time serves as the scaffolding for our future plans and our memory palaces of the past.” Mmm.

17. Seen Library does book exchanges, book drives, and book pop-ups, yes. But: all their books are “wrapped in custom paper adorned with a library card of handwritten clues so you can choose a book by its contents rather than its cover”. (Spoiler for upcoming post)

18. Loewe’s Crafted World Exhibition puts art x fashion out on full display. Currently on tour in Shanghai until May 5 with more cities being announced soon.

19. “The starting point is to start a larger conversation based on humanistic values, soft skills, and priorities larger than the numbers on an income statement. You don’t need to read long books to participate. (But it will empower you if you do.)” —

    Ted Gioia

20. A lot of people are in love with the poem, The Orange by Wendy Cope. And I loved this essay on loving The Orange and other poems that aren’t sad. (from

    Notions
    )

21. As someone who has found herself a writer but never had any formal schooling for it, I feel it when

    Fariha Róisín
    says “My life is an act of liberation” and writing itself a language for self-liberation.

And speaking of books…

FICTION

• A book on female agency, told as a vampire story “with echoes of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein”.

• Teenage girl boxers. That’s the plot. Has critics raving.

• Three women—an artist, a coder, and an activist—navigate girlhood in the 1980s to making art and meaning all the way in an imagined 2040s.

• A blurb so wild and unique I want to read this just to experience it.

• A mystery meets fever dream set in a Polish forest but really a “brilliant examination of art, celebrity, the natural world, and the power of language“.

• Said to be for fans of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

• Might be what you get if you cross Ted Chiang (author of the story that inspired my favourite movie, Arrival) with animal folktales.

• Explore love and intimacy in the age of AI, told through the story of a female robot.

• Self-discovery set in New York’s glitzy magazine industry.

NON-FICTION

• The poet who wrote “There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé” is back with a collection of essays.

• Read this if you want to know what makes a poem work.

• Part memoir, part guidebook on personal transformation and re-imagination—exactly the kind of book I want to read right now.

• A poet writes about basketball—and critics are calling it profound, inventive, stunning.

• Some things about the universe just aren’t adding up, and this book makes it fun to learn about them.

• “Care about language precision, clarity, and inclusion all at the same time,“ says this book. I do. So I’ll be reading this.

• Take a tour through the fascinating history and future of our cities’ building blocks: urban housing.

• A memoir of a female puzzle-maker meets the history of crossword puzzles.

POETRY

• “Was the grief worth the poem? No, but you don't interrogate a weed for what it does with wreckage."

• "No poet can reDRAW or EDIT the TIDE of TIME alMIGHTy, no VERSE reVERSE the flow or add to the reSERVE of hours trickling through the cracks.”

• 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem

• Poetic diary entries written over a decade, then sorted alphabetically starting with: “A book about how difficult it is to change, why we don't want to, and what is going on in our brain.”

• A clinical psychologist is also an award-winning performance poet—and this is their debut poetry collection.

• “Inside every woman is a snake.” / “Think of me as the gift you're unsure how to open.”

• A story-as-poem that started as a document called HEARTBREAK BOOK.

• “A queer, fat, love song of the interior. A late-bloomer’s coming of age lyric.”

• What do Astro Boy and Pretty Little Liars and The Handmaid's Tale have in common? TV—and these poems.

AND COVER OF THE MONTH goes to…The Manicurist’s Daughter by Susan Lieu.

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THREE QUICK THINGS:

• Left On Red
  is now read in 35 countries around the world!

• I’m just weeks away from having a room of my own again. (Moving.)

• I started a separate newsletter to share my own poems once a week:

  Pink Slip

ON PROJECTS COMING SOON:

• FOR JOB-HUNTERS: Two years ago I wrote “How to Package Yourself”, a guide on using language, psychology, and data for creative people (especially non-technical generalists) to get higher paying jobs. And then AI changed everything about how we work and I’ve been wanting to write an update. I’m starting to work on a revised version soon!

• FOR FREELANCERS: I’m putting finishing touches on a toolkit that covers the strategy and tactics behind making a great living using creative skills without getting your soul sucked out of you.

• FOR ANYONE WHO STILL DOESN’T “GET” POETRY: Last year during National Poetry Month Left On Red was still Violets and we did a 5 day series for beginners to poetry. This year I made a e-zine/kit/doc, which I’m very excited to share. Next week.

ON THE POETS OF SUBSTACK (+ WHAT’S NEXT):

Fine, I'll Do It Myself

• From 99+ to 200+ poets (!!): The poets really came out to support other poets, turning a bad thing (only poets read other poets) into a good thing (poets reading other poets). Anyway, if you saw the list when it first came out, take another peek at the new poets that have been added. (Tip: Hover over the publication name to see a blurb.) My goal was to showcase the breadth and diversity of poets and trust me when I say there’s at least a poet for everyone, whether you’re brand new to reading poetry still looking for your way in or are a poet yourself looking for fellow poets.

• (Double) the big magic: Those of you who’ve read

  Elizabeth Gilbert
  ’s book on creativity will know what I’m talking about. I found out not long after posting my list that just a few weeks ago, someone else had already done the exact same thing. Rest assured, if you peruse both lists, you’ll discover the beauty in the discrepancies that exist between two different humans. So go check out Saffron’s, too. (I resisted the urge to comb through her list to maintain some curation serendipity but can tell from a glance we have some of the same poets and also a lot of different ones.)

• COMING SOON…the novelists of Substack: While looking for poets, I found a lot of novelists and started putting together a separate list just in case. And then Jennie from the comments said “I’ve also been finding it hard to find fiction writers”. So that’s where I’m headed for our second stop. If you have any recs, feel free to drop them in the comments.

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“COLOUR OUTSIDE THE LINES” in STYLIST MAGAZINE, BRIDGET as photographed by CLAIRE BRAND, makeup by ANDREW GALLI

Easter eggs. Literal: sparkling, colourful, kawaii, yet also so chic. I pick up a pack for my cats, try to think of something else to do with them. Store poems? Fortune cookies in colour. Not fortunes. Feelings or portals. Metaphorical: mysterious, the kind that acts as a portal, a clue into something else, something beyond what we can see right now. Albert Einstein said: "Nature conceals her mystery by means of her essential grandeur, not by her cunning." Something like that. An Easter egg is planted: Marvel, Taylor Swift, my mom decades ago, and now me. But I think there’s something about being "careless and spontaneous as the curl of a stem or the kindling of a star"¹. / The colours of spring, how the sky is blue and sharp again to my eyes, but green and welcoming to my skin. / "A bird gags sweetly on the new green deal / as I work my way through ineffable instructions / on how to live this poor and shabby life / as performance. How to pack it, sell it?” (Rachael Allen, GOD COMPLEX) / The buds of every pink cherry blossom. The cells in our bodies. Deep violet faded into lavender on her eyelids. Me at every juncture of failure: "Something broke and something opened.²" An Easter egg: a tiny slightly misshapen ball so “utterly focused and utterly dreamed.³” Something like that.

1. Annie Dillard, PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK

2. Annie Dillard, PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK

3. Annie Dillard, PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK. Well, good things (and Daniels) come in threes.