Tuning Out: Seven Life-Affirming, Joy-Inducing, Sanity-Preserving Options for Today
+ an absurd prompt for absurd times
"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.
Well friends, I had a much pluckier intro written for this week’s newsletter, but to be honest, this morning I woke up engulfed with feelings of foreboding and despair. Then, I did what I always do. I turned on the lights, I made coffee, I sat down and filled several pages of my purple notebook with new writing.
While I totally understand some of you may prefer to be tuned in and connected today, I myself will not be watching any televised or streamed coverage, nor will I be doom scrolling on social media. If you’d like to join me in this, here are some suggestions for creating a day full of hope, joy, and creativity instead:
Honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. via this live streamed event on Facebook at 12:00 noon, Eastern Time: The Way We Get Through This is Together. “Join Rebecca Solnit, Charlie Jane Anders, Bill McKibben, Liz Ogbu, and Akaya Windwood for a special Martin Luther King Day livestream to celebrate community and cultivate a pathway for hope in these dark times.”
Spend time outdoors. (There’s a lovely park a ten minute walk from here, but I’m also considering visiting the Leu Gardens here in Orlando.)
Listen to music. (I’ll be listening to my favorite playlist of pop, R & B, and folk songs from the 60s and 70s—my musical comfort food.)
Read. (I’m reading various books right now: The White Book, novel by Han Kang—again—Dressing the Bear, poems by Susan L. Leary, and Sad Grownups, story collection by Amy Stuber. All excellent. All highly recommended.)
Indulge yourself. (There’s a place called The Soda Fountain near here. I’ve walked right past it several times. Today I’m getting myself a goddamned milkshake.)
Embrace stoicism. “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” ~Marcus Aurelius
Write your heart out. This is the best way I can think of to shake our fists at, well, everything. Try the prompt below. Go make something beautiful and weird.
YOUR PROMPT
“I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it.” ~David Lynch
Image from “Rabbits,” a 2002 short film by David Lynch. Watch it on YouTube. It’s trippy!
As a rational human being, I’m having a hard time engaging with the absurdity of current events. I mean nothing makes sense. Do you feel like this, too? But what if, as writers, we lean into absurdity as a tool of resilience and rebellion? Or simply as a means of emotional and intellectual release? For—dare I say—fun?
That’s your prompt for today.
Let us bow our heads and play.
Ponder the images below, but don’t latch onto any one idea too quickly. It’s been said that David Lynch rendered the surreal mundane and the every day, absurd. And Kierkegaard said: “What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?” Let’s playfully invite these ideas into today’s practice.