If you’re new here, First Thoughts is a call-back to my old Substack, which took its name from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones, and was a place for me to organize my thoughts and write about whatever was making itself available. There were poems, stories, essays, and weird little lyrical bursts. I’ll occasionally pop in here when I feel the vibrations. Not that you need it, but I want to give you full permission to skip over these if you’re mostly here for book(ish). I look forward to the next essay, which will be about an old book, one of my favorite overlooked writers of all time. Meanwhile, here are some thoughts on indecision. Thanks for being here.
Free in the knowledge that one day this will end Free in the knowledge that everything is change - Thom Yorke, The Smile, “Free in the Knowledge”
The other day we were having dinner with some friends, and we got on the subject of attention, how algorithms work, cancel culture, etc. We sounded very sure of ourselves. Don’t get me wrong. My friends are smart, had great things to say. I went home, jotted a few notes in my notebook, added a book to my TBR list. As the night went on, and as I had fitful sleep later, I kept thinking about the rhythms of the conversation, and wishing I’d been different. Wishing I’d be different in the future, if and when we’re lucky enough to have another summer night like that.
I know, I know, you can’t change the past. That’s not what I’m suggesting. I’m talking about openness. I’m talking about pushing past the automatic. I’m talking about listening. At one point in the conversation, I jumped in, offered another book recommendation, another challenge, but almost as soon as I piped in, I recoiled. I’m always already tired of my opinions. The late Barry Lopez once told me, after I anxiously asked for his advice on how I might position myself in some literary controversy, in a very zen-like way, “Well, Josh, you don’t have to take a position. You just have to do the work.”
A few weeks back, I pulled out R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People first the first time in many years and gave it a spin. I was flabbergasted— by the scope, the clear influence the album has had on many indie artists today, and, of course, the writing. Here’s verse three of “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite”:
Baby, instant soup doesn't really grab me Today I need something more sub-sub-sub-substantial A can of beans or black-eyed peas, some Nescafe and ice A candy bar, a falling star, or a reading from Doctor Seuss
Damn if that isn’t Writing 101. (There’s also some fun backstory to the last line if you feel like Googling the song.) I felt suddenly shaken from a twenty-year nap. Or not a nap per se, but a daze. I bought the album when I was 11, had no idea what Nescafe was, and always thought Stipe was singing a goofy name in the chorus of “Tonite”, “Colwin Chaddabaker” or some such. Alone and in my room, I would pop the CD into the player, listen to the opening three tracks before growing bored, and usually skip to “Man on the Moon” and “Nightswimming.” Since rediscovering the album, though, I’ve relished it front to back many times.
I’ve been thinking a lot about our relationship to art, and how it changes over time, and isn’t that enough evidence of flux? A family member once asked me why I would ever re-read a book. She seemed genuinely puzzled. “That’s where it all begins,” I said. (Plus, that’s what writers do—or must do.) We’re always half-asleep, missing things, distracted. I don’t think that’s characteristic of the iPhone era. Full attention is an act of love, as Tara Brach says, and how many times have we really given anything our full attention? I can only speak for myself, which is approximately 6.7 times. But I look forward to trying, as I look forward to getting my mind changed.
As I see the incoming news about the Supreme Court’s decisions on affirmative action and student loans, on the migrant boat disaster in Greece, on the ongoing border crisis, I see friends and acquaintances posting memes and headlines and furious-face emojis, and I can’t help but feel all those things, too. We’re passing around the article about vibrations and sound waves, gobsmacked that science says we’re all singing the same tune, in a way, and I’m thinking of ancient Native wisdom of connectedness and Buddhist wisdom on interdependence. Haven’t we known these things for a long time? And then I think: wait. You’re making some big assumptions about the article. And then I think: who has time for another article? And then I hit a paywall, and that reinforces a strong opinion about paywalls.
Thinking things through takes time. And time is something we’re ostensibly short on these days—along with our attention spans (which is itself another cliché in thinking: poisonous phones blah blah blah). It’s hard to escape the Information Crap-pocalypse, as Ted Gioia says. Scrolling and skimming and berating ourselves for scrolling and skimming.
I’m not sure why, but this year I’m more aware than ever of flowers. Maybe this is just a product of getting older, delighting in the little things, but I’ve been thinking of the great unfolding of lactiflora peonies, sometimes called the Chinese peony. Fold upon fold, layer upon layer. Just before blooming in June, they bear these tight fists, then seemingly forever open their hearts to the wind and the sun and the rain. When I feel myself getting cynical, growing tired, forming knee-jerk opinions, and becoming decisive about Great Solutions for Our Problems, I try to think of peonies, I try to think of change, I try to think of flux, of drought, of monsoon, of Nescafe, of seasons. Opening, and working. I think of Barry, and indecision, and a willingness not to know, and to admit it in front of my friends, and I think of the world’s hurts, of glacial melting, and pipelines, and laughter, and this little sign above the doorway of a coffeeshop I worked at during grad school, a sign that said, “You might be wrong.”