Blowin' in the wind.
The answers are inconvenient and grim...
Happy to hear from many of you that the 🏳️⚧️ Being Alive Book Club is resonating. This month we’re reading Rep. Sarah McBride’s Tomorrow Will Be Different and discussing it in this Substack Chat thread (it’s ok just to lurk!) Save the Date for a live Zoom discussion on Monday, January 27th 8P ET. I will tell you more about what to expect, introduce you to our first guest, and invite you to register on Monday.
At the bottom of this newsletter, I’m including more links to listen to Rep. McBride. She is the light I need right now—and the first freshman House Dem to introduce a bill in the 119th Congress! She’s proposing a fix for a real economic issue, credit repair scams, as opposed to perpetuating toxic performance art politics.
I watched A Complete Unknown from my couch last night—a luxury of sorts. Keeping ties to the film business and paying my guild dues, even when I haven’t made a film in years, gives me the privilege of award-season screenings at home and the responsibility of voting in our org’s awards. My quiet evening with Chalamet-Dylan was the consolation prize: I had planned to see Mufasa with two friends at a favorite screening room in the city. Director Barry Jenkins would be there for a Q&A. It’s been years since we crossed paths, I was looking forward to seeing him. I had big plans for this week, we all did.
It was nice to be distracted; the film is gorgeous, the music simultaneously familiar and refreshing. I texted my mom throughout, she turned me on to Dylan, taught me to love Joan Baez more. I enjoyed meditating on how networks of creative people influence each other. (Pete Seeger had a wife named Toshi. Did Bernice Johnson Reagon name her child after Toshi Seeger?! She did, wow. More on this at the end.)
A Complete Unkown is set in my city, NYC, made by people based here and in Los Angeles. The film business is reeling. An industry turned upside down long before their city lit aflame.
My friends, friends of friends, coworkers’ parents, their neighbors, on and on have lost everything they called home. My brother and his husband evacuated midweek, 30 minutes before their neighborhood was ordered to go. They remain out of town, rattled, on high alert. Friends still in town debate which room of their house has the best ventilation. Schools are closed. So many have burned. Volunteers are mobilized. The fires still burn.
I wasn’t going to write about the fires—but it’s taking up most of the space in my brain right now. And there’s a virus in my lungs keeping me from doing much else. Wildfires are my worst nightmare. Then floods. The list keeps going—but my top five daily worries tie back to global warming. NPR’s Up First ping’d this morning: 2024 was hottest on record.
I mean, we all know that, right? Now, what?
I sent an angry email back to an LA-based sports team this morning. Their email marketing of the moment was a fundraiser tied to a… branded tee shirt?! I snapped. Seems particularly dumbfounding to think that the thing LA needs right now is branded merch. I briefly worked on a video clip at work this week that included the fact that the apparel industry contributes 10% of global carbon emissions.
When I talked to my daughter about the fires this week, she astutely remarked that, “It’s sad. People can run from the fires, but houses are stuck in place.” As I cautiously moved the conversation into an awareness that climate change was making these threats larger, more frequent, and more widespread, she pushed back, “Dad, you need to live in the now. Not so much in the future.” Is this how Gen Alpha copes? When I was her age, I thought a lot about the future. I still do. Maybe that’s just my wiring. Or maybe it’s because Prospect Park and Central Park both caught on fire this year. And I’m her dad. It’s my job to worry about her future.
A moving set of scenes in A Complete Unknown revolves around the Cuban Missle Crisis in 1962. Two things struck me: Despite my awareness of the historical moment, I realized I had no visual for the panic that ensued on the streets that time. The film shows panicked New Yorkers chasing caps, irrationally trying to outrun a rocket. And, in stark contrast to now, the reminder that news then only came from Walter Cronkite. Baez, stunned to still be alive, wakes up and turns on the TV. Dylan wakes up and… picks up his guitar. When was the last time I picked up anything other than my phone first thing?
I’m not thinking clearly right now. It hurts to breathe. I’m slowly figuring out, when I have more energy, where to direct it.
In the meantime, some recs.
If you have it in you to read more about the fires, these two pieces are incredible:
Alissa Walker’s beat is the LA urban environment. After leaving Cubed/NY Mag last year she started “Torched” — focused on the city’s preparation to host the Olympics. Her too-aptly-named newsletter is always great, “Zero percent containment” (written Wednesday) is heartbreaking and a must-read account from the first 24-hours of a crisis.
I'm not being glib when I say that LA's leaders demonstrated more situational awareness for the "traffic nightmare" on the first night of the World Series than they did for this real-life nightmare.
Colm Tóibín published a gorgeous, gutting dispatch in London Review of Books: In LA. It begins, “It was all sweetness verging on smugness.” And goes on to make you cry.
If you are in LA, you probably already have innumerable text threads of resources, including Mutual Aid LA Network’s open-source resource library. I’m keeping an eye out on organizations like Suay who are offering free clothing distribution, masks, and meals from their DTLA warehouse. (Hello, big sports team. This is what a city needs.)
***
I still haven’t written down my 2025 intentions, yet to paint my More/Less list, haven’t cracked open my New Years book—so I’m channeling
, permitting myself to spend all of January reflecting. I’ll get my holiday cards out, at some point.Not too late to join Wendy (and me!) and her supportive Grown-Ups Table community drawing every day this month. It feeds my soul, especially this week, to see so many people drawing together around the world. The theme this year is, “good enough.”
***
Listening to Rep. Sarah McBride is my balm at the moment.
Our Book Club guest tipped me off that Spotify subscribers can listen to her read Tomorrow Will Be Different.
The Seattle Public Library hosted Sarah McBride during her book tour. Serves as a mini-version of her book. At the end a guest asks her if she’ll ever run for office…
After winning her seat, David Remnick invited McBride onto The New Yorker Radio Hour for a conversation. If you listen to one thing, it’s this.
***
And finally. Mentioning Bernice Johnson Reagon either made you smile or scratch your head. For the uninitiated, Dr. Reagon, known affectionately as BJR, was a stalwart activist, scholar, and singer who started the legendary Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973. I had the pleasure of seeing her sing many, many times with Sweet Honey. She passed last summer—her legacy lives on through many, including her daughter Toshi Reagon. Toshi still performs. You won’t regret experiencing.
Impossible to pick just one song, but to close the loop: Toshi Reagon and Lizz Wright singing Dylan in Harlem.
Peace.
xx Kyle
Ahhhh Kyle - thank you for sending this out and sharing all of the memories and connections and grief. I’m with you on the merch. I also really resonated with, “When was the last time I picked up anything other than my phone first thing?”
And lastly, I’ve been recovering from a surgery where I thought I’d spend time drawing and reading and all the things and what’s actually true is I’ve spent a lot of time staring into space or at a screen doing nothing. It’s okay to do nothing, Your more and less list will emerge when it is ready. Or not.
thank you!