What is this newsletter really about? (and who even cares?)
Issue #6
Welcome, I’m Nanya and this is you are here, a newsletter about whatever the hell I want it to be.
No straight lines
Hello friends / foes / lovers / fans and everyone who refuses to be filed into a category,
This week, I come to you dispirited and under-slept, wondering (yet again) about the point of it all. ‘It’ being the newsletter, that is. This week, only five issues in, I was almost at the point of canning this twice-monthly missive entirely. Too much talk in my writing circles about ‘consistency vs perfection’ - aka about forcing oneself to tie a rope around their neck and squeeze it like a rubber chicken till the words come out. And then sending off whatever came out of that process. Ugh.
Well, that’s not me. I have no trouble writing, unless, apparently, it’s an unfinished draft going out to an audience I don’t know. (Hello, newsletter friends!) I already made a place for myself to do that on the internet. And no, it’s not Twitter. I write every day: vignettes and poetry and essays. In 2021, I want to write more long-form essays, so if I’m writing more in general as a result, I’ll take it.
But writing for me is art, and it’s sacred.
I write because I really, truly enjoy it. I write because it makes me feel expansive and one with the universe. When I’m swimming in words, I feel like I am in the world’s largest ocean, with no pressure to reach the shore. Writing is one of the few things I know I can be good at, but that needs time and space and love while I’m still learning to trust my voice and the fact that anyone wants to listen to what I’m saying.
Adding the stress of a newsletter in a fixed format and with an actual semi-interested audience feels like putting myself into a straitjacket and tying it up with cling film and rope and human-sized rubber bands, and - maybe you already understand where I’m trying to go with this - I’m not really a fan of tight things. Or of walking in straight lines. Or putting my soul up for weekly inspection while I’m still growing. I already pointed you to the trail of breadcrumbs you can follow if you want to do a full psychological analysis of what’s going on in my head.
So here’s what we are going to do with this newsletter: I’m going to send you whatever the hell I feel like without any pressure of a fixed format, and you are free to unsubscribe at any point if it’s too out-of-the-box for you. (You were always free to unsubscribe, but you knew that, right?)
I plan to send you bits of essays, poetry, photos, other jangles I make or encounter on the internet. I have no guarantees on the format or the frequency of delivery (probably every two weeks as it has been so far, but maaaybe closer to a month). All I can promise you is that it will be something shiny (and usually short!) in your inbox that I hope will entertain and surprise you each time. This is the low-commitment premise I started with and that I hope to maintain. So, everything has changed for me, but nothing has changed for you, really.
Some housekeeping. If you’ve noticed this newsletter looks a little different, that’s because I have shifted platforms. Things have come to a head at Substack these past few weeks with anti-trans bullying, and the dudes at the top are doing nothing to shut it down. This newsletter is free and neither I nor Substack make any money from it, but I absolutely cannot continue support a platform that takes no action to ensure a welcoming environment for all the people on this planet. So I’ve switched newsletter services to Letterdrop. But we’ll have to see how it goes. If you have any tips for me on easy-to-use newsletter services that don’t walk over marginalised communities, please let me know.
Cool? Cool. Mail me if you have any questions, comments, complaints. Mail me if you want to say hi. (I can guarantee you that getting an email from you that even just says “hi” will make my day. So take seven seconds, make my day.)
Anyway, on to the ‘content’. Thank you for supporting me in this continually evolving experiment.
Stuff I make
Writing: On distance and closeness
Excerpt from a recent Medium essay I wrote on meditation as zooming out or zooming in.
The experience of being an outsider looking in at your own thoughts (distance) is in a very fundamental way the same as being present in the middle of your experience (closeness). You are reminded, either way, that you are not alone in your experience, and that this too shall pass. You are reminded that your experience is just a thread in the perpetually-woven carpet of history. In the same way that a picture of a cell nucleus looks almost exactly like the universe expanding, I think you see the same things in that moment that you zoom in or zoom out to your own experience.
Read the full piece here.
Book news
Recently, I’ve been working on a short book of poems on the body called, very creatively, ‘On Body’. It features words I wrote and photos I took, and I’ve been telling everyone I can about it, so you’ll probably hear more on this soon (and have a chance to feed my artist soul some cashmoney).
Poetry
Yes, more poetry! Or whatever you call this. It’s poetry month, I’m trying to write a poem a day, and the resistance is real. But it’s fun! Follow me on my journey as the community and I try out a bunch of new styles and formats in our attempt to make something beautiful each day.
Original post here.
Original post with all its iterations here.
Original post (with transcriptions and translations) here.
Links
Miss your relatives? Use deep fakes to (kind of) bring them back. Hello, Black Mirror. 👋🏽
Vaccinated but not ready to go back to normal? Good news, it’s… normal!
Still at home? Need yet another egg salad recipe? This one comes with a chive mayo (how meta).
Umm, INVISIBLE STARS exist. Hang on while I write a poem about this.
Question
Your turn. Ask me a question. The weirder the better. Samples include: What’s my favourite face the dog makes? What’s the first thing that’s going to expire in my fridge? When was the last time I ate something with garlic in it? Whatever you want. The weirder the better. If it’s creative enough, I’ll answer it in the next email.
(Just hit reply.)
Yours,
N
Originally posted on April 14, 2021