There’s Only One Way to Start
Happy (very-very belated) New Year! It’s been a bonkers month, but I’m dusted off and ready to give this whole 2024 thing a go. I’m going to have fun doing very non-nichey things and ask your indulgence and continued attention in advance.
I’ve written before about my grandfather’s favorite poem (spoilers, it’s “If”). My favorite is probably “Out, Out—” so we’re clearly both a barrel of laughs. Still, as I said on the most recent Todcast, if you’re a writer and you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.
This is how my day started:
There hasn’t been a good “Tony Russo” story in months, and, although the story isn’t worth breaking apart, there’s something amusing in catching your dumb self out. It also helped me jumpstart a dead Thursday morning and replace the drivel I’d prepared for you this week.
I don’t for a second think that I get to build my own language and meanings, or impose them upon you, but “dumb” is ill-used so I wanna rethink it in my life and writing.
I feel like people who use “dumb” and “smart” as a dis/compliment aren’t talking about acuity; they’re talking about curiosity. It’s a question of how desperately you want the hole that is your ignorance filled and what you’re willing to do to fill it.
As I’ve said before, stupidity is the act of defending your right to ignorance. I’m stupid about Taylor Swift, for example. No matter how desperately culture and my spouse try and disabuse me of my Swift ignorance, I’d rather discuss eating babies.
Speaking of my wife, she uses “dumb” as a synonym for “silly.” I suspect she picked it up from her 8th graders. I love that because it was pretty dumb to think there’s a high school basketball player named “Warren G. Harding” anywhere outside of a postmodern novel.
Looking Forward Looking Back
I rarely do a retrospective in January, preferring to count my birthday as my first day of the year, but I want to take a second to thank you guys for subscribing and reading. For what it’s worth, about two-thirds of you open every email. I can’t tell you how humbling it is to know that, even if you don’t decide to read the whole email, you’re willing to see if I have anything interesting to say week after week.
Last year, I got a bunch of paid subscribers, and I can’t tell you what that was like. I set this Substack up as an alternative to having different blogs for different topics. I wanted to put everything I wrote in one place where people could read it. My first subscriber decided she wanted to support that, with no strings attached. Just, ‘I like what you’re doing, keep it up.” I mean, Jesus. How cool is that?
Others followed and, since I didn’t have a great plan for paid subscriptions, they were kind enough to wait it out while I made one (I am not pandering here). Last year (and into this one) I released my previously unpublished Being Burley, an account of a small brewery trying to open against the larger backdrop of the craft beer revolution.
This year, I’m going to make stuff specifically for them.
Rather than “pitch” articles or episodic podcasts in the hope of selling them, I’m just going to write them for the people who already are paying me to do that very thing.
I’ve got a whole postcard project lined up with interviews and videos and essays. There are at least two more true crime books bonking around in my head and a dozen crazy stories I won’t turn into books before I die that I’ll share there.
These won’t all be for everybody. Some will be violent, some will be kooky, and some will be experimental approaching unintelligibility. So starting with my February project, when something comes out behind the paywall, I’ll let you know and post a preview. If you want to subscribe for just that month to get just that thing (and all the archives) I think that makes sense. If you don’t, no sweat. I’m making them anyway.
I’m shouting distance from finishing the first draft of my next book. I can’t wait to share some of the details on that.
In front of the paywall, I’m going to start trying to do one short personal thing every week and one rabbit hole story each month, plus the weekly “notebook dump” podcast. Finally, I want to close with a sneak preview of some of the things kicking around upstairs right now.
Does AI Need Nazis?
I have a “Fahrenheit 451” worry about AI. Its writing is too passable, not worse than any marketing material or advertorial I’ve read. Hell, it’s better than most, but that doesn’t make it good. Here’s the thing: what if all writing got bone-achingly bland and nobody cared?
I think that part of the problem is that AI literally isn’t capable of being transgressive for effect. Like, it doesn’t have a sense of scale, opposition, or irony. I also worry that we’re so used to being talked down to, we don’t notice it anymore.
Fuck your manners (working title)
I’m reading an astounding book, On Manners, by Karen Stohr, that I want to take you through (with my own bias). I heard Stohr give a talk last spring. She used the example of having to come up with manners regarding armrests (who gets which one and why). Of course, that’s not an issue in first class. In fact, the only reason we have to sit resentfully when someone isn’t following armrest etiquette is so the airline can stick two extra seats on the plane.
I’ve been trying to find a way into what I call my “shopping cart” essay and I think this is it. Having an opinion about returning shopping carts is like having an opinion about airline armrests, it assumes we’re beholden to corporate greed.
Also: I don’t return shopping carts.
Return to Sender
I’ve begun using postcards as my analog Twitter. When I buy them in bunches, sometimes I get them pre-filled-out. I’ve decided to re-mail them (in envelopes) to their original addresses, include a return postcard, and see what happens. I’ll let you know if anything does.
The point is, we’re going to have some fun this year, and not Sheryl Crow fun. I plan to have the next notebook dump out Monday, I guess we’ll see soon.
Keep the Faith,
Tony
Postscript
I also do another podcast for fun, “Day Drinking on Delmarva.” This was a pretty typical episode, which means if you don’t mind it you’ll eventually love it, but if you don’t like it, it won’t get any more likable.
TR