no hope, so gin + tonics?
Obsessions of this year and next
Looking back on my writing activity for 2024, I discovered I’ve written a little over 40,000 words. That’s pretty low compared to 130,000 words in 2023 and 110,000 words in 2022. I guess grad degree deadlines really make one churn out the lingo. Oh, well.
Maybe you’ve noticed my last few posts have been shorter, punchier, and somewhat disconnected from some of the threads this substack has been obsessed with over the past two years. I’ve also dropped (for the time being) monthly essay recommendations. I’ve been writing (and reading) in fits and starts lately, squeezing words out amid more urgent and necessary tasks. (I wrote that Gladiator II post entirely on my phone in the lobby of a London Everyman immediately after seeing the movie, and edited it on the Tube ride home.)
Lately, I’ve been writing through a lot of grief, anger, and unsettledness; I’ve discovered a kind of purity in that, a clarity, a clean fire. In between actual writing, my mind rummages about several rabbit holes, the fruit of which might come about in finished pieces here and other places—hopefully in 2025—but I’ll have to write way more than 40,000 words to cover it all.
Here are some of those obsessions—loosely (and probably badly) summarized.
depth + disciplines
Writing and studying often lead me into subject matter I’m not very familiar with but immediately find value in as I can see how they relate to subjects I am very familiar with. So, I want to earn capability across numerous disciplines. (This is becoming a Core Principle™️ of mine.1) I want to learn deeply about many things—church history, the philosophy of film, the history of visual art, interior design and fashion principles, medievalism, manuscripts, wabi-sabi. So that’s where a lot of my reading and free time will go this year. Also might pick up a few new hobbies.
I’ll encourage you to stretch your capabilities across disciplines too, by reading and by practice. Grow outside your comfort zone; you might find the Stone Age and dance notation have things in common.
My friend
talks about the value of this in the inaugural post of her substack In My Garden Grew (which you should also subscribe to).Also check out
+ ’s post, The Arts Need Each Other (Yes, yes, they do!)This post on “multi-passionate people” by
.In his essay, “The Serious Artist” (1913), Ezra Pound argues that the artists we remember are not those who create entirely new things, but those who are able to receive and study the diverse and sometimes contradictory work of their forbears and synthesize it in their own work.
exclusionary idylls
I consistently find myself sliding along a scale of comfortability with a few idyllic concepts. These concepts—the traditional family structure, multi-generational living, a slow, countryside, rural aesthetic, and a static, deeply-held community—are a norm for many and readily achievable for others. These concepts also seem to be built in as the aesthetic trappings of conversations around: (a) Christian humanism; (b) Christianity as a civilizational force for the West; (c) the pursuit of things that are good, true, and beautiful in art and in life.
While the realization of such picture-perfect concepts is a good and worthy pursuit, I wonder if the work that some of us (like myself) have to put into achieving them is worth it. More significantly, I wonder if, by embracing the picturesques (the aesthetic trappings) named above, we leave behind those who don’t have the brushes and colors to paint those pictures for themselves. I wonder if, by setting up these images as The Good Life, we end up signifying that other ways of life are not good (or as good) or worth pursuing and persisting in.
Some of my closest friends are single parents, don’t have “traditional” family structures, live in heavily urbanized areas, and are separated from blood relatives by thousands of miles. Their way of life is immigration and transience (of place and people). There isn’t so much conversation about the values of community, family, and deeply-rooted culture that relies on imagery that makes sense to people in these contexts. I think there should be.
I think about this a lot because I’m an optimist, but I’m also a realist. There are forces in motion—globalism, immigration, capitalism, social and sexual mores of the past several decades—that won’t be rolled back with the adoption of a particular idyllic worldview. We have the world we have now. And a conceptual retreat to the countryside isn’t doable for most of us. That’s why I’m more interested in the concept of oasis. What good and beautiful things can we build in the middle of the places and contexts we now inhabit?
Can we dig for the principles beneath the aesthetic and paint a picture that works for the city-dweller, the single parent, the individual who by nature of their work makes a new home every few years, the immigrant who moves alone to a wealthier country to send money back home, the young adult who has no parental home to return to for the holidays? What is the picture we’re painting for those for whom the term “family” means a made, found, or fallen-into family?
I’m going to be thinking about this even more, hopefully developing more precision in this conversation.
all the rage about religion, especially Christianity
The place of Christianity in institutional life will, I think, be the most crucial cultural and social development of the next decade or so in the West. Mixed up in that is the growth in paganism and pseudo-religions, accounts of naturalist religious experiences, and the sacralization of Western culture. Here’s some stuff about that
The BBC’s 10-episode podcast docuseries, The New Gurus, tackled the new gods being worshipped these days: productivity, wellness, anti-racism, and the deities of the “intellectual dark web” (which isn’t so dark webby anymore).
- ’s essay, The Moses Option (among so many other things)
- ’s Is God a culture warrior?
- ’s Christianity Within Civilization
Teaser: My own forth-coming essay on a return to paganism preceding a return to Christianity.
death + grief
I had to contend with these at full force this year. I’ve been working out some of that process on paper and will continue to. Below are some readings I found worth contemplating.
Jack Gilbert’s poem, “Brief for the Defense”
A Grief Observed, by C.S. Lewis
Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl
- ’s post in , The Multiverse of Grief
Aaron Brown’s post in The Hedgehog Review, Grief That Speaks
This episode of The[ART]ology, “Grief, Observed”
- ’s post, Death Be Not Proud
- ’s post, I Followed Jesus But My Life Didn’t Get Better
Music (inclusive of these, there are some songs I can’t listen to anymore without crying): “My Everything” x Owl City; “I Don’t Wanna Live Forever” x ZAYN + Taylor Swift; “Streets of Gold” x NEEDTOBREATHE
fantasy fiction
Why it’s necessary. How we adapt it. Especially with Narnia filming on the horizon! Maybe the Lasaraleen piece will come next year. (I’ve been saying that every year for a few years now.)
a new era of aesthetic + vibes
I keep going back to
’s remark that “aesthetic communication is arguably a more powerful form of communication” than any other. It is, in fact, the most powerful. It’s communication via presentation. Communication without words. Communication that doesn’t need to and often can’t be reduced to words. In our intensely simulacristic age, in which appearance (more than anything) is reality and in which more mediums than ever stand between the person and the source, this isn’t going unnoticed.For example, the U.S. election has been assessed in aesthetic terms at a level, by my own anecdotal observations, heretofore unknown. The weekend after the election, one pundit remarked:
The big difference that everyone’s feeling, I think, is that they [political parties] are now selling a lifestyle vibe. It’s one lifestyle vibe or the other: you’re driving an F150 and drinking beer or you’re driving a Prius and drinking wine. And guess what? The beer drinking party won.
Speaking at the 2024 Post-Liberalism Conference, political philosopher Phillip Blond revealed (as an aside) that he’s writing his third book on aesthetic. It’s about (and I paraphrase) how things don’t tell us what they are; they tell us how they should be seen. 🤌 I can’t wait!
If Vulture’s recap of “Obamacore” and The Gospel Coalition’s takedown of vibes as “the currency of our time” are any indicators, we’re going to see more conversation about this.
And speaking of the 2024 Post-Liberalism Conference2, the title of this post comes from a remark by (Revd Prof) Alison Milbank who, after discussing what hope we have against the onslaught of the Machine, threw up her hands and (half-jokingly) declared, “but there’s no hope, so let’s all have a gin and tonic.” Or something like that. I wrote it down.
See how I tied everything together? Someone call Ezra Pound. Happy New Year!
What will your obsessesions be in the Year of our Lord, Two Thousand and Twenty-Five?
Should write something about Core Principles for myself. Might share it on here.
A fantastic event put on by The Telos-Paul Piccone Institute.
Thanks so very much for the kind shout-out Daniel. I'm so sorry you're walking through a vale of tears this year, but I'm happy if my writing has helped you along that sad journey. Best wishes and blessings for a happy New Year!
Fully empathize with your thoughts about the ruralist-tradition-industrial-complex signifiers of the good life acting to exclude other kinds of good life; this is something that comes to the fore often with me because I live in a densely urban area and I bristle at the idea that such a life setting is somehow "sub-par." There are many kinds of lives which Christians ought not to dismiss out of hand. "Oases" are a good way to put what is probably the correct course; something, perhaps, like Elrond's Rivendell, or the Badger's house in The Wind in the Willows.
On aesthetics: you might find this amusing—last year I wrote at length about aesthetic subcultures and the worldviews communicated thereby. https://www.ruins.blog/p/aesthetic-subcultures