So here are some things that happened this week.
The new James Blake single has been on serious rotation.
Someone over at Pitchfork compared his vocals to D'Angelo, which I love, because who doesn't love D'Angelo? I want you to show me the human being who doesn't love D'Angelo, and I will show you - I don't know, I don't even want to think about it. I love D'Angelo in a very passive way, but every now and then (not often enough), "Untitled" will be playing somewhere, and that thing happens where the world melts a little and everyone around you suddenly seems fascinating and sexy and wild and alive. Also that profile on ?uestlove in the New Yorker was really great, and D'Angelo seemed very difficult, which weirdly endears me to him even more, like he's actually this deeply shy man who just wants to sit at home and read scholarly articles on post-war American architecture, but there's this fire burning in him and he has to do something about it or die.
That was a tangent. James Blake sings, "we're alone now / we're alone now / we're alone now / I'll wait." He gets it.
I had two short pieces in The Billfold this week. The friend I interviewed for the first made the observation that the commenters over there are some of the most astute, most kind, most generous he's ever encountered, and it's true. They offer incisive, thoughtful feedback, almost unheard of in the world of internet commenters. Never change, Billfold. I feel really lucky to be part of that community.
I monetized my feelings about Valentine's Day in the second, maybe my own attempt to diffuse a day that remains fairly loaded despite all efforts to shrug it off. I was unhelpfully reminded of last year, when I was lucky enough to spend the evening with someone extremely dear to me, someone with whom I no longer have a relationship. The day has the unfortunate effect of highlighting absence rather than wealth, which is honestly what I have - a wealth of love. I shoved some of that love onto my coworkers and then took my friend out for dinner and a play. The timing was awkward: someone he loves is slipping from him, and he looked me in the eye and said, firmly, "I will never love again." It's not true - he will, he is too full of love not to - but goodness. It's hard, isn't it? I wanted to put my hands against his cheek.
It's hard. It is hard. All of it. Having been back in the dating game for a few weeks now, I'm starting to feel the inevitable fatigue. I tried to explain this with as much earnestness as I could muster after two pitchers of margaritas on Friday. "I want to be seen," I think I said, by which I meant that I want to be judged not on what I am or am not saying, my actions or lack thereof, all of the negotiation and game-playing that feels fundamental and inherent to dating, but rather just - I just want to be seen. That's really it. Even sober, it's the same sentiment: I would like someone to see me for my wholeness, and not as the sum of these carefully plotted behaviors. This is what exhausts me most about dating - not the endless parade of messages and drinks and the hope and the resignation, but the behind-the-curtain-ness of it all, the smoke screen, the haze. If there's an upside, it's that it makes me that much more grateful for my friends, the ones with whom I can drink two pitches of margaritas and then say things like, "I WANT TO BE SEEN."
This tribute to David Rakoff is beautiful, and offers a lesson I'm trying to appropriate and remember: Don't trade up. "Don’t grade friendships on a hierarchical scale. Don’t value people based on some external indicator of status. Don’t take a competitive view of your social life." Here, here.
Also, go get 'em, Connie Britton.
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