Is Writing Hot?

My dearest Hotties,

I am pleased to inform you that I found The Answer to the question driving this inquiry. I am sure many of you didn’t think I wouldn’t succeed, let alone that I would come out victorious so quickly, but the joke’s on you: I’m invincible. After only 14 dispatches, 3 Clown Classes, 1 bout of COVID, 2 light colds, 4 missed parties, 2 benders, 1 Swamp Party, 11 psychoanalysis sessions, inconsistent Yoga, 4 books, and 1 $800 dollar round trip ticket to Spain (all since the start of the newsletter), I have achieved enlightenment. Wondering how to be Hot? Be in Barcelona. That’s it. Really.

On Sunday, I arrived in Barcelona for the first time since 2018. I’ve long been a fan—I first visited for research purposes (not about Hotness, but tangential) and I remember sensing there was something special about this leafy sea-side city, but I was too busy trying to become someone I wasn’t to appreciate it’s mastery of The Art of Being Hot. I landed just over 3 days ago and I already look and feel better than I ever have; I have a tan, a hangover, and a slight buzz from alternating between vermouth and coffee all day. And it’s not just me: I met up with a friend whom I haven’t seen in something like nine years who moved to Barcelona three years ago, and, though she’s always been stunning, friends, she looks phenomenal. Is it something in the water? The tomato, ham, and bread diet? The rate of vermouth consumption? The proximity to the ocean? I am not sure, though it’s certainly not the accent.

Sexual tension abounds in the Catalonian capital. You would not believe the eye contact I’m exchanging on the street. To get my attention, waiters call me guapa. Everyone around me is beautiful—even when they’re rocking the Joe-Exotic-mullet—, and they’re fun, easygoing, and kind. They appreciate my melodic Mexican Spanish, and, most importantly, don’t ask me what I do for a living. I landed at 7AM on Sunday, and by noon I was on the beach, sipping on a light beer while I giggled with friends about a nearby group of Italians getting massages on the sand. I wish I was making this up.

This discovery brings both good and bad news. The bad news is that the permanent answer (move to Barcelona), though unbelievably straightforward, is largely unattainable for most of us mortals. I must admit that it is a little disappointing to learn that “Being in Barcelona” is all one needs to “Be Hot”—my garrulous musings about Space were entirely off the mark. The good news, however, is that there is an answer to our inquiry, and it is unequivocal, Human, and on this planet. I doubted, especially after the AI fiasco from a couple of weeks ago, whether I would ever feel certainty about anything related to the topic of Hotness. Fortunately, Barcelona has set the record straight.

I’m sure you’re worried, now that we’ve found The Answer, whether this newsletter is moot. It is, to be honest, but fortunately (for you), I’ve come to the conclusion we can keep messing around with the conceit of “How to be Hot” because nothing really matters anymore. I’ve found the one-stop shop for all things Hot, so we can now take our time exploring all the other avenues toward this ideal. Even if other options don’t exist, I also happen to enjoy writing these missives, so we’ll just keep on in the comfort of the knowledge that, if all goes South, Barcelona will welcome us with open arms (and leave us with perfect, golden, sun-kissed skin, muuaaah).

Over the next week, I promise to analyze the phenomenon of Hotness in Barcelona, but in the meantime, being (Hot) in Barcelona has triggered a small existential crisis from which I am trying to recover. As you know by now, Existential Crises result in Long Essays, in which I pretend to explore what it means to be Hot, but really I’m just trying to make sense of my self and others. So, now that the mission-critical updates have been covered, we can move on to the question of the week: Is Writing Hot?

The Problem Arises

Leading up to my trip, I had been feeling a lot of ambivalence about my professional aspirations. For the first time in a while, I’ve not been sure what a “next step” looks like for me professionally. I’ve been a hashtag Chief of Staff for over two years now, and while there’s a tremendous amount to learn and therefore grow in my role, I haven’t felt momentum toward that upward trajectory in the same way I felt, say, six months ago. This may well be a temporary plateau, and perhaps in a few months I’ll be back to my usual (non-literary) professionally ambitious self, but I’m relishing in this moment of doubt.

In this fuzzy space of “not knowing”, I’ve been writing more than I ever have outside of school. Largely thanks to this newsletter, but complemented by my slow, arduous work on a biography-cum-novel-cum-memoir, I feel confident in my desire for the written word. At the risk of sounding hopelessly banal, time loses its meaning when I’m writing something I enjoy. I told myself that I would work on this piece for only thirty minutes, but here I am, two hours later, and I just can’t tear myself away from the computer, despite it being far past my bedtime. I can’t help but wonder what might my life look like if I made substantially different choices and found a way to dedicate my weekdays, not just my weekends, to writing. Could I move to Barcelona, support myself with my writing, and still Be Hot?

The Confession

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer. This fact is uncomfortably embarrassing for me to admit, and, the truth is, I’ve only recently gained the confidence needed to “out” myself as an aspiring writer. Why I feel such shame around writing is not something that’s easy to explain. On the one hand, I experience deep skepticism about my skill. Quality maintenance in literature was literally my job when I worked as an editorial assistant in a literary publishing house; for years my days were filled with judgment as I decided whether or not to pass submissions along to the editors with whom I worked. I quickly internalized a high bar for “quality writing”, and many years later, on my worst days, I unleash that same judgment on my own work: How dare I say I want to write! I’ve got no platform! Cultural Criticism? Who are you kidding! I need a PhD for that kind of nonsense. I’m just another quirky brunette who, at best, writes witty but superficial “hot takes”. That is, when I actually sit down to write. My friends, it is not kind.

On the other hand, practicality reigns and the shame resides in the fact that I’m not quite able to see how I would go from where I am to a world in which writing is most of what I do. I can’t shake the idea that in order to live comfortably, I can’t just write. I have to have a day job, right? How else will I make money? Things quickly spin out of control: when I feel proud about a piece I’ve published, I’m often dispirited by the fact that it didn’t go viral overnight and that I, therefore, need to continue to work. I tell myself this isn’t just magical thinking at play; it’s pragmatism. Writing isn’t a lucrative field, at least it isn’t for most people, and I’m not financially stable enough to take the risks I would need to take to commit myself to this work, so I have to keep hoping for a miracle. Is that true? Probably not. I’m being unimaginative; I think I’m just afraid.

What I do know is that writing is, to me, one of the most captivating forms of problem-solving I’ve ever encountered. As words make their way onto the (digital) page, I know that there’s a correct way for them to land, but I don’t know, at the outset, what that will be. My job is to gently shape a piece’s tone, message, and story until it just works. I often don’t know why I make the choices I make, but I move forward with certainty when something feels right. And some days, the piece just clicks right into place, and for a moment, I feel transcendent. For work that’s almost entirely intellectual, it’s one of the few activities in which my body leads as much as my mind does. I don’t need to think, I just write. This sounds entirely counter-intuitive, but iykyk.

The Inquiry

The first time that I began to realize the power of language was when I began to study German at university. I have long been a reader—I’ve guzzled up books since the first time a finished a “chapter book” on my own—but it wasn’t until I arrived at university that I paid attention to the dynamics of language driving the stories that I love. I think I hadn’t learned to look at language in the right way, and therefore began to take it for granted. However, trying on a new set of sounds in a foreign language class provided the shock of difference that I needed to see the magic of language: that meaning lies in between words and across borders.

A simple example: In German, when you want to express regret or apology, one commonly uses the phrase es tut mir leid, which translates literally to “it pains me to hear that”. This phrase conveys real feeling, an experience of empathy in the body, which, at a simple glance, does not occur in the English. However, confronted by the lyricism of another language, I pushed past the ubiquity of the English, “I’m Sorry”, and defamiliarized myself with the term, which then allowed me to see a similarity in its origins. Sorry derives from the Middle English sori, which in turn comes out of a combination of the Old English sarig "distressed, grieved, full of sorrow", and the Proto-Germanic sairiga, "painful", which comes from sairaz "pain" (physical and mental). Less poetic, perhaps, than its German neighbor, a word like Sorry, which hops out of my mouth with almost no resistance, is rooted in pain and the body. There are countless examples of truths that exist in this language but not that, or that exhibit similarities across borders; the trick is to learn to start paying attention. Language, I find, is endlessly fascinating.

And yet! Even in this microscopic cross-linguistic brush against the linguistic divine that is a comparison of how we communicate regret, we’re immediately confronted with the most significant problem of language: it abstracts. To say I am sorry is not the same as feeling the pain that you claim to convey. Language acts as a bridge across our individual experiences, but it is a faulty, rickety bridge upon which, I worry, we place too much trust. Over the last months, I’ve been forced to confront the fact that writing and language aren’t foolproof means of communication—words I believe to mean one thing mean something completely different to another. Standing at the abyss between myself and someone else, I try to launch forth filaments from myself—words, tales, stories—in search of connection, but I end up hurting and attacking instead. Or, more common an experience: someone says something and I simply don’t know what they mean, and rather than asking for clarification, I simply let the distance hang between us, terrified of breaking the veneer of connection that language sought to establish. I often wonder if language isn’t, perhaps, among the most faulty tools of communication in our tool belt. Not because language can’t be a valuable tool, but because we’ve forgotten how to wield it.

Ok, but is Language Hot?

Unfortunately, even when I take the bold step of admitting I’d like to be a writer and start to iron out the practicalities, I can’t help but worry I’ve taken on a fickle muse. Is language really where I want to hedge my bets? Will my interest in language turn out to be my downfall? There are multiple levels at which I worry about this question.

First, there’s the impact of abstraction: am I living life less by attempting to reduce it to words? Right now, for example, I could be out and about in the sunshine, further developing the tan, soaking up the Barcelona spirit. Instead, I’m sitting in a dim apartment trying to make sense of my relationship with words. Is this living? Even if I were out in the sunshine, I’m sure I would be trying to figure out how to capture that moment in a set of words, thereby refusing to live fully in the moment, and succumbing to the overwhelming force of my mind.

Second, there are my superficial, future-oriented concerns, particularly related to the advent of technology. Will AI render writing a futile activity? I’m only half joking about this—while I don’t really think that we’ll all be reading books written by more advanced LLMs, I’m concerned that the art of writing will substantively change in the near future. I’ve largely been influenced by a Twitter thread that suggested that AI might have a parallel impact on writing as there was on visual arts after the proliferation of photography. No longer bound by the need to accurately represent the world around them (along with the effect of important political and social movements), artists were suddenly free to lean into abstraction. Yes, I know that literature has already undergone the effects of modernism (and post-modernism, and post-post-modernism), but what if that was only a minuscule deviation from all the possible uses of language that are coming our way? We are due for another novel-like technological advance in literature. Am I cool enough to keep up?

Finally, I’ve started to question more fundamental use and function of language, surprisingly, thanks to Clown Class. The magic of Clown, in my short experience, happens outside of language. After our emotional warm-up exercises, the group often engages in a game of sorts—not your traditional, recognizable game, but rather one that you go making up on the spot. Sometimes a game is played in pairs, sometimes in larger groups, but the idea is that you have to conspire with your Clown Friends to, well, play. It’s hard to explain in words. Language fails me even just at explaining the setting. One of the games we have played is called turn-arounds. In this game, two people stand on opposite sides of the room, facing a wall, and try to try to jump and face each other at exactly the same time, though without making a sound. You have to learn to listen to your partner—to their enthusiasm, to the way their pant rustles when they bend their knee—and hope that you turn at the same time. Once you do turn, you can then play a next game, which builds on the surprise you experience once you’ve turned at the same time. Hot?

That’s likely not doing it for you, but for now, let’s pretend you understand the Clown concept of game. I’ve found it fascinating to see that the moment that formal language emerges in any of these games, the magic of an encounter shatters. Sometimes the language is literal—we’re often asked to make sounds (“what does that expression or movement sound like?”, to which we respond with squeaking or hissing or hemming and hawing), but sometimes the clowns slip back into their social masks and say legible words “yeah” or “ah ha”, ricocheting you back into the real world and away from the Ha Has. Other times, the language can be as universal as a hand gesture: a raised hand, an accusatory finger. Again, the world they created tumbles right back down into its normal shape. At their best, Clown games rely on a form of listening that goes beyond formal language—it’s learning to read another’s movements, energy, their silences, and their breath. In one of the better games I played, my partner and I were just playing with our breath, escalating and shrinking the sound of our exhales from opposite sides of the room. It was hilarious, and yet all we were doing was breathing. I don’t even know how to put what happened into words.

Right, so is Language Hot?

I realize that I haven’t really been outlining an inquiry, but rather letting you into some of the anxieties I have been feeling as I question my devotion to my art. To rectify the meandering nature of this newsletter, following the usual pattern of the Hot To Be Hot Existential Essay Genre to which you have now been accustomed, I will now draw on another thinker to hammer down some sweeping statement about the relationship between Hotness and Language. Today, I’ll pull in the one and only Anne Carson to act as my chorus. Anne Carson is known for a great many things, but the most important fact about her is that a little over two months ago, she shook my hand and welcomed a friend and me to an exhibition by saying that she admired our virtue. (Hot?)

I’ve been reading Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet, in which she draws an important parallel between the desire of Eros, the search for knowledge and the written word. In this beautiful, provocative book, Carson outlines familiar concepts such as the relationship between the self and other, and the fundamental contradiction of desire, which is that it arises in lack (once you have the thing you desired, you will no longer feel desire, but rather repulsion). (I think) Carson argues that in language, we consistently experience Eros: we desire to put our life into words, and yet truly, fully doing so will never happen—perfect representation through language will always evade us because language abstracts.

In my musings about Space, I went on a tiny tirade against the overwhelming force of metaphor: “Each time that we launch ourselves into the infinite possibilities of the universe, I believe we’re merely looking for a metaphor to the study of the human mind. As fond as I am of metaphors, however, I am suspicious of their ability to cloak the truth in their attempt to clarify. And yet, to resist metaphor is hard ‘because you actually have to endure the thing itself, which hurts for some reason.’ (Marie Howe to Krista Tippett)” Looking back, in light of Carson’s argument, I wonder if I wasn’t missing the point. It isn’t good to avoid reality, but we have no means by which to confront reality completely. As humans, we’re privy only to a fraction of reality; whether that’s in the sounds we’re able to hear, the light waves our eyes are able to receive, the thoughts we’re able to think and the ways in which we then communicate all that to others. Grasping the entirety of reality is not only impossible, it’s also probably awful, overwhelming.

So rather than attack language for being imprecise and incomplete, perhaps we should celebrate the fact that it never gives us all we want. Language always represents a possibility, something always beyond our grasp. Carson likens the quest of the lover and the philosopher to a spinning top, originally described by Kafka. Delight occurs as the top spins, quickly followed by disgust as soon as it falls back down. She writes, “to be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.” Writing, to me, is a suspended moment of living hope—hope that someone will read my words, understand them, connect with them. Hope that I’ll make sense of my feelings and experience. Hope that I’ll go viral overnight and then be able to write for a living for the rest of my life. (Ha, ha) (No, but really, share this newsletter with other people, please.)

There’s no more unnatural an act than trying to represent our lived experience in words, and yet, I feel an almost primal desire to turn to language when I’m drowning in feeling. Words give my days shape and meaning; they guide my reactions and help me feel alive and, surprisingly, embodied. I’m grateful that language grants me the illusion of possession; although I know that I embark on a futile quest, I remain convinced that if I can find the right combination of 26 letters I may be able to hold on to something of this fleeting life for just a moment longer. As life slips through my fingers, language stands in as possible salvation, despite it being a distraction, an abstraction.

By brandishing language’s ability to cloak, we may arrive at something hotter than we ever imagined before. We won’t ever be able to arrive at “truth” through language (and the more I think of it, the more important it is that I dissuade myself of this notion), but we’ll see hints of it between the words we use. More importantly, we have to remember that language is not the only form of communication available to us; it’s valuable, but there’s much more beneath the surface, and only if we’re able to bring different layers of communication in concert with each other, might we be able to expand the limited picture of reality to which we are, unfortunately, subjected.

So with that, I announce that, moving forward, this newsletter won’t just be written digital missives, but also a podcast, vlog series, and telepathic vibes. Stay sharp, you’ll never know how or when the next lesson in Hotness will arrive. I kid. But actually, stay sharp, you do really never know when the next lesson in Hotness will arrive (though it will certainly not be in a Podcast or vlog from me, don’t worry.)

‘Til next time!