Rules of the Game

Friends, Allies, Hotties, Lovers,

It’s been a pleasure to read your enthusiastic responses to the inaugural How to be Hot dispatch. Hotness is a rich topic, ripe for exploration, and we all have a lot to learn, it seems. I’m glad you’re here.

Before we dive right into full-fledged analyses of all that is Hot around us, it is important to lay out a few ground rules for the inquiry. Frankly, these rules will mostly be for your benefit because without structure and constraint, my mind loses the thread of reality and I get nothing done. I know I am not unique in that. Anywho, the rules:

First, I am not allowed to say everything is hot. My untrained eye is particularly susceptible to this. As soon as the idea for this newsletter came to mind, I started walking around the city quietly gasping, “Hot” in response to all that I saw: a particularly fluffy corgi butt, a magical chance encounter with a friend on the train, an silent exchange between two strangers on the street admiring each other’s matching “Chivas” baseball caps. It is as if, to better acquaint myself with this word, I need to constantly feel its shape in my mouth, understand how it tastes both alone and paired with all the other flavours in the world. Not unlike the suffocating itch to pronounce a lover’s name that leads you to clumsily bring them up in conversation over and over again, I feel myself pulled to re-brand all things that are beautiful, mystical, magical as hot. But that’s a lazy use of language and of my neural pathways—if everything is hot, nothing is.

Second, this newsletter is about things that are Hot, and not about things that are Not. This is a tiny distinction, but an important one. I will refrain from using the term “Not Hot” to describe anything or anyone. While we recognize that hotness is a sliding scale (yes, one thing can be hotter than another), in this space, something can’t be described as “less Hot” than something else. I will simply use another adjective for whatever cannot be described as “Hot”. We’re not tearing down, we’re building up.

Third, I will not be using the adjective “Hot” to describe things/objects that can make you Hot. This newsletter is an exploration of “the ephemeral sources of Hotness.” This newsletter is not a shopping guide to material goods that will make you look Hot. For that, please go back to YouTube, TikTok or Instagram or wherever people shop these days. To illustrate, I’m not allowed to say that what makes a person Hot is that they’re wearing a certain kind of earring, or that their pants are flared in a particularly trendy style. I must go beyond scratching the surface and seek to understand what all those items represent on the person; how do they all come together to express Hotness? Please note, however, that there will be items that are in and of themselves unapologetically Hot; that’s fair play as long as I explain how and why they are Hot.* If you see me slip, please call me out.

Finally, we acknowledge that while there are some unquestionable central traits of Hotness, around the edges, Hotness can be highly subjective. We will not push back on someone who says something is Hot if they have a well-grounded argument explaining why. We will, however, push back, as good students must, when we see that something is called “Hot” but the term has not been well-defended or we find that the word “Hot” is used thoughtlessly or incorrectly.

Now that that’s settled, a handful of notes on form: these dispatches won’t come on a regular schedule. I’ll send off thoughts when and as I have time to process and shape realizations into whimsical little notes (this clarification is more for me than for you). There might be interviews, there might be guest posts, there might be reflections, pictures, playlists. Anything goes along as it’s Hot. And I’m very keen to hear from you—send me ideas, challenges, questions, suggestions, reflections. I will probably engage in too much detail, screenshot parts of the conversation, and then beg you to guest author a future dispatch.

Let the exploration begin.

More soon,

Dominique

A “Hot” Song

In appreciation for your sticking around through our “table setting” process, I wanted to share a song that I’ve found particularly “Hot” this week.

*The Moka Pot is one of the hottest objects in human history. The small ones, the size of my hand, are especially Hot. They’re Hot because they’re made of metal and are placed directly on the stove-top above a roaring flame (unless you’re electric). They’re Hot because when your coffee is ready, the pot alerts you through sharp, bubbling gasps. Moka pots are also Hot because they’re a feat of engineering—who comes up with this stuff? Evaporated water shoots up through this funky perforated dish, absorbing all the goodness of the coffee grounds and then comes back down in liquid form in a different, higher chamber? Is that how this thing works? I should Google how a Moka pot works, I realize. I have no idea what happens inside it and I’m making all this up along the way. I’ll do a whole dispatch on the Moka pot, I promise. But, in the meantime, let me share the Hottest thing about it: the velvet ribbon of coffee pouring out of the pot’s lips.