But above all this, I wish you love

I’ve been thinking about grief.

August was a hard month for me. Grief sat very close beside my family, and will continue to linger, waiting, for an uncertain amount of time. It’s not something I feel up to talking about, but it’s made this month feel…absent. Like I blinked, and suddenly July tipped into September in a rush of traumatic amnesia.

And then, in the last week of August, we lost Dolly Parton and Tim Curry.

I’ll admit that I didn’t grow up listening to country music, and I mostly know the same Dolly songs everyone knows. My experience with her was as an adult, reading about her philanthropic work, her generosity, her kindness. The millions of books she sent to children.

Tim Curry, though… Annie was far and away the most formative movie of my childhood, and he will always be Rooster to me. I spent high school watching Clue on VHS with my best friend and going to midnight showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show. I have precious memories of so much of his work.

We live in an age of too much access to celebrities, of diminishing privacy for everyone, of parasocial relationships that lead to invasive and toxic fandoms. But the grief I’ve seen for Dolly and Tim is real. We didn’t know them. It’s not the same grief that their friends and family are experiencing. But those two performers in particular gave us something: something bright and joyful and accepting and gloriously, gleefully outlandish.

As I’ve watched this outpouring of grief for two strangers, I’ve been struck by something: not just how special they both were, but how special it is that we can feel this way about them. How beautiful is it that we can feel real love for people we don’t even know? How beautiful is it that art can move us this way?

We humans fuck it up a lot, but I think that’s pretty wonderful.

Make art. Tell the people you love that you love them.

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.

Don’t dream it, be it.

Happy autumn.

What’s New?

I went on Superhero Ethics to talk about the first two episodes of Lanterns, copaganda, and adaptations that don’t seem particularly interested in their source material. Be warned: spoilers abound!

What I’m Reading

I just finished Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faerie by Heather Fawcett and I know I’m late to this party, but it is utterly charming. I love a voice-y narrator and detailed, immersive worldbuilding, and this book has both in spades. (Footnotes!) Looks like I need to add the rest of the series to my TBR.

What I’m Watching

Please, friends, run don’t walk to the theater to see Coyote vs. Acme. I love Looney Tunes, and you know who else loves Looney Tunes? This movie. It’s a smart, hilarious, highly sardonic but ultimately hopeful love letter to cartoons, very much in the same vein as Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and Looney Tunes: Back in Action. It’s also a movie about standing up to massive, corrupt corporations…a movie Warner Brothers attempted to shelve as a tax write-off, until public pushback made them agree to let someone else distribute it. I’m not saying seeing this movie will in and of itself fight late stage capitalism, but it’ll make you feel like such a thing is possible—and worth trying even if it’s not. (Seriously. This movie’s take on hope is fascinating and I want to read a million think pieces on it.)

I have two major deadlines on October 1st, so it’s going to be a wild month. See you on the other side.

<3

Jessica