Balm for the windy season

On John Prine and Keanu Reeves and finding your cool glass of water

Image Description: A close-up photograph of a pile of eucalyptus leaves stacked on a shelf. Under them, we see a small bit of woven textile. The shelf below is white, and the wall behind the leaves is also white, but with swathes of shadow. Eucalyptus is used to reduce pain, promote relaxation and rest, and soothe inflamed respiratory systems.

We’re knee-deep in April now, and everyone I know is in the throes of so many things. Flying to Venice, submitting book proposals, wrapping up semesters, installing exhibitions, dealing with allergies, transitioning into new jobs—seriously so many people in new jobs!—transitioning away from old jobs, raising pandemic puppies and babies and rescue squirrels who won’t leave their nests, moving across country, filing taxes, re-learning social skills, buying new pants to replace the sweatpants that replaced the former pants (okay those last two are maybe just me).

One of my favorite Substack newsletters—you should subscribe, it’s marvelous—is written by Anna Sproul-Latimer, founding partner at Neon Literary. It’s ostensibly about the publishing industry, but actually about being a human while writing books. My favorite edition—If you want to be popular in publishing, ask yourself: what would Keanu Reeves do—is printed and posted above my desk as a daily reminder to seek out sanity, gentleness, and calm. She writes, “Artists who are emotionally healthy can change parameters of reality for people.” (Yes, you definitely should be drawing a mental picture of Keanu in that scene in the Matrix where he holds a hand up to stop a cloud of bullets… perhaps an impulse many of us share in the middle of this April.)  

Anyway, Anna’s letter this week is about the certainty of our limited time in this life. “The most important thing to keep in mind as you navigate the publishing industry” (but you could insert the Art World here) “is that you are going to die and are in fact sweeping closer to the moment of your death with every passing nanosecond.” She’s nothing if not dramatic. But also, she’s nothing if not correct. “What are you going to do, you glorious concatenation of innumerable atoms and past coincidences, within the span of this brief flash of light and color?”