2021 Pleasures
by Susan diRende
So I scrolled through my 2021 browser and library of app histories to remind myself of what I read and watched and listened to over the last twelve months. Apparently, I am in tune with the whole imploding-of-civilization zeitgeist, the loss of nuance, and the abandonment of intellectual rigor for the “feels.” I’m not proud of it, but there it is.
Okay, I think at the computer as I write this. Maybe there are others foundering in depths they once swam freely in just like me. They might find a much needed escape in the lowest common denominator of culture like I have. I can’t be the only shallow one. Or, if I am, think what a kindness it will be for others to compare their own lists to mine and feel oh so good about themselves.
So, first off, I’ll tell you what is the lowest source of reading pleasure for me. The written equivalent of reality tv on social media. I cannot resist sites like Bored Panda, a compilation of reddit threads, which defines itself, I kid you not, as an “Arts and Humanities Website.” “Why?” you ask. I ask myself that even as I click on “45 Times People Hilariously Roasted Multi-Level Marketing.” (If someone uses the word “toxins” and can’t name anything specific, they are trying to swindle you.) Or, “People Share the Weirdest Interview Questions They’ve Been Asked.” (Can you stop dialysis treatments to be more available?) And of course, “Employee Fired for Failing to Come to Work the Day After Open Heart Surgery.” (Okay, I made that one up.)
Frequently reloading ads sometimes make scrolling impossible, so half the time I just read the comments--comments written by people with strong opinions and weak grammar. Some part of me despises my sordid journey through meaningless, probably invented, certainly inadequate human interaction. What is the pleasure here? People. Maybe I like it because I can get a hit of herd feeling without having to actually hang out with people. Or maybe it is the endless fascination of train wrecks minus the blood and gore.
I couldn’t listen to this stuff, though. Which is why my listening is a bit more literary. Thanks to my library app, I can now load audiobooks from four different library systems onto my phone and let the narrative play as I walk. I listen almost exclusively to nonfiction, though recently I enjoyed a pseudo-dictionary compilation of magical beings: Finding Faeries: Discovering Sprites, Pixies, Redcaps, and other Fantastical Creatures in an Urban Environment by Alexandra Rowland.
Each entry is short and light. I particularly enjoyed absorbing the mock-academic details presented for liminal creatures, their appearance, habits, and habitat while walking through parks and city streets. It made for some delicious moments. The book never asks me to think deeply, and I am spared feelings of outrage at the stupidity of humans regarding such things as the environment when the depredations are presented in terms of their harm to dryads.
When it comes to watching, not having a television and being unwilling to sit in a movie theater for pandemic reasons, I prefer nonfiction content as well. (Okay, so I lapse at times into scrolling for clips of old movies and television series in a sorry nostalgia move, but my list would not be the same as yours, and you probably don’t need my help anyway in finding your video equivalent of gummy bears.)
I have actually started paying for online classes. There are good free classes all over YouTube as well, but sometimes I want something more structured. I tried Master Class for a month and got a refund. Too pricey. Skillshare was too iffy in quality and content. But I have recently started taking classes with Domestika, a leaning site that is arts-based. The quality is as good as Master Class, and while many are in languages other than English, I’ve learned valuable information and gotten some skills practice for my art and writing. The “list price” of classes is high, but the discounts offered on social media and through emails knocks the price down to a little over $10/course, which I can afford.
Finally, despite my resolutions to avoid the political as much as possible here, since “pleasure” is not a word I would apply to the political infoscape, I am going to suggest a book and a video, both short (remember my atrophied-by-crises attention span). Both of these represent my thinking about how society and politics should work and what I can really expect from my fellow humans. Both were laced with dry humor, and both gave me a reality check that what is happening in the world is an aberration that can be reset to a more rational norm.
The book, The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, is a quick read or listen, more a monograph than full-on book by the economic historian Carlo Cipolla. If you want to get a quick overview, the Wikipedia page sums up the essentials. This treatise reminded me to step back from the cascade of constant outrage, to accept the current turmoil as being as old as human society, and to recognize that the stupid occupy all levels of society, including my own cohort.
Similarly, I thought the animated video by CGP Grey, Rules for Rulers, was going to be just a silly escape. It turned out to calm the roiling waters of my political angst. It addressed my useless question, “What is wrong with Democrats that they can’t win and legislate better?” Thinking about the number of competing interests that the one party has to satisfy almost guarantees its weaknesses. I never thought that our two-party system was particularly bad compared to governments that rule by a coalition of disparate parties, but I can see now that it favors authoritarianism and betrayal of supporter interests.
So maybe not completely shallow pleasures after all.
Susan diRende ran away from college and joined the circus at 20, where she learned how to step outside the boundaries just far enough to get a laugh. Ever since then, she has been writing, painting, performing, and directing with the goal of bringing about illumination and transformation through laughter. She has won awards as a playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, and performer. A multilingual US/EU citizen, she currently is living the vagabond life with no fixed abode, chasing images and ideas wherever the impulse leads. Aqueduct Press published her novella, Unpronounceable, in 2016; it received a Special Citation for the Philip K. Dick Award.
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