(Editor’s Note: This post originally ran in early 2021 and is being reposted in honor of the great writer Joan Didion, who passed away this week. Her writing defined a time and a generation with a razor-sharp intellect and wit as dry as a good martini).
Back when I was in the newsroom, I had a managing editor who did a stint on the city desk at the Chicago Tribune. He was what newsies liked to call “grizzled.” Every afternoon between 4 and 5 p.m. we’d have our last “budget” meeting of the day (another unique newspaper term), when all the section editors would decide which stories go where. At that point, you had a good feel for everything that would be in the next day’s edition. Sometimes at the end of one of these meetings, the grizzled old editor would look around the table and say, “I don’t know if this paper’s going to be worth a quarter.” (I know, I’m dating myself with that reference to a 25-cent newspaper.) When he said that, we all went back to our desks to see what kind of rabbits we could pull out of the hat.
I still use that value reference today, although the price point has changed. I continue to get the New York Times delivered every Sunday and plowing through it I wonder, “Was that paper worth $6?” Today it was. The covid coverage has been particularly good at the Times throughout the pandemic. This morning they had something a little offbeat. They asked a bunch of artists questions about what they did during the pandemic, including “What’s one thing you made this year?”
Aaron Dessner of The National, the mopey rock band out of Cincinnati, replied, “Right as the quarantine started, I started writing so much music, and I had no idea what it was. There was no horizon line, there was a lot of uncertainty — so I just made a lot of music that I didn’t know what it was for. And that’s when Taylor Swift approached me.”
That, of course, led to “Folklore,” Taylor’s quarantine album recorded at Aaron’s Long Pond studio in the Hudson Valley. The album is a small masterpiece. Aaron’s comment on “writing so much music . . . there was no horizon line” made me think about what I’ve been doing on this blog for the past year, which is writing. A lot.
Some of the reasons for the production increase are obvious. The pandemic, for sure. Then I had shoulder surgery, which knocked me out of my golf rotation and freed up a lot of time. And, to be truthful, writing helps me navigate the grief after losing Kit in May 2020. I think about Kit all the time. All. The. Time. Writing gives me the luxury of pondering other things for long periods, although whenever I post something, I always wonder what Kit would think. She was my best editor. So writing simultaneously diverts my attention from the grief and connects me with her. That’s a good combination.
And to be honest, it’s fun. Not just the writing, but pulling together the artwork, thinking up some kind of clickbait headline, embedding links to deeper material, and reconnecting with old and new friends who stumble on JEP somehow.
But the more I think about it, the more I realize I write because of something Joan Didion said in a speech called “Why I Write.”
“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means,” Didion said (before you dismiss this as misappropriating my motivation from another writer let me remind you that Didion herself stole the title “Why I Write” from George Orwell; we’re all in this together.)
To go back to my journalism days again, I think a good newspaper creates order out of chaos — organizing information to help us make sense of the world (some newspapers, of course, are better at this than others). So too does writing. Like a good conversation with a friend, writing helps sort thoughts and sometimes leads to surprising realizations, or even epiphanies. As Didion said, writing is a mirror for my thinking. And the deeper you dive, the more you get at the meaning of something and experience the deep pleasure of seeing order rise out of chaos.
Plus, it’s something to do. You can’t watch Netflix or listen to Phish all the time. Can you?
Lv u bro. Merry Christmas!
Are u grizzled now?
Loved the hair photog also!
Lyrical and evocative. More about news rooms! Didion was definitely a badass. My first and most defining automotive memory was standing in the front yard of our summer place in Green Pond, NJ, at 7 or so, as a white Stingray (for the first time) rumbled slowly up the street. So, it is not surprising that Didion made one an accessory in her portrait.