This is not about sex, y’all. If anything it’s more about the Notes app on my iPhone.
I’m on an airplane, I just remembered a story from a respectable newspaper about how the author Jen Beagin wrote her recent (very good) novel Big Swiss on the iPhone’s Notes app, which sounds insane. “It’s not a great method,” she said. “I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone; I have many back problems. I like to be horizontal. There is not a lot of negative space in the Notes app. The negative space kills you. I feel more at ease in the Notes app. I never learned how to text with my thumbs—I use my forefinger. I do own a laptop, but the whole book is in my Notes app on my phone.” So, do I buy it? A novel with a forefinger? Still, on this plane, a flight from Tallahassee to Los Angeles, I am thinking, why not a short meditation? With very little negative space? It’s Thursday when I’m drafting this. Tallahassee was a reporting trip, I embedded with a group—mainly veterans—doing disaster relief at the end of a three-month mission to help survivors of Idalia, a hurricane that did $300 billion of damage back in August. Today, sides of highways remain piled with shattered trees. People desperately need help, still. And in the past, reporting, I always worked from a notebook, I learned how to maintain conversation with someone, full eye contact, while scribbling on a notepad held at the waist (the trick is to use a pen with a big nib and write in large letters, so everything later is legible). (“Big nib,” lol). But a few months ago, on a different reporting trip in the Spring, I traveled in a van around Peru with a pair of Gen Z reporters, and they typed everything into Notes while interviewing, and I got converted. Look at all the benefits: digital preservation, cloud duplication, searchable text. Look at the downside: none, really, except learning how to do something new. But I love learning new things, I love learning from people younger, people older, people my age—from any age, to incorporate something new doesn’t just make me feel more youthful, I feel more vital, more energetic. Learning as a sure way to expand resources and touch, my sense of the present moment. Someone recently turned me on to Ali Smith’s quartet of seasonal novels—incredible. Someone recently turned me on to Leo Takami—very top. What is feeling turned on all about, though? The sexual answer is easy, probably, but how about feeling turned on generally: a drip-drip of anticipation, in the midst of new and fantastic; that descent into discovering sustained greatness, which feels like you’re wading into the sea, the temperature calibrated to your taste. Or that moment when I stand in front of a painting I haven’t seen, by an artist I don’t know, and something just clicks and there’s a hum, I feel my body and mind both slowing into a stillness of response and contemplation. I think about this, from this plane: human lives are short. And war is aflame. And dust is dusty—who wants to be dusty. But to be open, nimble, or maybe to lie still in bed at night and picture the sky above your building. To be dumb! This is being turned on: dumb, listening, and alive. Give me more of that. And who knows, maybe Jen Beagin did write a book on her Notes app. It sounds horrible, but maybe I should learn how to do that! I’m still laughing about “big nib,” to be honest.
Many good wishes to you, wherever you are, from this airplane.
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In tomorrow’s Sunday supplement for supporters:
Three new albums giving me comfort and pleasure
What it’s like to watch a water droplet slide down a woolen riverbed
A long, very good assessment of China’s current “era of malaise,” and more
What the what
Meditations in an Emergency is a weekly dispatch from writer Rosecrans Baldwin about something beautiful. Paying subscribers receive a Sunday supplement with 3+ things to love, plus a monthly longer piece sent from the road, for some inbox wanderlust ⛰️
Rosecrans is the bestselling author of Everything Now. His most recent novel, The Last Kid Left, was one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year. Titles mentioned in Meditations in an Emergency are stored on a Bookshop list, which pays a commission for any books sold.
I just love your writing! The best for me is a piece that is informative and intimate. Writing can be that way more often than we think I bet. You're also picturesque - I "see" what you say. Thanx