you need a dangerous little idea you actually care about

or a big one fr

I do believe that writing casts spells,

that you can take a thought or pre-thought, something swarming in the blood, and place it, twisting and newborn, between letters. Of course, it has the power to seethe and beat before you. Of course, you may not know what you’re doing before it’s done. You may not know the weight of it, and why should you? Of course, we are always different by the end. I don’t know how to take a juicy current affair without putting some ancient spin on it; what have any of us really learned in the past one thousand years? Every character flaw has teeth, roots that snake through our bloodlines. No matter how much we contour or smooth or blur through filters, surgery, even code, we’re still made up of the same rude beginnings. We carry our ancestors’ aches beneath all the new hardware and smart mirrors. Still, the same old hungers.

I don’t really mind a bit of scandal, me; I read so many Substacks about what’s going on now with whom, and enjoy it, by the way. Since I've cut down on scrolling, my reading has increased by 40% (though my YouTube habit has also skyrocketed). I’ve been known to focus on random, inconsequential topics and study them past midnight, until the wee hours. Anything but be quiet and think. Thank God I outgrew my weird True Crime phase. It was gateway horror, your average murder (I admit I wasn’t doing very well those months). One day, after a sold-out night performing in Los Angeles and meeting many incredible people and talking, talking, talking, I spent the next day in bed from sunrise to sunset watching Piers Morgan interview serial killers. I was in a dangerously clear anti-climactic depression — the sneaky kind that inflames you from within, hampers your plans on a very broad spectrum, makes you care less about your health and overall appearance and all of this slowly, slowly.