#5. 20 years, skincare as metaphor
also The Serpent, Harry Nilsson, The Gervais Principle, Simon Rogan
Hello!
I’ve decided that Wednesdays aren’t the best day for sending this - I don’t need more midweek pressure - so it’s going to limp backwards until it’s going out over the weekend. (This a-ha moment courtesy of reading Ella, Emily and Sonia on Sunday).
On the looking-for-a-job front I’m closing in on the new work contract. Lots of forms and paperwork and clunky online interfaces. But also plenty of helpful people answering my newbie questions and that’s been delightful.
20 years
Last week Becs replied (love replies!) and said:
Can you please write some news about Esther in the next one, thanks!
Tuesday was my 20 year anniversary of being unmarried with Esther. (I lifted this ‘unmarried’ angle from Esther’s social media post because after 20 years together it feels good to say that, you know, we’re not married and that’s been OK for us).
Last week Esther played me a talk by the poet David Whyte that I first heard via On Being (a podcast that Holly opened my ears to). The talk is a beautiful thing about the illusions we cling to as humans and midway through he says this arresting thing about broken hearts:
The second illusion is, I can construct a life in which I will not have my heart broken. Romance is the first place we start to do it. When you're at the beginning of a new romance or a new marriage, you say, "I have found the person who will not break my heart." I'm sorry; you have chosen them out unconsciously for that exact core competency. They will break your heart. Why? Because you care about them.
Yes. After 20 years me and Esther have done all the good happy stuff that’s in the photos - travelling, eating, drinking, dancing etc. But we’ve also done a fair bit of David Whyte’s breaking each others’ hearts. Why? Because we care about each other and that makes heartbreaks inevitable.
I’ve talked before about how being in love with someone for a long time is poorly represented in art and culture. I still think this is mostly true. So I loved that at the end of Bridgerton, Daphne made an offhand remark about the strength of her parents’ love and her mother - Lady Violet - turned and (finally!) shared her own marriage wisdom:
Yes. But that is not to say it was without its trials. Your father and I faced many trials but we overcame them. We made a decision early on to do so. We chose to love each other every single day. It is a choice dearest. One that is never too late to make.
That, for once, felt like a good representation of what it’s like to be in love with someone for a long time. So thank you for that Shonda Rhimes.
I wouldn't change my 20 years with Esther for the world.
Skincare as metaphor
My lockdown routine of early morning bike rides followed by long workdays in heated rooms finally cracked me into asking about face moisturisers on Twitter. (The replies came thick and fast. Skincare twitter is lively and lovely.)
I settled on The Inkey List (thanks Talia). Their recipe builder was the only ‘skin quiz’ that helped me answer with confidence and it had a nice design. Of course I ended up buying more than intended - come for the face moisturiser, leave with the five-step cleansing routine - but then they do say marketers are the biggest suckers for marketing! My skin feels loads better already (and, no, I don’t care if that’s placebo).
Anyway, this new skincare routine is a great example of what happens when I start paying attention to something new.
One reason I struggled with ‘skin quizzes’ was that I’ve never paid close attention to my face. I couldn’t answer questions about skin type, problems, or goals - not because I’m an idiot but because I had no frame of reference (it felt like every symptom applied to me!). But after less than a week of doing a skincare routine on my face these things are coming into focus. Now I’m like - oh look here’s redness, those pores are narrower than these ones, that's a breakout - which are things I couldn’t even see a week ago. Sometimes I need the names for things before I can see them.
Weirdly, this reminded me of learning about typography. Before I picked up Thinking With Type or The Elements of Typographic Style I would happily shrink line-heights or compress letter-spacing or decrease font-sizes or squash margins to fit text on a page. But once Ellen Lupton taught me to name these atrocities I couldn’t unsee them. Paying attention to typography (even a tiny amount) showed me gradations that were always screamingly obvious to the designers around me. It’s the same with infographics and Edward Tufte, copywriting and Ginny Redish, workshop facilitation and Gamestorming, skincare and The Inkey List, etc.
Basically, when I start paying attention to something new I quickly learn to see gradations that were hiding in plain sight. And, even more quickly, I forget that there was ever a time when I was blind to these gradations.
This is interesting to me. I see a lot of unnecessary conflict between people-who-see-gradations and people-who-don’t-see-gradations for any given topic. The former get frustrated that anyone could wilfully ignore what’s in front of them. The latter are mystified that anyone could care so much about something that’s not there.
Maybe we could improve these conflicts by remembering that the gradations are not self-evident in the topic but are a by-product of first paying attention?
Watching
Literally two days after proclaiming that I wasn’t into serial killer stuff (sorry Shaun) I was awake at 3am watching The Serpent on iPlayer. Give me a swaggering early-70s rock soundtrack, tacky fake-film saturated colours, ridiculous pastiche outfits, and a sun-drenched pool-party Bangkok expat social setting and I’m yours apparently.
Listening
Episode 4 closed with Jump Into The Fire and it’s everything I love about early-70s rock. Late enough for proper bass, early enough to not be metal, non-radio enough for a flabby tom breakdown, and sweet enough for tape delay FX on a vocal wailing “We can make each other happy!” over and over into the abyss. Strong dressing gown cover too.
Reading
Loved reading The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class. It’s a TLDR of Venkatesh Rao’s “The Gervais Principle” essays which tell painful truths about organisational behaviour (love PostureTalk, PowerTalk, BabyTalk, GameTalk and StraightTalk!). Then it overlays an intriguing 3 ladder system of social class. Funny, but also painful if/when you recognise yourself as being on the path to Michael Scott/David Brent like I do.
Cooking
Esther got us Simon Rogan at home for our anniversary. Soda bread with cultured butter. Trout with pickled turnips, turnip mousse, hazelnuts, kale crisps and coal oil. Beef cheeks with red cabbage and truffled cauliflower cheese. Black forest gateau. Decadent! I warmed it up and plated it which I think counts as cooking, right?
Writing about love and skincare is not where I thought this newsletter would take me when I started in January. But then I guess you never know what the gradations are in a given topic until you start paying attention.
Thanks to Becs for asking me to write some news about Esther too. Mostly I’m quite private about our relationship but this week was a good one to mark.
Stay safe.
Will