Splash No. 211 - Internal Monologue

Internal Monologue

The endlessly skillful Jasmine Sun recently published a piece about how life and work affects one’s writing, among other topics. A standout section:

“I wish I could observe life like Maggie Nelson,” I said to my manager.

“You can,” he replied. “I think reading literature makes one much more attentive. I go from ‘writing op-eds about who is good and who is bad’ to ‘writing vignettes about what's amusing, unusual, or thematically resonant’ in my head. It's like, ‘What genre do I want my internal monologue to be in?’ and most of us are default-choosing ‘enraged op-ed.’”

This stuck with me. Enraged op-eds, soulless copy, carefully couched emails to execs. Is this what I want my internal monologue to sound like? Is this why I can’t write creative nonfiction anymore?

As I mentioned in my last letter, work has been taking up most of my mental space. When I had more time and space, I would have plenty of time to dedicate to reading poetry and essays, thinking aimlessly, generating an endless deluge of concepts for letters, poems, dreams, etc. Nowadays, I default to humorous podcasts to fill my free time, getting a few chapters from a Rick Riordan YA novel here and there, bookmarked by sips from the Twitter firehose. And at work, my reading is split between requirements documentation and Slack messages. Yet, there’s still a throughline to these varying media.

At one point, the world was binary — someone could be a happy person or a sad person, energetic or lethargic, big or small. I was small, the world was big, everything was one thing at a time because that’s all I could understand. Eventually, I started figuring out nuance: I was a humorous kid except when I wasn’t, I was a serious kid except when I wasn’t. Both were possible. During one poetry workshop with my writing group, one of my peers pointed out that every one of my poems had a funny line or two, however subtle it might be — even when I attempted to write about the darker side of human emotion, I couldn’t keep myself from offering the lightness that needn’t be far away. I’m a humorous kid even when I’m serious.

These days, I like to simplify sometimes and think of myself as an unserious person. I spent enough of my life overly focused on negative emotions that I decided that pushing myself towards one end of the spectrum would lead to a happier life. I’m still capable of being serious when it matters, but when you decide on your default setting, things are a bit easier.

So what does the internal monologue of an unserious person sound like? One who alternates between comedy podcasts, books written for 14-year-olds, surreal memes, and Slack messages at a company full of hilarious people? You guessed it — it’s the worst episode of Saturday Night Live that no one ever saw, it’s an endless of barrage of bits and quips all meant to make me laugh and share a giggle with someone else. I like the person I am when I’m constantly churning out one-liners, even if everyone around me groans in pain from the excessive corniness. At the same time, I wonder how it affects my work.

I imagine that if one’s internal monologue are the vegetables and spices and grains, then the artistic process is the culinary process, from washing and prepping to cooking and plating them into a beautiful meal. All ingredients are not created equal and it shows in the final preparations. Perhaps my current monologue, a mise en place overloaded with corniness and cheesiness, pushes my meal further towards Taco Bell than what I’d like — cheap, easy, tasty, but unsustainable to eat continuously. Any great dish has balance: a mix of flavors and textures to create an experience that doesn’t too heavily move in any one direction. I ponder how I can alter my ingredients to be more diverse, just enough to make a fulfilling, home-cooked meal.

Drops of the Week
 

• PLAYLIST - IM REALLY IN THE ZONE RIGHT NOW - I made an electronic music playlist for doing work to — mix of genres, lots of breakbeat / dnb

• ARTICLE - "Bats and balls — but not baseball — win over Texas kids" by Arelis Hernandez - just as we all suspected, cricket is huge in Texas

• POEM - "When I See André 3000 Buying Bananas At Trader Joe's" by Jon Sands - I've definitely sent this one before but I think it's funny and everyone should read it.

Donate to Abortion Funds Donate to Afghanistan Crisis Appeal Mutual Aid Networks

Thanks so much for reading! If you're not already subscribed, I'd love for you to subscribe here. You can also check out my older newsletters here.

Also, I'd love to hear your thoughts— you can reply to this email if you loved or hated the letter, or you want to tell me about how your day has been. I'm all ears.

With culinary flourish,
Nikhil