re: joy as an atomic bomb
the los alamos of joy
I debated on waiting for divinity holds my hand to be released and making this in REference to a double feature because the two posts were written at the same time and I found myself moving paragraphs between the two essays. It was a very different process than my usual essays, which usually are very distinct in their boundaries. However, at the end of the day, the two essays are vastly different and wouldn’t make much sense put together as one post.
Hi. Welcome back to another episode of in REference to (sometimes I pretend this is a podcast). Today’s feature is:
i. joy as a conventional bomb
The interesting thing about this essay is that it’s more so a response to the idea that people tell better stories when they are “sad” or “depressed.” As a result, some of the sources of inspiration behind this essay are not necessarily pieces of media I agree with, but still works that inspire me.
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
I disagree a lot with this idea (despite also believing it’s one of the best openers in the history of novels). I think there’s a lot of avenues to explore in terms of “happy families” and happy families can also be happy in their own ways.
Oppenheimer dir. Christopher Nolan
I got a lot of the imagery for this piece from watching Oppenheimer and I do think the whole dichotomy of Barbenheimer (probably) influenced this piece at least a little. In general, I feel a lot of my writing contains references to physics, which I hope doesn’t annoy any actual physicists with their inaccuracies.
untitled tweet by Richard Siken
Grief is a man in sad pajamas that you keep locked in a room because he's proof you used to love something. Set him free. Let him leave (or stay) if he has to. You have other proof. Setting him free is not a betrayal of your love. Healing: not a betrayal. Don't romanticize it.
Vincent van Gogh
What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.
van Gogh is so often seen as this poster child of depression when, in reality, many of his best paintings were done while he was in a better state of being. I think his life is one of the most inspirational stories.
We Learn Nothing by Tim Kreider
I don’t know why we take our worst moods so much more seriously than our best, crediting depression with more clarity than euphoria. We dismiss peak moments and passionate love affairs as an ephemeral chemical buzz, just endorphins or hormones, but accept those 3 A.M. bouts of despair as unsentimental insights into the truth about our lives.
and
Perhaps the reason we so often experience happiness only in hindsight, and that chasing it is such a fool’s errand, is that happiness isn’t a goal in itself but is only an aftereffect… And it’s also true, come to think of it, that the only stars we ever see are not the “real” stars, those cataclysms taking place in the present, but always only the light of the untouchable past.
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Mary Oliver in general is a writer that proves again and again that you do not need grief to be compelling.
I Am Panting by Anna Świrszczyńska
I am running and screaming from joy
I am running and screaming from despair
I am panting
my lungs work like crazy.
Poor Things dir. Yorgos Lanthimos
There’s a lot going on in this movie, but I think the joy in it outweighs the grief and that’s rare for these kinds of films.
Everything Everywhere All At Once dir. Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan
The whole concept of the everything bagel vs. the eye, yin and yang, the all-consuming grief and the joy that spits in its face… the fact that Evelyn named her Joy… it gets to me.
To The Young Who Want to Die by Gwendolyn Brooks
Graves grow no green that you can use.
Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.
The second time this has been included in an in REference to post, but I stand by it being a great essay.
ii. side effects of exposure to joy and radiation
There are some essays that I’ll move to queue as soon as they’re done and some essays where I’ll let it sit and stew for a while. joy as an atomic bomb was an essay that I was editing up until the day I hit post. There are three main drafts pre-dating joy as an atomic bomb as it currently is (the process explained more in detail in the next section), but the draft that I’ll be focusing on right now is the second one, as that one had the most lines cut.
The second draft had a very specific (and different) structure than how the essay currently stands. I had originally planned to compare joy to three separate emotions instead of using the movie metaphor. As a result, there were three distinct “shorts” within the second draft, each with a “topic sentence” of sorts:
Joy and anger run in parallel lines.
One of my favorite words to misuse is “parallel.” I like to extrapolate too much from this idea of two lines that don’t touch because visually, they are identical lines. The short vignette from this idea remains in the current essay, but it’s framed differently. I originally put a lot more focus on the first vignette of my friend’s friend being terrified of me, but it ended up falling a bit flat. I felt like I was trying too hard to appear angry that the essay was becoming more focused on the specific moments than the “thesis” of joy being a compelling emotion.
Joy and fear splinter through my chest in perfect symmetry.