aesthetic friendships and the big war: January 2024 Essay Recommendations
Plus: Why Americans are voting for Dorian Gray and the confounding of the French tongue
So. How’s your January? I feel like this first month of 2024 went by really fast. But time is an illusion. What else is new?
the new French
During a short trip to France a couple years ago, I decided the first language I’d learn (whenever I’d commit myself to learning another language) would be French. My high dreams haven’t panned out yet, and I’m almost glad of it because the French of yesterday isn’t the French of today. A recent New York Times piece explores how Africans, many of whom fall under the Francophonie, are transforming the tongue, injecting it with fresh vibrancy by uniting it with linguistic mannerisms from their own mother tongues—sometimes to humorous effect.
In Abidjan this year, people began to call a boyfriend “mon pain” — French for “my bread.” Improvisations soon proliferated: “pain choco” is a cute boyfriend. A sugary bread, a sweet one. A bread just out of the oven is a hot partner.
At a church in Abidjan earlier this year, the congregation burst out laughing, several worshipers told me, when the priest preached that people should share their bread with their brethren.
But even more interesting is the potential for the medium of language to bear ideas. The next wave of shifting worldviews in (and from) France may very well come from Africa.
“If French becomes more mixed, then visions of the world it carries will change,” said Josué Guébo, an Ivorian poet and philosopher. “And if Africa influences French from a linguistic point of view, it will likely influence it from an ideological one.”
Read it: How Africans Are Changing French — One Joke, Rap and Book at a Time
mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the bestiest bestie of them all?
Katelyn Beaty has an insightful post on how the meet-ups of social media influencer types aren’t always sincere. More often than not, there’s a kind of transaction that happens when (Christian) Influencer A posts a picture with (Christian) Influencer B. Deep down, we know this already, but it still needs to be said.
As easy as it is to condemn the celebrity/influencer types, I’m far more interested in how our observation of the influencer “friendship” reflects on our own friendships mediated through the lens of social media. Beaty writes:
…I’m interested in the decision to end the meal or meetup with a photo to post on the Internet. As soon as one says, “Hey, we should take a selfie…send it to me!” — and I have definitely said this — I believe that cheapens the otherwise good connection that just happened.
The decision to take personal moments of real connection and spin them into digestible “content” has injected the exchange of goods and services — capitalism — into a type of relationship whose very nature is meant to resist it.
We’ve been warped by our times. The impulse to request a photo after a meetup—with the full intention of posting it online, or hold the phone in one hand while toasting with the other, is so there. All the time.
But does that cheapen the connection? Does that turn the friendship, the meal, the conversation, into nothing more than an aesthetic trapping? Does it eradicate the real thing that’s just been done? Questions to ponder, indeed.
“I want us all to have and know the real thing, not the simulacrum on the screen,” Beaty writes. Me too.
Donald “Dorian Gray” Trump
It’s another American election year, and it’s looking like the showrunners have run out of plot material. Barring an act of God, we’ll have Biden (of course) vs. Trump (again). And when it comes to The Donald, like everyone else, Martin Gurri wants to know, why? Listen to “mainstream” American media and it’ll seem like the former president is constantly being cast as the least-desirable option. And, yet, here we are.
In a piece inThe Free Press, Gurri argues that, for the politicians, opinion writers, and social view shapers who publicly decry him, “The Trump of their rhetoric and imagination, in many ways, is them...” 😲
Simply by being there, by occupying space, by sucking up attention, Trump trolls his antagonists mercilessly. This explains the almost physical revulsion to the man felt by so many high-ranking people: he is not, in truth, a mirror, but their portrait of Dorian Gray, in which they discern with horror the consequences of failure—the gruesome marks of their coming extinction and decay.
Well, when you put it that way… Seems like we’re stuck with Trump because we’re stuck with ourselves. Read this whole piece.
little things, big war
You ever feel like you aren’t doing anything? I mean, you’re doing plenty of things—little things—none of which feel slightly important. But sometimes it’s the little things—things like insisting that chili be served with sour cream—that are most important: the tiny battles that engage our souls in the Great War, the Great Dance, the Music of the Spheres.
I’ll always convince myself that I am, in some real sense, engaged in a cosmic battle. You may call it fantasy. You may chalk it up to my supernatural view of the world. You might think that it’s merely a useful fiction… These small things are duties; and duties done faithfully are ultimately an act of love.
A well-written post and much-needed reminder by Luke Burgis at Anti-Mimetic.
What else?
I like Shannon Palus’ essay in Slate—I’m Finally Quitting Trying to Quit Social Media—because it promotes the idea of moderation when it comes to our constant use of social networks. It might not be beneficial to our mental state to go cold turkey on Facebook or Twitter or TikTok. Instead, Palus argues, we should figure out why we turn to social media and determine healthier ways to get the good without the bad.
As someone who probably drinks too much coffee, Yasmin Tayag’s piece—Caffeine’s Dirty Little Secret—caught my interest. (I just finished a spiced chai latte.) Some people really do take in too much caffeine, sometimes to tragic ends. Still, I’m down to try Panera’s Charged Lemonade.
Finally, I’ve started listening to the ApocryFUN episodes from Katelyn Beaty + Roxy Stone’s Saved by the City podcast. Stone hosts this series with Tyler Huckabee. Together, they explore the impact of books that made big splashes in American evangelical culture—Blue Like Jazz, The Purpose-Driven Life, Wild at Heart. You know the type. Check it out wherever good podcasts are hosted.
Gonna start ending the monthly roundup with a choice meme.
Really enjoyed this recommendation roundup!