03.20 | trapped in freedom

and when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. what do you call it, freedom or loneliness?”
– Charles Bukowski

✉️ letter #59

About halfway through last year I conquered a very important milestone in independent living - I went to a Broadway musical all by myself. And it made me feel so profoundly sad.

I do a lot of things alone, and most of the time I quite enjoy it. I live alone. I solo travel a lot. I often go to restaurants as a single diner and I have no trouble sitting at a small table or at the bar, book or journal in hand, not bothering or being bothered by the fact that I’m spending that time on my own.

But I’d long resisted going to a theater show by myself.

I don’t have the attention span for it, I reasoned, with my ADHD I’d need the body double. And it's not like there wouldn't be opportunities to hold out for; I’d met dozens of people just as enthusiastic about live performance as I was, surely some of our plans would involve heading down the Great White Way.

18 months later, all that had happened was me severely under-utilizing one of the most unique and wonderful resources this city has to offer.

Then one random weekend, while I was taking a long meandering solo walk through midtown, I found myself making a beeline to the Times Square TKTS booth just to see what was on offer. I chatted with the ticket person, chose something that was beginning soon, and in an almost fugue-like state entered a theater, got a drink, found my seat and watched people perform for two-and-a-half-hours.

The show was Gutenberg! The Musical, featuring Andrew Rannell and Josh Gad (the original Book of Mormon cast) in a very meta parody of what it takes to make a Broadway production.

I enjoyed it - both of the leads were high energy, the conceit was well choreographed, the music was enjoyable, and the jokes were funny even if they were incredibly inside baseball. I left thinking, “that was a very good show and I’d recommend it to other people who like Broadway.”

I also left thinking, “Turns out it’s not that hard to sit through something like this by myself.”

I also left thinking, “I wish I hadn’t been by myself.”

Which was a turning point.

Up until that moment, I’ve only thought of my ever-increasing levels of autonomy with a sense of pride. I liked that I’d created a life where there were almost no limits on what I did with my time: If I wanted to go somewhere, I went. If I wanted to do something, I did it. If I didn’t like something I’d already started doing, I could leave it immediately. I was beholden to no one. Every choice was my choice to make. The world was an endless amount of possibilities… as long as I stayed alone.

But did I really want to be alone?

I recently read a paper that was about the difference between the “Western ideal” and Taoist definition of “freedom.”

In the West (and I hate using the term “the West” but honestly I’m not sure if there’s a better short descriptor out there), "freedom" generally refers to a lack of external constraints and coercions. We obtain freedom by finding and utilizing tools that would stop our environments from hindering us in our pursuit to fulfill our desires. Freedom is creating the space to do as much of what we want as possible.

Taoism asks us to question the centering of that want and whether it’s aligned with your context within the universe. If we were to simplify and perhaps self-help-ify the concept of 无为 wu wei a little bit, you’re only truly free when you’re purposefully functioning in harmony with where the universe is taking you.

In my desire for freedom, I’d made myself hyper-independent. But that hyper-independence turned out to be mostly a trauma response. I’d never asked the question: Was I alone all the time because doing things on my own was joyful, or was I alone all the time because I couldn’t handle the hurt of being disappointed by other people?

Turns out, while there was (and still is) some of the former, way too gigantic a chunk of how I thought about life was firmly in the latter. In the case of theater going, I was preemptively mad at other people for not having made visible plans to see shows, but I'd also never followed up on conversations where people had been enthusiastic about possibly seeing shows - in case they were just pretending they would consider doing it with me.

That mindset needed to change. I needed to change it.

It’s funny that I realized that on something as small as a Broadway ticket, but hey, life happens in the mundane.

These ensuing months have been spent figuring out how to back out of a hyper-independence mindset, and one thing that's been especially hard for me is how exposed and vulnerable you feel when you actively try to depend on other people... but that's a topic for another time.

🎼 the soundtrack | I Don't Need Your Love - Izuka Hoyle (SIX)

Speaking of Broadway shows, I fulfilled a dream request of my sister's to watch Six, the musical about King Henry VIII's wives in the last week. I'll say more in the pop culture fun area, but I figure I'd feature one of my favorite songs of the night in this section.

The version I heard was sung by Gabriela Carrillo, one of the strongest voices of the night. We were surprised to find out SIX was her Broadway debut!

Unfortunately, her performance isn't on Youtube except for this incredibly short clip here:

But she does have a Youtube channel (who ISN'T a vlogger nowadays, I guess? 😅) where, prior to her Broadway career taking off, it looks like she was mostly doing astrology videos.

🌱 the green light | an eco-focused newsreel

Let's talk transformation this newsreel! Apple waste, spider silk, enhanced cotton: How bio-based textiles could replace plastic in our clothing. [Grist]

• Scientists are examining a fungi's ability to decompose toxic waste from abandoned homes, transforming them into future construction materials that are stronger than concrete. [BBC]
• So for years now, a lot of companies have been "greenwashing" their claims of sustainability. Now facing criticisms for these practices, they're engaging in "greenhushing," a seemingly counterintuitive practice in which companies intentionally don’t publicize their climate-friendly actions and goals. [Inside Climate News]
• The World Meteorological Organization issued a red alert this week saying that 2024 is shaping up to be another record year for global warming. What will it mean for the world's oceans? [PBS]

🪢assorted | food for thought from around the internet

Not since Free Willy have I noticed so much Orca news in the media in the past year or so. Apparently when they're not playfully upending yachts for the fun of it, they're also out there headbutting great white sharks, as National Geographic has captured here. Pray they never develop a way to get on land and lay waste to us all.

• We get stuck here sometimes on all the horrible ways AI could ruin our lives, but like with any technology, there are thousands of applications that are actually useful and life-giving - to note, a modified protein-design tool could help create antibodies from scratch, giving us faster access to vaccines for the COVIDs, Ebolas and other diseases of the future. [Nature]
• AI is also helping scientists reveal the complexity of birdsong. To our ears, it's the same damn thing. To them, that single song is how zebra finches find their mate for life. [The Washington Post]
• Some cool stuff happening in the sky: A star system, located 3,000 light-years away from Earth, is predicted to become visible to the unaided eye soon as a nova within it bursts. [NASA]

✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun

This was essentially the cast we saw doing SIX, with a change up for the characters of Catherine of Aragon and Jane Seymour.

If it's coming your way and you have people in your life who like historical remixes with a feminist bent, I highly recommend this. It's a relatively short show (there was no intermission) and the songs were all catchy and differentiated from another. The latter point is something I really appreciate, having seen some musicals recently where every piece sounded nearly exactly the same. Somehow SIX manages to pay homage to its very obvious pop references without ape-ing them wholesale.

Now that it's been on Broadway for about two years, we're finally seeing tickets for it become slightly more obtainable. In another six months and you might be able to find a discount at the TKTS booth.

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