#1 - it starts with a year-end list
Celebrating an end to the Hyperfixate era, ushering in a new one for however long it may last, and of course, a list.
Welcome to good in a storm, a newsletter that got a facelift and trying to figure out what it is. Sign up here.
Gosh, it’s been a while.1
Every time I take a newsletter break—intentional or otherwise—I go into a whole spiel of how tired I’ve been or avoid admitting that I just didn’t have anything to say. Nothing worse than a writer with nothing to say. (Some things are worse, say, bad writers.)
Hyperfixate—this newsletter’s first persona—hasn’t felt right for a long time. I stopped wanting to look at or write about pop culture in the way I used to. I was trying too hard to come to something profound, funny, or both under a short turnaround with a media landscape that’s constantly changing. I just couldn’t keep up. I also didn’t want to.
I want to send Hyperfixate out with a bang and welcome something new in its place. I picked ‘good in a storm’ as the title because it comes from my favourite line in Fiona Apple’s Shameika:
“I’m pissed off, funny and warm / I’m a good man in a storm / and when the fall is torrential, I’ll recall / Shameika said I had potential.”
I had just turned 21 when I heard that song. I was and continue to be haunted by my “potential”. Haunt no more. Haunt be gone. I consider myself to be a pretty good man in a storm. I live in Vancouver now, I kind of have to be. I like being able to identify with empowering lyrics instead of shying away from them out of some faux humility or shame. I am a good man in a storm, and I’m famously pissed off, warm, and (as I’m trying to be professional at it), funny.2
But enough about me and my introspection you didn’t ask to hear about, I want to do a little housekeeping for this not-so-new newsletter. It’ll be wildly inconsistent, and it may well be sporadic, but the most important thing is that I want this newsletter to become a place for me to experiment. I want it to be a place where I have room to fail.
You may get a story I wrote that got rejected from several magazines, you may get an essay or two, or you may get some of my boyfriend’s excellent photography (he’s truly brilliant and I’m trying to get him to share his photos more), you might even get a poem! You might get a very Hyperfixate-era essay because that voice may be harder to shake than I thought it would! Who knows! I sure don’t! And I’m tired of pretending like I do.
I’m going to keep changing and so will the things I write. No doy! I really just needed to give myself permission to play again; play around with my voice, with form, with my preoccupations, and with my time.
I’ve also been inspired by the Substacks I’ve been catching up with, namely Slouching Towards Blok M, Weekly, Maybe, mixed feelings, and of course, Maybe, Baby. Avi introduced me to Maybe, Baby a couple of years ago and I’ve been hooked ever since. There’s something about the way all these writers have managed to articulate not only their own experiences but also what it means to live and to experience life at large. I feel really lucky to have been shaken out of my stupor by some excellent writing.
I’m happy to let this experiment unfold with the amount of effort I put into it. That effort will vary. I’m learning to work with whatever bandwidth I have without burning myself out. I’m no stranger to burnout, but I am a stranger to burnout recovery. A novice, if you will. And I’m learning to be nicer to myself about it and this experiment is a way to try.
So, to honour Hyperfixate, I’ll honour one of its traditions: an End of Year List. A Round-Up. But this one will be a little different. For one, it won’t be very long, and there are a lot fewer hot guys on it. A lot of the hot guys on past years’ list turned out to suck.
Without further ado, here’s the Bye Hyperfixate, Hello Good in a Storm 2023 List:
I Used to Be Funny (2023) dir. Ally Pankiw
She said she wasn’t going to talk about movies anymore, but here she goes talking about a movie!
The first film I saw at VIFF this year was Ally Pankiw’s I Used To Be Funny, starring fellow Virgo and Hot Girl I Aspire To Be, Rachel Sennott. The film follows Sam (Sennott), a stand-up comedian and au pair in Toronto struggling with depression after the girl she used to care for goes missing.
I’m not doing a very good job of stringing my thoughts together about this film simply because I’m still reeling from it. From a craft standpoint, the film is excellent—the script is tight and very moving, the performances were stellar (it was super cool to see Caleb Hearon on the big screen), and the direction and cinematography evoked Pankiw’s penchant for intimacy and style. I was impressed with how feelings were explored visually in the film, not just elements of the performances but how everything from the lighting, sound design, and editing overwhelms the screen with Sam’s feelings. As to how the film made me feel, let’s just say I felt quite a lot.
I’m often moved to tears by film and television. This is not news to you, readers of this newsletter, or to people in my life. I Used To Be Funny was visceral on two points: one on Sam’s journey as a survivor of sexual assault, and another on her relationship to comedy. I’m not ready to write about or discuss my own experiences to the former, but the latter I need to get off my chest.
In the film, Sam has taken over a year-long sabbatical from comedy; we see flashbacks of her at shows, clips of her set other people watch in front of her (something I hate when it happens to me), and many a regular man saying she’s actually funny. A visceral sound design choice was the repetition of “Oh, you’re funny!” from one of her employer’s co-workers ringing in her ears. She runs out of the club when her friend and evening’s MC introduces her on stage. In the climax of the film, Sam admits to Brooke (Olga Petsa), the teen runaway she used to care for, that she’s not funny anymore. That her trauma has impeded her relationship not just to her loved ones, but to a profession (and presumably) passion she cared for. Her story ends on a hopeful note: Sam gets back on stage again and kills, and her opening joke is welcomed by a warm audience.
Like Sam in the film, I know what it feels like to have a barrier between you and something you once loved and enjoyed doing. And how you just need to fucking do it. Ever since the pandemic, I’ve been having trouble getting back on stage. Sure, I do a couple of gigs here and there, but my feeling has always been (and this has been ever since I started doing stand-up) that I just don’t gig enough.
And it’s true. I don’t gig enough.
I got pretty lucky in the summer to do some super fun gigs after I hadn’t in a while. And I had a great time at those. Dare I say, I was even pretty decent. It was like getting back on a bicycle after not riding for a while. Even then, the more time passes, the less inclined I am to keep going because life gets in the way. I can list several excuses: I’m in grad school, I work four jobs, transit is tough in Vancouver to get to where all the comedy clubs are, I’m not well-networked, I don’t manage my time well—I have spiraled into insults-masquerading-as-reasons to try and “make sense” as to why I struggle with doing stand-up. I’m just struggling. It’s hard. And I can’t push myself at the moment to do any more than what I can manage, but I hope that I can in the future, whenever that will be. I just hope I’ll still be funny3.
Gittemary Johansen’s YouTube Channel
I spent a day after a pretty intense Climate Writing class looking up ‘zero waste’ on YouTube. I stumbled upon Danish sustainability activist and influencer Gittemary Johansen, who does everything from giving lectures, cooking gourmet plant-based meals, impact analyses on different supply chains, greenwashing takedowns, and vlogs chronicling her lifestyle changes. I find her voice and editing to be quite soothing and it’s been a while since I’ve had a go-to YouTube personality to check on after a long day.
What I appreciate about Johansen’s work is her emphasis on transparency. She emphasizes that she didn’t arrive in the YouTube sustainability scene fully formed and that every day she learns and expands her vocabulary to grapple with climate change as it continues to change our world. There’s a series she has on her channel where she watches her old videos and extends so much kindness to her younger self. She doesn’t just reflect on how much she’s grown as a person, or how much her production value has changed, but on how her opinions have changed or how she’s left behind habits and methods that don’t work for her anymore. Pretty dope vibe.
Archiving Old Family Photos
‘Archiving’ is the word I like to use for what I’m doing with all the digital versions of my family’s photos. I looked through my dad’s hard drive when I went to see my family in Australia and bulk-copied the folders I wanted to look through into my Google Drive. I got carried away and copied a lot more onto my desktop. It was a generative exercise; ideas for essays and shorts floated around in my head as I fought back tears looking at a version of myself that loved smiling into cameras and committing all sorts of mischief. I want to do more of that in the new year (mischief, that is.) I’ve written a couple of essays this year centered around my globetrotting childhood—they might find a home in this newsletter—but these photographs falling into my lap, a mix of printed photo scans or jpegs from multi-family shared digital cameras, have provided new avenues to explore in the recesses of my childhood memories. There are even photos from The Avenues Mall in Kuwait. Who would’ve thought?
I’ve inadvertently dedicated myself to archiving my childhood. It’s a lot more than nostalgia for me. Memories have a language of their own, and I’m just trying to parse it out for myself in a way that makes sense for me.
The National Gallery of Victoria
I went to the National Gallery of Victoria, or NGV, in Melbourne when I went to visit my little brother a few weeks ago. I got to go with one of my best friends from high school, and then again with my family. The NGV Triennale is on right now and it’s free, check it out if you’re in the area.
Before this, I don’t think I had been to an art gallery since leaving London last year. I haven’t had the chance to explore what Vancouver has to offer, but Melbourne was kind enough to reinvigorate my love for all sorts of art. It was refreshing in a way I hadn’t anticipated. I guess when all you’ve been looking at is screens, student work, and parts of yourself you don’t like, it’s nice to let your eyeballs soak in an installation entirely made of wood depicting a classroom of extinct Dodo birds or a carpet patterned after topographical maps of hurricanes.
A piece I was particularly moved by was a woodcut print by Fitri DK called Derita Sudah Naik Seleher. DK’s work focuses on Indonesian women in different revolutionary movements. This piece has power fists coming out of deforested stumps and 24k gold bars underneath them. It was cool seeing Indonesian art in a gallery outside of Indonesia, but I can’t help but think of how it’s taken me so long to seek art out from my own culture (outside of, of course, Gadis Kretek. I think Dian Sastro cured my internalised jawaphobia—I can say that, I’m Javanese).
Gen V and Positive Disgruntled TA Representation
The television event of the year has to be Gen V for me. I love these kids. Jordan Li is just like me for real (a TA just trying to do their job amidst shenanigans). Imagine being a TA for a bunch of superpowered theatre kids with dreams of becoming super cups. I would lose it. It’s been really exciting watching a good show about college-aged kids doing college-aged things instead of whatever the hell Sam Levinson has been trying to do with euphoria. Superhero nonsense has fatigued me, but not Gen V. I kind of live for their kind of nonsense.
Nicolas Cage
I kind of owe this guy. He’s automatically invited to my wedding. On our first date, my partner and I went to see Renfield, that movie where Nic Cage as Dracula exploits Nicholas Hoult’s labour.
We also went to see Dream Scenario and realised after the film was done that we were wearing the same t-shirts we were wearing on our first date. We’re gross and cute and I’d like to thank Nicolas Cage and his filmography for that.
I have also spent most of my life intrigued by Cage; his filmography, his prestige and relationship to irony, his role in the cultural zeitgeist, his Coppola roots, whatever National Treasure 2 is, that I genuinely believe it requires further study. I want to be in that class Abed was in from Season 5 of Community: Nicolas Cage, Good or Bad? I think ‘good or bad’ is irrelevant. I’m much more interested in why we care so much that he has to be good or bad.
Board Games that involve Lying
I guess this is a theatre kid thing growing up playing Werewolf or Mafia, but I really love games where you have to lie. They’re a deeply underrated genre of games. I recall a game night where we had to go on quests and try to thwart the quests and it was the closest thing we espionage-hating civilians would ever get to being spies. Duplicity, when the stakes are low, is super fun and we should all be able to admit that.
Organizing a Barbenheimer Evening
We pulled off a pretty insane Barbenheimer weekend. We had 30 minutes between each film. Oppenheimer first, Barbie to end the night. All my friends came dressed up. I enjoyed Oppenheimer a lot more than Barbie, but the joy of being in the theatre with a big group of loved ones is pretty indescribable. Ryan Gosling’s cover of Push by Matchbox Twenty has also not left my mind. I’m proud to admit that I spearheaded the group chats and ticket coordination because that shit gives me an adrenaline rush I imagine Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread gets when he finishes sewing a dress. It’s the little things in life.
End of List
It got pretty Hyperfixate-y at the end, but that’s only because I’m rushing to catch a bus to begin my own New Year’s shenanigans. Other honourable mentions that I wish I had more time to write about: Blowback Podcast, Ruth Sahanaya’s Seputih Kasih, Mystery Menu with Sohla and Ham El-Waylly, and Thai Ginger candies to help with nausea. They will probably get their own essays. I’ve also done some stuff in real life! I’ll reflect on those another time, I’m trying not to define myself by the things I do or don’t do. We’ll see how well that goes.
I’m not sure what’ll come next. I have a few ideas. I hope I follow through on them.
On that note, if you have the means to and haven’t yet, check out Mirna El-Helbawi’s Instagram to see how you can donate an eSIM to help people in Gaza, Palestine stay connected to the internet. It’s the least we can do.
I’ll sign off the way I always do:
All my love,
Ari.
I haven’t always been the kind of person to say ‘gosh’ but I think we should bring it back. It tickles a part of my brain that wants to hear more words cartoons say.
Slap it on a post-it note and call it an affirmation. It feels strange typing this paragraph out, I feel like my bravado hasn’t been earned. White guys have been proud of themselves for less, so c’est la vie.
Don’t be silly. Of course, I’ll still be funny.