Suze is Hunting Muses, 10

Hi. My name is Suze Kay, and I’m a proud moderator of Voices in Minor, a community of Vocal authors who desire to uplift, inspire, and support one another. Every Wednesday, PViM will publish a weekly round-up of whatever lures my muses closer to my writing nook.

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Well, hello there, Vocal! I hope you've all had good weeks. Today's installation will be a little hodgepodge -- my brain feels somewhat fuzzy, and I'm having trouble keeping my thoughts straight.

Let's start things off with a song:

Do It All Again -- Dekker

(Spotify link here)

I've been really into Dekker's discography for the past few months, but this song is still my favorite. I love the moody, twangy guitar, the gentle road-trip vibe of the percussion, and the nostalgic lyrics. They all combine into a heartfelt ode to the past delights of youth, coupled with a regretful look back at what could have been.

Perhaps I'm just now getting into a past-birthday funk. Usually, I'm known to cry a little on my birthday. Never for good reasons (although, as a hormonally-addled youth, I certainly found some good reasons with the help of some exes haha). Last week, when I wrote about the year between 28 and 29, I was jubilant and celebratory. No tears! And now, I'm feeling a little harsh with my past self.

There were so many things I didn't understand, and chances I squandered, to quote Dekker. And sometimes it's a gloomy thought, to look back on what only could have been if I were a better/smarter/kinder person in the past -- but I like that the message of this song is that still, there would be worth in doing it all again.

I hung out with my friends

On Saturday, I hosted a casual get-together at my apartment. For six hours, my friends and I shared excellent conversations and an absurd amount of food. Some highlights:

• Experiments don't always work: I made my own cake and tried to make it funfetti. In the end, it looked tie-tyed, because all of the sprinkles sank to the bottom. Any tips on getting it right next time?
• How something looks doesn't matter nearly as much as how it tastes :)
• My cat really likes to eat tulips, to the extent that she'll knock over a glass vase full of birthday flowers in the middle of the night.
• I got an excellent book (more on that next)
• If you ask twelve people to bring a snack of their choice, they will leave you with seven half-full bags of chips.
• I told people my one house rule was they weren't allowed to make fun of my music choices at my birthday party... so naturally, they made fun of my music choices at my birthday party.

I read a magnificent book

I devoured "I Have Some Questions for You" by Rebecca Makkai in three sittings over two days. It flew past me, I sunk into it, I swallowed it whole. A dear friend gave it to me because she was desperate to talk to me about it. I see why.

Successful podcaster Bodie Kane returns to her boarding school to teach a two-week course, in which she encourages current students to create an investigative series about a local topic. One such topic? The murder of Bodie's roommate, for which the school's athletic trainer has been improisoned for two decades. The book follows Bodie, increasingly convinced that the wrong man was blamed, as she grapples with the person she was twenty years before, uncomfortable truths about the Me-Too movement, and the American justice system.

My friend, a lawyer, was naturally hooked by the legal and societal elements of the narrative. I was more impressed by the intangible concepts that Makkai elucidated, specifically the fungibility of self, the infallibility of memory, and just how weird it feels to be living at a boarding school.

These are concepts that I mull over constantly. Eight months ago, I wrote about how scared I was to return to my boarding school and face the person I was there. (Incidentally, it was part of a review for another excellent book about boarding school, "Old School" by Tobias Wolff.) More recently, I did return -- like Bodie, to teach a class in my field of work. (You can read more about that experience in this installment.) And of course, another shameless plug for my recent novella-length series on here, "Women Who Stay," in which I also pursued questions of memory, love, attachment, growth, and human psychology. (But if you're choosing between reading WWS and "I Have Some Questions for You," read Makkai's book. It's so much better!)

I think it's so lovely that my friend and I read the same book and each loved it fiercely for such different reasons. Maybe you'll love it too!

I got obsessed with Twitter

My original outline for today's installment was going to do a little deep dive (a la my obsession with KateGate) on the most recent Twitter writing community scandal, which popped off just as I re-downloaded the app for the first time in a year. The scandal is juicy. It features a person who allegedly created four separate personas (and pretended to be an agent?!), then was a real meany to a bunch of people, and also pretended to be an ethnicity they weren't. But I got really tired just trying to find links to everything, so unless you all in the comments scream out for a full breakdown of the drama, I'll just advise you search "Freydìs Moon" and go down that rabbit hole for yourself.

The thing I really wanted to say about that whole fiasco is how funny it is that we're all still obsessed with masquerades. Like, we've just moved the party online, and changed the masks into profile pictures. I hate posting on there because it feels very performative.

To follow that thought down to its natural conclusion... isn't all writing performative? Aren't I attempting to communicate to you, reader, with every word I write, some type of value? Some subjective beauty? A level of education, or a worthiness of spirit? Yeah, of course. Doesn't mean I have to feel great about it. Also doesn't mean I have to feel bad about it. And isn't there something so sinister about the idea that I could talk forever, and tell you all sorts of things, and you could come away with a completely different understanding of who I am than I think I am? And which of us would be right? Would either of us?

I mostly stay on Twitter because sometimes, watching the flow of an echo chamber 35 screams into the void at a time, I feel like I'm getting closer to answering those questions.

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