Feat. Lauryn Hill and her (Matronly?) Miseducation, Medical Terms for Storytellers, Radical Books Half Price! Science vs Serendipity.

AND sending this just before I hop on a plane and HONEYMOOOOOON on through. Excuse my joy.

20 YEARS OF MISEDUCATION

I recommend this deep dive into Lauryn Hill from the New York Times’ Still Processing podcast, on the 20th anniversary of her debut solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Starts as a conversation but weaves through songs and speeches– setting up Hill as a prophet and that album as a prophecy: about fame, social media and more. It’s also the first time I’ve heard TLC and Hill’s brand of feminism described as matronly. INTERESTING.

Still remember listening to Miseducation for the first time— Year 8, my friend’s family car, her mum driving, and Doo-Wop (That Thing) playing. And it was probably the first time we were listening as women. We weren’t women yet but we listened like we were. The podcast hosts point out that this was literally the same time as Hit Me Baby One More Time. And don’t get me wrong– we loved the image of Britney in uniform vocal-frying her way through oh baby baby (but only secretly I told everyone I liked The Offspring). But it was different with Lauryn Hill. She preached and we listened. (Tho… listening back to the lyrics now, someone with an opinion on the internets definitely going to find a few lines problematic and blamey. Not me).

I’m the perfect age to be nostalgic about this. I remember reading this on Man Repller about how Drake’s Nice for What (sampling Hill, of course) hit the spot for women in their 30s [A very low-brow listicle, but it does the job].

Still Processing features this interlude from Hill’s unplugged album where she says ‘I realised I’ve become one of those mad scientists who does the test on themselves’ . There’s talk how as a young woman, Hill wasn’t taught to take care of her singing voice but I kept hearing it as a metaphor – about young people — young women especially— learning to take care of what and how they voice themselves. Check it out.

STORY DOULA

When trying to work out what this thing I like to do is— encounter stories, imagine them up, help other people tell theirs… I have sometimes privately thought of myself as a story doula which— YES, LAUGH! FINE. TRUST ME— I would not be telling anyone about because it’s SO NAFF on so many levels BUT SO RIGHT. But then my totally original private mission statement— well, I found it elsewhere, and they made it better. In the podcast newsletter Hot Pod, US radio producer and editor Jen Chien is profiled and she says:

“If producing a radio story is like giving birth to a baby, my role is somewhere between the hardline, technical focus of the doctor, who’s only thinking about getting that baby out on time, regardless of the mother’s comfort or desires — and the gentle, client-focused approach of the doula, whose mandate is to ensure the mother has the best, most comfortable experience possible. …Sometimes compromises have to be struck, and the midwife is the one having to make the tough decisions when it comes down to the wire. I like being both a hardass and a nurturer, often in the same meeting/edit.”

YES. A mix between doctor and doula. So there is is. Midwife. The profession I would have chosen if I had the stomach and brains for it. Instead, now, rendered in story form. Please don’t tell anyone about this conversation. Mission statement job titles should not be aired in public. [P.S. I HAVE MORE TITLES!!].

CHEAP, RADICAL BOOKS

Not so great at shopping with the exception of a good book sale. Woot. But I thought I should tell you that my second-favourite international publisher, Haymarket Books, is offering 50 percent off all their books (poetry, fiction, history, sociology, great essays etc etc etc) until August 24th. This is not a sponsored post. Love these publishers and the stories and ideas they put out into the world. I was going to tell you the books I’m coveting but I started choosing them all and now I need a lie down.

EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT DEEP-DIVE INTERVIEWING

…will be shared at this course I’m running at Writing NSW in Sydney on October 20th, to help strengthen your writing and documentary projects. I’m a fossicker of strategies of all my favourite non-fiction narrative writers and documentary makers– I’ll share them and everything I’ve learned from hundred of hours of interviewing.

REPLY NOTES

In reply to class critiques of Queer Eye from Note July ’18 no. 2, the awesome Sheila Pham writes:

SCIENCE vs SERENDIPITY

My inner world consists of me finding links and coincidences and investing meaning in them against my will. I rarely admit this to people, except now. This note has become uncomfortably confessional. I do enjoy observing my rational mind’s distaste of my flippy hippy heart’s endless search for the serendipity of the universe. And so, enjoyed this article from Aeon:

“The poet John Keats in 1817 accused Isaac Newton of trying to ‘unweave the rainbow’, by which he meant that Newton was attempting to take the magic out of life by paring it down to its scientific basis.”

Don’t unweave the rainbow!

Sign up for notes here. Reply notes: [email protected]. Hardcopy letters to PO Box 531, Broadway, NSW 2007 Australia.