Dame Delay

Because Dame Margaret's time management skills are still extremely a work in progress.

Hello, beloved members of Dames Nation,

I come to you, heart in hand, to beg forgiveness: I’m on solo Dames-duty this week thanks to a vicious act of germ terrorism perpetrated against Dame Sophie and by the time I’d finished my work newsletter I had nothing left in my fingers for our personal newsletter. I simply had to leave you and watch Joni Mitchell receive the Library of Congress’s Gerswin Prize for Popular Song, it was imperative. Which is actually great, because it puts me in the position of being able to ask you exactly what I asked Twitter last night, but with vastly superior visual aids: what in the Dress Barn HELL is Amy Klobuchar WEARING???

Computer, enhance:

Thanks to my terrible photo, interlocutors on Twitter focused in on… floor-length culottes, but these I’ll defend. Are they an unconventional choice? Absolutely. But, executed properly, in an outfit with a defined waist, or perhaps a single solitary natural fiber, I think they could be chic. It’s the monstrosity on top that’s bedeviled me so completely. It’s like what the third grade teacher at an almost-entirely-white school would have worn to the educational Chinese New Year party she’d thrown as part of an effort towards multiculturalism in…1992. My hand is absolutely ITCHING to tear that crinkly metallic gold shirt off her, or at least tuck it in! With a nice white silk shell, tucked into the culottes, I might not notice the way in which her little jacket is giving Cheesecake Factory Decor Ethnic Ambiguity. But that gold shirt is so bad it drags the entire look into ignominy.

Klobuchar has never been a favorite of mine, although I do admire her the way her loathing of Pete Buttigieg is silent, seething, Midwestern, and eternal. Regardless of my feelings about her, I do typically try to avoid criticizing women’s clothing, especially when being fashionable is not part of their job. This, however, was so shockingly bad that I did feel compelled to comment. Thank you so much for giving me a safe space in which to do so. Please share your thoughts about WHAT she was THINKING at will.

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Dame Margaret Being Enabled Not Wisely But Too Well

As previously mentioned, my new job with Not Sorry Productions has a somewhat dizzying array of benefits. Like, a big part of my job last month was making and then conducting a 32-film March Madness-style bracket of romantic comedies (in which 10 Things I Hate About You somewhat shockingly beat When Harry Met Sally and won the whole thing). But I’m heading into an even HIGHER realm of “Wait, seriously… this is a job?” Because. They’re letting me teach a class about Taylor Swift.

Courtesy of wildpipm on Instagram.

I’ve long had this bit that, were we friends in real life, you would have heard me relate at least 6 times already, and it goes like this: you know what I feel when I watch babies and toddlers absolutely losing their tiny minds in the grocery store because, like, their favorite cereal is out of stock? I just feel envy. Because truly, when my favorite cereal is out of stock, I too feel like breaking down and sobbing about it, but I can’t. I’m a grown-up and my reactions to minor inconveniences are supposed to be proportional. But I look at those wailing infants with longing, thinking “Wouldn’t it be nice?”

This is a little bit how Taylor Swift’s highly personal songs have always made me feel. Like, do I still lie awake at night arguing in my head with people I dated for four months when I was 20? Yes, absolutely. But would I write a 10-minute-song about how terrible they are? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Not because I lack confidence that I could produce something sufficiently compelling, insightful, or nuanced— three things I happen to find many of Taylor’s most personal songs to be. I may wish I thought of these tiny slights less, but I know the thinking I do about them has often led me to truly valuable self-understanding, understanding I actually delight in sharing with others (c.f. this newsletter). No, the only reason I would never, ever do what Taylor Swift does is because it would mean admitting I still care. It would mean publicly owning that I am not over that mean thing that one ex texted me, or that guy who inexplicably ghosted me after three intense weeks of dating, or the girl who decided she didn’t want to be friends with me anymore in the third grade. And to still care about someone whose behavior demonstrates they don’t at ALL care about me? It’s like the most pathetic thing I can imagine. Obviously it’s true. But to just admit that’s so, in front of God and the internet and everyone? I would rather be boiled alive.

Which is one of those thoughts that, finally looked at in the clear light of day, you realize is big time garbage. There is not a person in my life whose value is derived from how little they care, especially about their relationships with other people. I don’t think anyone else, including Taylor, out to be ashamed of suffering because of the actions of someone careless, nor do I think anyone else describing the carelessness of others and its impact is being “self-indulgent.” I actually think they’re doing something hugely valuable, that these insights are a gift artists have given me, letting me put a name to treatment I’ve received in the past and even, on some rare occasions, letting me identify a bad decision before I’ve had to suffer hardily for it. It turns out that I am the only person I expect to be either too smart to get hurt, or too strong to feel it.

Examining my reaction to Taylor through this lens, I started thinking: what could I make if, like Taylor, I focused on creating art that honored my emotional intensity rather than being too abashed to own it? What would it look like if I let myself say “that hurt” so I could give other people the benefit of also hearing “and here’s why”? And that’s where the idea for this class came from. It was imagining all of us being emboldened by Swift’s example and making something remarkable out of the things of which we can’t let go. So, for six weeks this summer, I’m going to be doing just that with however many students elect to join me.

We will examine Swift’s studio albums two at a time, in roughly chronological order, and try to suss out the alchemy by which she transforms private pain into communal catharsis. And then we’ll try to accomplish the same feat with writing about our own lives. I am so excited to see what comes of it.

OBVIOUSLY, I’d be overjoyed if some Dames Nationals showed up for it. You guys are great and you’d make the class great. But also, I thought you’d appreciate the thought process that generated it. I know we’re a ruminative crowd to whom rational justification for brooding would mean a lot. The only thing I want to say is, if you’d like to participate, but the cost feels prohibitive, don’t hesitate to fill out a scholarship request form.

THANK YOU FOR WAITING PATIENTLY UNTIL I WAS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING THIS, NOT THAT I GAVE YOU ANY ALTERNATIVE!

Your Favorite Problem Like Maria,

Dame Margaret