The Second Person

Suddenly, the perspective shifts when I’m writing in my journal—no longer I but you. The second person takes over. I continue moving my hand along the page, but a consciousness outside my own subordinates me, treats me as you. But who is I or you or me? Who’s in control…who’s not?

The second person doesn’t know me well enough to narrate my life: It may reveal glimpses of my past, but it doesn’t see the future before I do. These limitations make this point of view good for stories where the narrator needs to be as close as possible to the protagonist without actually being them. But it subordinates the protagonist with its instructional tone. In Lorrie Moore’s essay “How to Become a Writer,” the second person is Moore’s present self looking back on her journey as a young writer and guiding that person through it based on the conclusions she’s made over the years.

Through the second person, perhaps one can make peace with past selves.

What shows up in my journal, though, is more present, more urgent. Less a voice of experience than one of punishment. Punishing me for what, you might ask. Punishing me for who I am not. Nowhere is this voice more prominent than in my lists, a format where I will no longer do. These lists are usually about what I must do, and what I’m not doing. Who I am, and who I am not. The you aims to be a bridge of self-improvement. In the many lists of books and films and art works I hope to read, watch, and see, “you must” could be read before each one, even when absent. Instructions from the second person.

But where do I go?

It’s not that I disappear…I just become I, etcetera, like the title of Susan Sontag’s 1978 short story collection. The narrative voice in each story is disembodied, struggling to place events in a coherent flow for the reader (and the writer herself). I know from Benjamin Moser’s brilliant biography of Sontag that she demanded self-improvement. She sought to bridge the gaps between the many versions of Susan Sontag. She sought to bridge the gap between the writer she was and the writer she wanted to be—not become but be.

Sontag was a master of lists. She knew when they were needed in her work and could drill any subject down into items grouped based on some loose relationship they have to one another. A list is a body in how it brings together limbs of thought. Sontag wouldn’t approve of that metaphor. But she’s attempting to bring together disparate things in her lists. “Somewhere, some place inside myself, I am detached” (24) she writes in her short story “Project for a Trip to China,” which could almost be read as literary nonfiction.

“Somewhere, some place inside myself, I am detached.” — Susan Sontag

There are at least 42 different lists in “Project for a Trip to China,” though the entire story could really be read as a list. Sontag is trying to distill this trip down to an itinerary based on memory, imagination, and history. Finally, she will be able to link her imagined China (a place tied to her father, who she never knew) and the real China. “Mythical voyage” (27). Her trip will result in “literature” more than “knowledge.”

In our personal writing, can we be both the psychoanalyst and the patient? Sontag’s feelings about psychoanalysis were that we tend to rely on it too much. We seek a reason for why we want to go to China and what that trip would mean to us before we even go. We overanalyze for meaning, interpret instead of experience; and as the title of her famous essay collection makes clear, Sontag was Against Interpretation. But in “China,” I wonder if she’s trying to bridge analyst and patient, and that’s the project that fails in the end: “Perhaps I will write the book about my trip to China before I go” (29).

Literature over knowledge.

The limitations of the second person come from the directions this point of view gives the protagonist. You not I. I, etcetera, which doesn’t mean “I, plus” or “I, and so on.” It only means that the I is constantly being overthrown. Overthrown by a narrative consciousness that analyzes and interprets experiences for me.

The second person takes over.

The Menu: A Kind of Review

Not a perfect film, but close. The film has a tight and surprising narrative that strikes the right darkly-humorous tone for Mark Mylod’s critique of expensive dining “experiences” and the people who pay for them.

3 things I think you should know:

1. Nick Hoult plays the type of character he’s meant to play: self-important, self-delusional, a dick. He’s the best part of the film!

2. Each course serves as a storytelling device that adds humor to even the most horrific and gory scenes.

3. The cheeseburger looks like the most appetizing meal Chef Slowik makes, which I believe is intentional. It’s not even supposed to be on the menu, just like Margot isn’t supposed to be at the restaurant.

Babylon: A Kind of Review

Damien Chazelle’s tale of how Hollywood tries to find a moral center but, instead, adopts hypocrisy never quite comes together for me. I like a tight narrative, and Chazelle loses too much control of the story he aims to tell. That said, Babylon is still a fun watch!

3 things I think you should know:

1. We should all be grateful that Babylon has introduced us all to Diego Calva.

2. Margot Robbie, running around with the fangs of a rattlesnake sunk into her neck. I don’t think I need to say more.

3. Brad Pitt’s storyline shows what would have happened to Don Lockwood in Singin’ in the Rain if he didn’t find his “second act” in The Dancing Cavalier. Oh, and the film doesn’t work without Jean Smart’s monologue.

Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles: A Kind of Review

I kept seeing articles hailing Chantal Akerman’s voyeuristic study of a middle-aged widow as the greatest film ever made. I finally watched it on Criterion and found myself completely engrossed by Jeanne (the protagonist), moving from enclosed space to enclosed space, and turning lights on and off as she enters and leaves a room.

3 things I think you should know:

1. “This woman fascinates me” was all I kept thinking throughout the film.

2. Her son, Sylvain, points out her unraveling to her: “Your hair’s a mess (Vos cheveux sont en désordre).” “You missed a button (Vous avez manqué un bouton).”

3. I saw but also didn’t see the ending coming.

What the fuck should I blog about?

UPDATE: Here’s something I read in a collection of Susan Sontag’s notebooks, Reborn, that feels pertinent—

“I cannot write until I find my ego. The only kind of writer [I] could be is the kind who exposes himself.”

“What could I write a blog about?” Julie Powell (played by Amy Adams) asks her husband in Nora Ephron’s film Julie & Julia (yes, I know it was loosely based on Powell’s memoir, but I never read it). Her husband offers a few ideas that Julie immediately shuts down, and he ultimately suggests that she write about something she’s passionate about.

Julie Powell (played by Amy Adams) writing a blog post on her laptop.

She settles on cooking, specifically learning how to cook from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Julie achieves mild fame, a collection of fans, and becomes a narcissistic monster who equates being a writer (what Julie says she wants to do throughout her portions of the film) with being famous. “What do you think a blog is? It’s me, me, me day after day,” Julie yells at her husband before he storms out of their apartment, angry that his wife’s blog had become more important than their marriage.

Julie & her husband enjoying cooking.

I’ve heard before that you should blog about your passions, about something you can call yourself an expert in. I need to carve out a niche for myself on the internet in order to drive traffic to my content. And then maybe—just maybe—that niche will fill a void in 1,000+ readers’ lives. Finding my niche is what I struggle with.

It’s not that I don’t have any passions; I’m passionate about a lot of things. Or, rather, I’m interested. Interested is probably a better word. But I’m not an expert in anything. I’m in a perpetual state of learning—always the student, never the teacher. Maybe I’m putting too much emphasis on finding my niche. Can I really not write anything until I find it?

My first blog post on this site is about the struggles I’ve had with writing over the years, specifically with even calling myself a writer. Like Julie Powell, I suppose I’ve been afraid to really apply myself to the work. It’s scary to sit down and write for hours. It’s scary not to know what you’re going to write or how you’re going to approach a story. It’s easier to just not prioritize writing right now.

I keep myself from writing and publishing because I don’t know what to write. I’m on a quest to find what I should be writing about, which doesn’t leave much space for actual writing. I don’t like this way of thinking. It tends to make me jealous rather than appreciative of other people’s work. I’ll read a book, blog, newsletter that I love and curse myself for not having that idea myself. But what I’m really cursing myself for is that these writers have written and I have not. I’m still searching for what to write.

Do I really need to search for what the fuck I should be blogging about? Does a blog have to be about anything other than what I feel like writing about day to day? This is all to say that I guess I don’t give a fuck about what I blog about. No, that’s not it. It’s that I don’t need to search for something to write about. I have all that I could want to write about within and around me.