I knew I was burning out by the time I got to Cannes in mid-May, because about a week into it — the festival runs just shy of two weeks — I realized I was feeling much better. Which is not usually how festivals go; Cannes in particular requires being awake and alert enough to watch and judge movies for roughly 16 hours per day (this is not an exaggeration) and that is enough to kill most people’s brains dead. But I could feel myself coming back to life, and this was a surprise, a new feeling.
The other reason I knew I had burned myself out was that I was turning into a procrastinator or, worse, just someone who couldn’t bring herself to do things that needed to be done, ordinary things that take very little time to do. Fold some clothes, or return an email, or whatever. It was becoming unthinkable to even try.
On some level I know all the answers to this. Work less! Batch your tasks so they go quickly. Find time to rest, and to do refreshing things.
But sometimes I’m just tired of doing stuff, you know? Any stuff at all. Since we got back I’ve been trying to mash myself into the groove again because I have, you know, a book to write, and a job, and I somehow got roped into doing a little bit of online course development before I can take this sabbatical I’m supposed to be having right now. There are certain sorts of things I used to write all the time (reviews of upcoming releases) that have been pared back, which means I’m writing much more labor-intensive things, which means I miss the criticism that used to feel like it was cleansing my brain. And I have a stack of books to read that’s so high that I need to take a year off work just to read them all.
All of which is manageable, but sometimes I can feel myself suddenly becoming unable to look at that email I need to return directly, lest it burn out my retinas. Or absorb information, or track the plot of a story, or come up with anything worth saying. It’s an unpleasant feeling that virtually everyone has had many times, but it doesn’t make it less scary when I can feel it looming around the edges.
Anyhow I don’t have anything interesting to say about that except that if you owe me an email, you’ll get it eventually, and that I am still trying to figure out what kinds of things actually rejuvenate me. I go to yoga, I run, I lift weights, I try to read novels. And I know there’s great privilege in being able to make the things you love — movies, books, thinking — into your livelihood. But the flip side of the coin is that when you need to do something else, well … it is not always really clear what to do. And yet time marches on.
How do you steer away from burnout?
Probably I just need a frozen margarita and a little bit of a comfy sit to end the week. Maybe I’ll do that. Right now.
Something worth seeing
I don’t have an outlet or time right now where I can write about Corsicana, Will Arbery’s new play, which we saw a week or so ago. (Arbery wrote the play Heroes of the Fourth Turning, which became a bit of a sensation a few years ago that even extended past the New York theater scene; I interviewed him back then and he’s lovely.)
But I wanted to make sure you knew about it. Corsicana is set in small-town Texas, with four characters: two siblings in their late thirties, a film professor named Christopher and his half-sister Ginny, who has Down syndrome; the family friend, Justice, who comes by their house to help them out since their mother died; and Lot, the outsider artist in town, who has never really felt welcome in the community. Mostly, they just talk. They try to figure themselves out, and they try to figure out their feelings. They hurt one another a little and misunderstand one another and form the odd kind of family that we all kind of know to call “chosen family” these days.
There are many reasons the production is remarkable, especially the cast: Will Dagger, extraordinary as Christopher; Jamie Brewer (who like her character Ginny has Down syndrome), with perfect comic timing; recent Tony winner Deirdre O’Connell as an indomitable and very familiar Justice; and Harold Surratt, breaking hearts as Lot.
But what kept striking me is its embodiment of Lewis Hyde’s The Gift, a book I read about a million years ago that’s a cult favorite of many artists, including, as it turns out, Will Arbery. (I could hear the text in the play, but didn’t realize till afterward that he was evoking it explicitly.) The Gift is a strange little book, somewhat more mystical and woo-woo than I usually go in for (especially 15 years ago when I first read it). But when I could quiet down my inner rationalist, I resonated with the book deeply. Hyde writes about gift economies, about the exchange of gifts that powers the world, how gifts structure our relationships and our communities, and how the logic of exchange capitalism mostly threatens those relationships and the idea of the gift itself.
That art is often valued strictly on the basis of what kind of money people are willing to pay for it is just the tip of the iceberg. That we often form relationships based around things we pay for, or the literal value we hold to one another, is devastating. To love based not on how someone can boost your status or fulfill your goals, but the gifts — not tangible, so often — that they might receive from you, or provide to you, is revolutionary.
In Corsicana, there is not much money to go around. Instead, everyone is trading, tentatively, on the gifts they can give one another — the gift of listening, or of caring, or of creating a song, or of being forced into a realization about themselves. It’s a play about art, though nobody in it is in any danger of ever being rich from their art, either by choice or by accident. And thus it is a play about empathy and love beyond the logic of this world. I loved it, very much.
Reading and Watching
All my burnout nattering sounds dire, but I think it’s mostly Friday talking, because I did gulp down a really compelling psychological thriller-type novel this week, Like Me, by Hayley Phelan, about an influencer whose intellect is kind of disintegrating in front of us. The audiobook was a great companion for the week.
We’ve been sprinkling our evenings with different shows (Better Things aka the best show that’s ever been on TV among them), but I wanted to specifically recommend HBO’s Mind Over Murder (directed by Nanfu Wang!), which is not a true crime series even though it looks like one. It’s actually about how our messy psyches and all the things we don’t know about how the brain works stick a very large and insistent wrench in the justice system. I have seen the whole thing (I believe four episodes have aired and are on HBO Max), and can heartily encourage you to stick to the end, because it takes several very unexpected turns.
Writing
The coolest thing I did this week was actually the full podcast conversation about China and Hollywood with Red Carpet author Erich Schwartzel, which you can listen to here. I promise that even if you’re only marginally interested in movies or geopolitics, it’s a really interesting conversation. (As you may recall, I published an excerpt, but the full thing is a great listen.)
And I talked to Sara Dosa about her wonderful new film Fire of Love, about a famous pair of (now-deceased) married volcanologists, which is in theaters right now and will go to Hulu and Disney+ soon.
And, what the heck: I did some long-awaited tweaks on my website, with a few textual changes and an updated list of selected clips.
While we are here, may I once again plug my book Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women?
Enjoyed this? If you’re feeling it, I won’t object if you buy me a cup of coffee. Writers need fuel.
On not burning out, and also Corsicana
All so true and familiar. In fact, because of burnout, it's taken me forever to crack open my copy of SALTY, but last weekend I did and I love it and I keep stopping to write in my journal about dinner parties of my youth and learning how to be a host in my 20s and it's just great to get back in touch with something in me that has been buried by... [see burnout].
This one really hit home. You described hat feeling of burnout perfectly. Sometimes we all just need a rest. I know I could use one too. I hope you get yours. 😁