[Newsletter] Bernie's going to win ft. the rest of my week
8/Feb, Saturday
I did one-hundred jumping jacks on Saturday morning. My trainer and I have these unspoken rules during my warm-up time, based on the shared premise that it would be bad if I were to die. Some of these rules are:
· No more than 10 push-ups
· No more than 10 squats
· No more than 10 lunges
· No more than 10 burpees
Some among you may have spotted a pattern. The cap for jumping jacks is 20, and I got to it, and then my trainer continued the count, patiently, “21…”. Our eyes met. I’d like to think I conveyed the horror and incredulity I felt because his face cracked, he seemed to appreciate the humour of the moment, and then he gestured for me to get on with it. Which I did. My heart became a small dense sponge vibrating at 1000 bpm, something vulnerable that could shudder to a stop if someone lightly poked at the center. But then after a while I entered that state of flow where I stopped being ‘Shreya’ and something closer to a tube through which the soundwaves of my trainer’s monotone chant to one-hundred was amplified and the only thing that really existed. It was pretty zen. I hope I never have to do it again.
Speaking of small dense things that lead to death, have you seen Uncut Gems yet? You should. Here’s the editors of Jewish Currents discussing the movie.
MB: There’s an allegory here for a kind of dawning revelation for many Americans over the past few years—including for many of us on the left—that we are just one shitty country among many, and that this is what it means to be in a declining empire. We are not the prime mover, we are not a city on a hill, and that means that we no longer have as much terrible agency as we did. I think that is what is happening to the figure of the Jew in this movie. He is recognizably Jewish, like the US remains recognizably the US, but he’s not at the leading edge of the zeitgeist or anything. He represents something very specific, but that’s also merely itself.
AA: I still think he does have to be a Jew, to embody that mix of precarity and maneuverability at the same time. He doesn’t have to go after all of this crazy stuff. He’s got his store. Every single moment you’re like, “You could just stop. You could just walk away, you never had to do any of this.” An Israeli once told me that the main motivation of Israelis is not to be a freier, a sucker, not to let anyone take advantage of you. You’re not going to screw me, I’m going to get a leg up. It comes from a feeling of precarity, but it ends up in a space of hyper-compensation.
JP: Insecurity plus power.
AA: Insecurity plus power, exactly. That, to me, isn’t just American. It’s specific. White enough to have access, with this immigrant hustler mentality.
MB: The question that everyone had about this movie before it even came out is whether it’s antisemitic to make a movie about a crooked Jewish diamond dealer. The assumption built into that question is that the diamond dealer is a symbol of the wealthy Jew. But what we see in this movie is that he’s a symbol of the working-class Jew, the desperate Jew. Maybe he’s not meaningfully working-class in terms of his place in the American economy, but he is culturally marked as working-class, and that is what’s actually embarrassing about it.
AA: He reminds me of my immigrant father, majorly. So is it because they’re first-generation, or is it because they’re crazy? Or are those the same thing?
If you still need wooing, here’s Adam Sandler’s acceptance speech for Best Male Lead for his role in the movie. I feel a Sandler renaissance coming:
9/Feb, Sunday
I saw Buddy Guy live at a blues festival and I didn’t know him before booking my tickets, and now I’m kinda happy I didn’t, because there’s all this Buddy Guy music to catch up with, and I’m kinda sad I didn’t, because there’s all this Buddy Guy music that could’ve given me a moment or two of pure solitary pleasure in the middle of a shit day.
Speaking of pleasure: jazz is a metaphor for pleasuring women! The single finger carefully massaging one point on a string; Buddy taking out a nice rounded drumstick and then playing his guitar with it, tapping and rubbing the strings with it; Buddy playing the guitar with his mouth i.e. eating his guitar out. It was amazing to see, because Buddy and the band were totally in on it. I love talented horny men.
Anyway, here’s a good essay on how jazz is more than a personality trait.
11/Feb, Tuesday
Amber A’Lee Frost recently talkedto canvassers for Bernie in New Hampshire about her conclusion about Pete Buttigieg’s campaign’s link with the Iowa caucus vote counting app (excerpt, lightly edited).
If you’re a panicky leftist like me who’s very bad at convincing people, you may feel called out:
Fundamentally, your job is to not necessarily bring everyone in on the conspiracy you thoughtfully have considered and maybe have developed a instinct about. We don’t need conspiracy, because [Pete Buttigieg] is bad enough on his own, and that’s absolutely the thing you have to consider. Because it is actually really important that we don’t look crazy. It’s really important we don’t look crazy.
So you kind of have to internalise that shit and move forward. And you don’t really have time to construct a corkboard full of strings of yarns and thumbtacks at every door. It’s not your job to go out and reveal everything to everyone at all times. Your job at doors is not to get everyone to understand your entire worldview, it’s to get working people to follow their instincts about who is on their side, and who is not.
And that is easy.
Kejriwal just swept Delhi, Sinn Fein just won the majority in Ireland, so the vibe feels good enough to say — we’re going 3 for 0, Bernie’s going to win New Hampshire. And then the whole damn thing. Get ready for it.