Greetings from my parents’ house, where I have taken to for the week for much needed r&r with my mom! I’m thinking of it as a modern day equivalent of a trip to a sanitarium by the sea prescribed by doctors for women with “fragile nerves,” which I just know I would be called if I were alive like 110 years ago. I know, I know: “Carrie, why are you back home just one month after you were there for Christmas? How could you need rest already? The year has barely even started? What have you been doing??”
Well! If you ever got sicker than you’ve been in at least eight years with a sinus infection from hell that consistently refused to show up as Covid on any rapid tests but also probably may have been the flu, which left you fully fucking incapacitated in your parents’ guest room on the day you were supposed to return to your apartment, and then you came back the next day when you were slightly less ill but still running a fever and half asleep the entire masked car ride, then felt mostly better about a week later but then suddenly started to get POTS symptoms that made you go to the ER thinking you were having a heart attack (but they were like “congrats Tony Soprano you’re dehydrated (ed note: i’m almost always overhydrated, so.) and had a panic attack”), then had to go through a battery of cardiac and blood pressure testing for a week and a half which put your anxiety—already exacerbated by essentially being isolated from any social contact for two weeks because you were so sick and then it was like 5º out and/or cloudy for 15 consecutive days—into overdrive just to hear “yeah, you’re okay, it’s probably POTS and also anxiety, just have eat more salt and gain back the weight you really didn’t have to lose but lost anyway while you were sick,” then eventually, when the daytime POTS symptoms started to improve you suddenly lost your ability to sleep through the night without waking up every single hour…I think you would be like “Yeah, I may be on the verge of a nervous breakdown and need to go home and be taken care of for a minute.” Like I said: Worst month of my life! Co-regulating my nervous system with my mom, though? Good, actually! Maybe we all need to have a week every now and then where we regress and let ourselves stop being adults who live in New York, where doing the bare minimum is still harder and more physical and just, like, vibe and chill out and be taken care of and also hugged on a regular basis. Crazy that people aren’t supposed to be alone so much, I know!
Anyway, I’m behind on so many things, this little Substack included, because trying to “feel better and like myself again” and all the Reddit boards and doctors appointments and Google that has entailed has consumed me and it’s so embarrassing! It’s SO embarrassing. Let me out of this hyperfixation loop from hell already! Because I’m not quite there yet (but getting close, I think, I hope), here’s some filler of things I consumed over the past month to feel a little okay, even if just for a few minutes. Hope it helps anyone who needs it :)
Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956)
I’ve been working on churning through Sirk melodramas after watching May December, and there’s really nothing I could say about them that hasn’t been said already (the Technicolor!). I didn’t love Written on the Wind the way I did Imitation of Life, but it’s impossible for me to deny that it’s a five star glorious soap opera. When Lauren Bacall marries a man after knowing him for maybe 24 hours, and that’s the least insane thing that happens in a movie, your own life feels far less crazy by comparison.
Sex and the Single Girl (Richard Quine, 1964)
Watched it on TCM one night. Unhinged. (Complimentary)
Big Fat Liar (Shawn Levy, 2002)
When I’m not feeling well, what I often turn to the most are lighthearted tween comedies I grew up with in the early 2000s. They make you laugh without making you think too hard, and most importantly: they go down easy. They’re not good, per se, but they’re not bad either; they’re just comfort food fare that transport me back to simpler times. It had been decades, perhaps, since I’d last watched Big Fat Liar, but came to it after it coming up several times during Paul Giamatti’s The Holdovers press tour. Anyway, here’s my Letterboxd review of it because I’m lazy:
“Sometimes I think there’s nothing more heartbreaking than aging past 14. You thought that the world was your oyster, that you were the smartest one in the room, that the basic functions of society were far more grandiose and exciting than they really are, that morality and justice can and do exist and are actually attainable. Shedding that romanticized, wild-eyed, creative view of life and all its possibilities as you grow up is sad, actually! Anyway, therapy is expensive but watching Big Fat Liar is—well, not free, but $3.99+tax, which is still a lot cheaper.”
Something’s Gotta Give (Nancy Meyers, 2003) and It’s Complicated (Meyers, 2009)
I’m seriously so fucking grateful to cable tv for programming these two perfect comfort movies seemingly every single night right when I really need them.
The Holdovers (Alexander Payne, 2022)
Honestly should have watched this last fall when I was supposed to and not on a Sunday afternoon this year when I was already feeling so deeply lonely and tired and sick and sad about all of it. It’s great, obviously, but it made me cry way more than I think it may have made most people!
Girls (S1E01-S1E07)
At one point, I thought: “What I really need is a tv show-as-a-project.” (See: getting through the hellscape of last January by watching The Sopranos.) “Everyone is rewatching Girls lately!” I thought. “That’s a good comedy I could watch that won’t be at all triggering!” Turns out the first two episodes are really sublime and as good as I remembered (it’s been at least 10 years since I last watched) but after that…girl, you really thought reliving the worst and/or cringiest years of your life would help with your anxiety? I have to laugh!
Feud: Capote vs. The Swans
In my maybe five days of feeling good between the sinus infection from hell and the onset of the saga of my-heart-rate-is-insane-right-now-what’s-happening-to-me, I decided that this year, I was going to read more. I love reading! I always have loved reading! But I’ve definitely noticed a substantial decrease in my consumption since (a) working from home and not needing a book to read on the subway every day (b) writing a book of my own and being like “my brain can’t handle reading about something else right now let alone reading other styles of writing that could alter my own.” The trailer for the new season of Feud had just dropped, and I went out and bought Capote’s Answered Prayers (obviously not the magnum opus he was talking it up as but still wonderfully bitchy!) and Lawrence Leamer’s Capote’s Women (fine? Informative but kind of bland and mid, style-wise), upon which the series is based, and gobbled them up.
Sure, there are only two episodes of this season out to judge, but my expectations have dropped dramatically. It’s not like I had high expectations, per se, for a Ryan Murphy production, but they were higher than average considering he didn’t actually write or direct any of the episodes. Is it fun to watch people be mean in period costumes? Of course. Does it make me say “I would have been such a great girly if I lived in the 60s…I’d have no anxiety because I’d just be barred out of my mind all day without being scared about the pharmaceutical industry”? Obviously. But Capote vs. the Swans is…I don’t know? A shrug. It hasn’t fully harnessed the high bitch potential I think it could! (Also, I know several people have already discussed with me the Jessica Lange role that is essentially a parody of a Jessica Lange-in-a-Ryan-Murphy-joint-performance but, good god. The way I laughed and laughed! Free her from the Ryan Murphy Industrial Complex! Give her better work!) At any rate, I’ll keep watching it. What else do I have to do!?
“Right Back To It” - Waxahatchee ft. MJ Lenderman
Manifesting off the lead single alone that Tigers Blood has the same effect on my mental health that the sublime Saint Cloud had on me in the depths of hell that was spring 2020.
“That’s Alight (Alternate Take)” - Fleetwood Mac
I kind of always reach for Stevie Nicks when I’m feeling low. There’s nothing more eloquent I can write here that I haven’t written a million other better times elsewhere (often in this very same publication.) What can I say!? People don’t refer to her as a fairy godmother for nothing! Those mid tempo songs just have that calming sort of “oh everything is okay, I am safe” effect. Also, singing is supposed to be good for your vagus nerve and can help pull you out of fight or flight, and there are few songs I love to sing along to more than the more barebones alt version of “That’s Alright.” I sometimes slip into the harmony part, which is deeply engrained in me from listening to the original Buckingham Nicks demo version where Stevie harmonizes with herself on an alternate track. It’s so very nice :)
TCM’s Talking Pictures podcast
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: I would give it all up for Ben Mankiewicz. He’s in fine form in TCM’s new podcast series. (I also love, love, love their old one, the narrative nonfiction The Plot Thickens—the one on Lucille Ball? Ate it up.) This time around, rather than tell the story of a single person in film’s life over the arc of an entire season, Mankiewicz is interviewing multiple filmmakers about both their experiences movie making and movie going. I have not been able to stop thinking about Nancy Meyers talking about how Billy Wilder had a contract advisory role at MGM/UA, so they took Baby Boom there just for a chance to work with him, and at one point he told her the movie should open on a funeral with the baby in a black veiled bassinet! Perfect anecdote!
(On that note, listening to podcasts does wonders for my mental health—I need the distraction of needing to fully listen to someone else’s thoughts and words to keep my own brain quiet for a little—so if you have any you like that aren’t anxiety inducing—I have mostly had to give up The Daily and the like—please recommend!!!)
My Name Is Barbra (the audiobook)
“Carrie haven’t you been listening to this since November? Haven’t you written about this here before?” Yes and yes, be quiet! It’s 48 hours long! I was savoring it at a sustainable steady clip until I made a sizable dent in it last month! “She’s so me” moment: Chapter 42, in which Barbra talks about flying to New York to see Don Johnson even though she hates flying—“I’m an Earth sign, Taurus, and we don’t like to be suspended in mid-air” (it’s true, we don’t!)—only to have a panic attack that she was going to die when she heard the stewardess say, upon descent, that this was the first time the pilot was landing a plane. I know it has to end (in 14 hours and 10 minutes for me) but I don’t want it to!
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