Joan Didion - Blog Posts
Play it as it lays.
I don’t think some people realize this is a critique lmao. I love the description of the woman imagining she’s driving on the road it really highlights the fleeting/unstable feeling she’s trying to capture and how the generation’s youth finds comfort in it 😌
A woman drives fast along the California freeway with the radio screaming, delirious with grief. She does this every morning, dressing quickly in her Beverly Hills home so as to leave no time to think. Changing lanes is like a dance the way she's trained herself to do it, seamlessly and to the beat. She walks barefoot into gas stations, rinsing down pills with warm Coca-Cola and chatting mindlessly with the attendants. Her marriage is over. Her showbiz career is dead. Her child has been taken away. She is known to cry at parties or get carried home; close friends have come to believe she's insane. It is only on the freeway, when the music is loud, that she can forget what's become of her life. To fall asleep she imagines herself on the road: "The Hollywood to the San Bernardino and straight on out, past Barstow, past Baker, driving straight on into the hard white empty core of the world."
How chic the story sounds the way Joan Didion tells it in her 1970 novel Play It as It Lays. The woman is a trainwreck but a sharp and glamorous one, numbing out on pills as a critique of moral rot in 1960s Tinseltown. Books are great that way. Played out in real life in the year 2007, the tale loses its cool; now the woman is a punchline whose endless personal disasters keep a burgeoning new media economy afloat. It seemed that every week, or sometimes even every day, brought a hysterical new headline regarding the downward spiral of America's pop princess. ("HELP ME!" "INSANE!" "OUT OF CONTROL!") "We serialize Britney Spears. She's our President Bush," said TMZ founder Harvey Levin in a gruesome Rolling Stone cover story from early 2008, which began with Britney wailing in a San Fernando Valley shopping mall as a crowd closed around her with their Sidekick smartphones brandished. "I don't know who you think I am, bitch," 26-year-old Spears snarled to a shopgirl approaching for a photo. "But I'm not that person."
...
"Do you feel out of control in your life?" asks an interviewer off-screen in Britney: For the Record, the MTV documentary on Spears' "post-breakdown" life released at the end of 2008. That February, she had been placed against her will under the conservatorship of her father and former business manager, which would last for the next 13 years. "No, I don't feel it's out of control. I think it's too in control," Spears answers without pause. "There's no excitement. There's no passion. It's like Groundhog Day every day." The camera pulls in close as she wipes away her tears. "When did you last feel free?" the man asks later. "When I got to drive my car a lot," she wistfully replies. "I haven't been able to drive my car."
Meaghan Garvey, "Blackout Album Review"
This was a really good blog post. Places are so much more than how they voted in the last election.
Joan Didion writes, in On Keeping a Notebook, that the purpose of keeping a notebook, or a journal for that matter, isn’t because you simply want keep a personal record of things; but because you want to remember the person you were at that specific moment. we write things down on our notebook/journal/diary (whichever one of those you keep) because we want to remember. we want to remember what specific people meant to us on a particular day or hour. or minute. we want to remember our first impression of something (or of doing that something), possibly of someone, too. sometimes we think we’ll “always remember” important events: “I’ll make a mental note of that” etc etc. but in reality everything is fleeting. so Didion says write it down. keep a journal. that way, people, places, and certain events will always be there in case you ever want to come back to them sometime in the future. but also so that they don’t ever haunt you.
Joan Didion writes, in On Keeping a Notebook, that the purpose of keeping a notebook, or a journal for that matter, isn’t because you simply want keep a personal record of things; but because you want to remember the person you were at that specific moment. we write things down on our notebook/journal/diary (whichever one of those you keep) because we want to remember. we want to remember what specific people meant to us on a particular day or hour. or minute. we want to remember our first impression of something (or of doing that something), possibly of someone, too. sometimes we think we’ll “always remember” important events: “I’ll make a mental note of that” etc etc. but in reality everything is fleeting. so Didion says write it down. keep a journal. that way, people, places, and certain events will always be there in case you ever want to come back to them sometime in the future. but also so that they don’t ever haunt you.
this essay by joan didion has completely changed my life i'm planning to print the whole thing and tape it to my work desk so i can stare at it all day
"To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves—there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home."
I watched as Jacques' car pulled out of the garage and onto the road. I rested my elbow on the counter and my chin on my hand. With my mouth open and my tongue, pink and slimy, hanging out, saliva dribbled down my chin, seeping between my fingers. My eyes were squinted, red and dry. I hadn't slept well since we moved in, the howls of coyotes and mountain lions in the hills kept me awake at night and echoed in my head during the day. I wasn't used to living next to the forest.
I dried my mouth with the back of my hand and shook the shiny, wet saliva on my apron. I took a deep breath, stretched my arms toward the ceiling and got to work. I went upstairs, where the bedroom I shared with Jaques and his office was located. I entered the bedroom and made the bed, punched and shaped the cushions, scented the room with a sweet air freshener and turned around.
The office door was closed, rattling in the wind and banging on the frame arrhythmically. I knew I shouldn't open it, Jacques had warned me. His office was his personal space, I had to respect it. If I didn't strictly respect his privacy I offended him, and then he would yell at me.
Excerpt of my latest short story Possession. It will be on Substack next week.
I just finished the second week of uni. It went by really quickly, it's been good. I don't have much work yet so I've been getting back into substack lately.
I made an instagram account specifically for my writing, it's @thatswhytheycallmeanitaa, i hope you follow it. I also hope you follow my substack, you won't regret it.
I'm currently reading Antigone, for uni; it always makes me tear up. I'm writing a lot, in fact I will post an essay on substack tomorrow (hopefully).
Substack is a strange place, just as tumblr or letterboxd are, it's hard to find a community there, plus nobody I know in real life ever uses any of these apps. Most of my Substack followers and subscribers are people I know irl who decided to subscribe to do me a favor, but they never read, like or comment on my posts; it's discouraging.
For all my life I've thought the only possible job I could ever have was to be a writer or artist, now, already in university, I fear people might not want to consume my art; I fear being invisible.
Maybe this is weird, but I'm scared. I've only ever wanted to write, and to have people consume my writing.
Anyways, I'm going crazy but I still love all of you,
Xx, lots of love,
Anna
I will always be a 1940s introspective female author wannabe.
Happy holidays, hope your christmas was amazing!
I am just delighted because I got to see family and friends.
I also am happy because I got a new Didion book, and I am devouring it.
I haven't gone skiing yet and I oh so miss it, but there's barely any snow around here, so I'll have to wait or travel.
I'm going to spend a couple days at my house in the south of france and I haven't even started packing my bags yet, I guess I'll do it last minute.
Like always, lots of love, happy holidays,
Anna 🫶🏻
I am starting pre evaluation exams next week, and I am scared and tired so my thoughts are a bit scrambled, bear with me.
Sort of felt anxious and like I was falling behind last week but I managed to make myself feel better and to keep up with school. My notion is a bit unkempt but I have not had the time to make it look cuter.
I went out at night for the entire weekend straight, I woke up early to watch f1 and study, it was not a good decision because I messed up my sleep cycle (I am like a child in that sense).
Anyways, all is good, I am reading Don Quixote for school, my professor loves it and I really tried to like it but it's not my kind of book. I am also reading the Iliad (which i love).
Study hard, go out and have lots of fun, stop and relax once in a while.
Xx, Anna 🫶🏻
