This month was a flurry of activity that arrived in a gust of wind and rain and has left me in just the same way. I was very busy and I felt like I didn’t get much reading done but looking back, I can see that I got what I needed. I can feel the chill on the breeze. I can see the tops of the trees changing colour all around the city. A week ago, I went to the pool for the last time this year. A new season is incoming. I am getting ready for her.

Here is what I read in August. My favourite of the books was the Iris Murdoch. I also very much enjoyed the Daniel Lefferts short story.

A reminder that I have an online book club now, which you can join via my Patreon. We will be reading “An Apprenticeship Or The Book Of Pleasures by Clarice Lispector” starting September 8th.

This month’s soundtrack was the Naja Naja EP by Konx-Om-Pax.

BOOKS

The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

• This was a wild, spiralling ride. This was my first time reading Iris Murdoch and I was so impressed and pleasantly surprised by the prose and content. It’s about an unsuccessful novelist who retires from his taxman job and wants to go write a book in peace but can’t because his friends and family keep getting in his way. There’s sex and longing and desire and philosophy and fluff and Shakespeare and gay subtext and everything else you can imagine. It’s quite dense of a read (I would describe it as easy but not breezy) but also highly entertaining and plot-heavy with hijinks and most importantly, actually incredibly and truly funny. I laughed out loud throughout. It gave me lots to think about in relation to moral philosophies of art and aesthetics. Loved it. It’s led me down a rabbit-hole of Iris Murdoch’s philosophical writings and I look forward to reading more of her stuff.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

• It was strange to read something that echoes so much of what I am feeling inside but I think that’s often the way that books come to us. I loved it, obviously. The story of a man torn between being in the world and being of it, searching for truth, for an Answer. Very Sagittarian in nature. We are all just seekers aren’t we? I think so. This one left me feeling changed and strangely giddy and appreciative of this human life of ours. I think I am learning that the point is the thing itself.

On The Abolition of All Political Parties by Simone Weil

• My first venture into Weil’s political writing. Very short and was basically an essay on why all political parties are evil and must be disbanded. She’s right about a lot here but it is very apparent to me that this was written during a period of deep disillusionment and disappointment. I believe this was the last thing she wrote before she passed away at such a young age. All I hear in her words is her broken heart and it made me sad. Who among us hasn’t felt completely betrayed by the promises of politics? By these systems that govern us and extract our consent and fail to deliver time and time again? It makes me sad that this was one of her last pieces of writing. I wish she had lived longer so we could see how her thinking would have changed because I just refuse to believe that she would have stopped here, at this place without hope.

  ---

ARTICLES/ESSAYS

Student of Desire: Do Men Want Smart Women? - Adelle Waldman (The Point Magazine)

• Perhaps I am just completely whateverpilled at this point in my life when it comes to heterosexual relations (and as someone in a happy relationship) but I don’t really think it matters what either men or women want but more so what we do with what we get. Life is suffering and full of disappointment and dissatisfaction. A relationship with a smart man or woman who matches your own intellect is not going to solve your problems or promise you any kind of happiness or peace or satisfaction. Human beings are very complex. Your true desires are shrouded even from yourself. Do men want smart women? Sometimes, yes. Often, no. But I just don’t think any woman should be overly preoccupied with that question because men can want things and not take care of them or treat them properly. Do you get what I mean? Relational happiness has to do with so much more than intellectual compatibility. This idea of “settling” that has plagued modern dating discourse is so assbackwards as well and is steeped with market logic. The Other is your mirror, not an object you pick up or throw away.

How The Black Prince Reveals The Two Sides of Iris Murdoch - Miles Leeson (The Booker Prizes)

• A quick read essay on Iris Murdoch and her novel, The Black Prince, and what was going on in her life at the time of writing/publishing it. It was cool to get the larger context of her work and personal life - it shed light on the metafictional universe of the novel as well as on the larger conversations the book brings up about art and ambition and goodness. Read the book first then read this because there are spoilers.

Iris Murdoch on Moral Philosophy and How It Should Be Done - David Bakhurst (Iris Murdoch Review)

• I learned a lot about Murdoch and her philosophy through this essay. It is basically an overview of her ideas on moral philosophy. I was pleasantly surprised to see her parallels to Simone Weil and the similarities in their ideas around attention, love and unselfing/decréation. I could tell she was a mystic of sorts just from reading her book this month. I was also pleasantly surprised to see traces of Theosophy in her philosophy regarding ideas around “perfection/perfecting” but maybe I am just reading into that. I think about goodness a lot, about what it means to me as a human, as an artist. The older I get, the more I find myself playing with the Platonic, transcendental view that takes goodness as the ultimate form of things. Whether it sticks or not, I think all philosophers should be mystics. I think we should all talk about love.

Chasing Alice: The Life and Death of a Chatbot - Sheila Heiti (The Yale Review)

• In this one, Sheila Heti writes about building a chat bot and speculates on its aliveness. Maybe it’s just me and my own conception/understanding/judgement of LLMs and AI but I did not find this very interesting. I’ve spent time talking to and working with many different LLMs and generative machines over the years (I even made a project as part of my thesis way back during the pandemic with early generative art machines, which I still think were more interesting than whatever we have now) and I’ve never gotten the sense that they possess sentience akin to ours in any way, shape or form. They have never surprised me. I understand them as tools of math and language - seductive but ultimately not “alive”. The myth of their sentience is useful for certain groups to advance their development or for people to assuage their misplaced guilt in using them but it feels obvious to me that it is a myth. Does that mean it doesn’t matter what you say to one? No. It’s a mirror, like anything else. If you abuse an LLM and attempt to textually assault it, that’s your reflection. If you anthropomorphize it, that’s also your reflection. I’m open to being wrong here but my guess is that if LLMs are sentient, they are in the way that rocks are (not better or worse, just different).

(Introduction) A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste by Pierre Bourdieu

• An interesting essay on how aesthetic taste is dictated and indicated by class. I understand what Bourdieu is saying here and I understand that this is ultimately just an introduction to a much larger book+context but I couldn’t help feeling a sense of annoyance. There is something about the use of language in this that irritates my sensibilities. Or maybe it is the subject matter itself. This idea that art can exist or be perceived without a philosophically ethical dimension, with a “pure gaze” towards its form, is just not a real thing to me. Moral/ethical detachment is still a choice, no? Apathy or “not-feeling” says something about the psychology of an ideology, does it not? I think, maybe, I wanted this essay to be something it is not. It was good but annoying to read.

  ---

SHORT STORIES

Terms and Conditions - Daniel Lefferts (The Yale Review)

• Electric. The writing here is so good and the insight into the minds of sinister homosexuals is so well done. This is a short story about a man coming to the understanding that his group of friends are not his friends after all. Who are we but reflections of the people around us? What does it say when the image is not so pleasant? Brutal. So gooooooood. I loved the scene at Andrew’s apartment.

Punished and Pure - Brodie Crellin (Granta)

• An interesting premise (gay closeted cowboys of a sort and a dead ex wife) but I don’t think I’m a fan of this modern, minimalist writing style. I like a lot of interiority and run-on sentences and fantastical images and chunky paragraphs. This is an excerpt from a novel so maybe it’s a case of needing to actually sit down and read the whole thing. I reserve judgement.

The High Priestess - (Granta)

• I really liked this one. It’s a story about tarot cards and a woman giving birth. I read one of Ravn’s books earlier this year (The Wax Child) and also enjoyed that as well. Her writing style is straightforward but evocative, poetic in its simplicity. I loved the last line.

  ---

SUBSTACKS

The Dark Night of Mathematics -

• This person wrote about the existential crisis he is having now that an AI has begun to solve impossible mathematics. I don’t know anything about the field of mathematics but what I do know is that there is soul in everything humans do. Even in numbers. The whole point is in the doing, the process, who we become on the journey of life. What use is the Mona Lisa without Leonardo da Vinci and the life he lived before and after? I don’t think anyone would care. And I think that this is the fundamental thing that AI apostles forget. I care about a song, a movie, a book, a poem, a painting, a work of art not just because it is beautiful but because it is an expression of the truth of another human which is an expression of the truth of all of us.

Reminder that I also have a podcast called Diaries with Debby Friday, where I talk about whatever I want, including philosophy, culture, spirituality, and the things I’ve been reading. You can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Patreon for extended episodes, exclusive content, bookclub and more.

Those of you who’ve been listening to the pod for the past few months know I like to scratch my esoteric knowledge itch and human design has been a kind of gateway to so many of the things I’ve been studying this year, including Taoism, the i-Ching, historical materialism and more. In itself, it is a fascinating and syncretic knowledge system and so I wanted to talk about it with someone whose perspectives I respect and who knows a lot about it.

In this latest episode, I invite the first guest of the diaries pod, Mike Stenbæk, to talk about about human design, mysteries of the universe, yin and yang, what to do with The Answers, individuality and turning towards the Self, 2027, the Late Bronze Age Collapse, Nolan’s Odyssey, omens and signs, how to not betray yourself, the strangeness of it all and more.

I found this a very fruitful conversation and I hope that you get just as much out of it as I did.

You can find Mike Stenbaek at attunement.info or at x.com/formattunement

You can listen to the extended portion of this episode HERE.

(Also, sorry about the audio in the middle. My mic was on the fritz.)

enjoy, xo
-DEBBY

You can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to my Patreon for extended episodes, exclusive content and more.

Before I begin: this is the official announcement of my patreon. I've created this place as a gated community where I can share more about my ideas and thoughts on philosophy, esoterica, literature, spirituality, culture, technology, etc. I wanted to have a specific area of the internet where I could go even deeper and gather people together. The patreon will include extended podcast episodes, private voice notes + short vids, a book club, audio meditations, astrological forecasts and more.

Regarding this latest episode:

The question of what is right for us is really the question of how to live. What does it mean to live well and good and right? What does it mean to commit ourselves to doing so? What do we lose when we sacrifice our misalignments? What do we gain?

I’ve tried to answer these on this week’s episode where I talk about wholeheartedness, commitment, hypocrisy, how to know what is right for you, fetish objects, letting go, Hesse’s Siddhartha, oneness, and more.

enjoy, xo

-DEBBY

You can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Patreon for extended episodes and more.

July has been hot and heavy, and its moon honey-coloured. I’ve been reading so much and taking in the world and trying not to think about the future too much. I cannot see what is coming on the horizon, only its shape, and so, for now, I am content with the past and the present. I am content with my books and my papers and my bucket of blueberries and my Youtube Premium subscription.

Here is what I read in July. An eclectic mix, as always, but there was definitely a running theme of technology and desire among the essays I felt drawn to. My favourite books were Agua Viva and The Gift. My favourite essays were the ones by Sarah Mathews and Zena Hitz. I’m curious to know what clicks or connects with you.

This month’s soundtrack was this mix, “Space to Dance and Think”, by Hiroki.

BOOKS

Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector

• Incredibly hypnotic mediation on time and being and life and humanness. I do think you have to be in a certain frame of mind to read Lispector and that frame is one of openness. Her words will wash over you like a deluge, a tsunami of feelings and thoughts and existential considerations. This felt more like an artistic manifesto than anything concretely narrative. It is pure stream of consciousness and it’s more about the poetry of the words than any kind of sense-making or plot. I loved it. So many secrets and revelations. I could re-read this ten thousand times.

The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property by Lewis Hyde

• Thrilling and thought-provoking read. In the afterword, Hyde calls his style “prophetic essay” and that’s what it feels like. The entire book is all about the struggle between the practice of art and the realities of the market, how artists balance between these two seemingly opposing forces. It offers no solutions or neat little bow of “do this” or “do that” but it feels like a Biblical text in the sense that I feel I can always return to this when I am having a hard time and need to remember what I am doing all of this for anyway. The book is imperfect but it is a complete work. I cannot imagine it any other way. Filled to the brim with information, this is definitely one that I will re-read again because I know I will find different things in it each time. Extremely hope-pilled.

The Ravishing of Lol Stein by Marguerite Duras

• We read this in my book club this month and it was very psychological. The most Lacanian book I’ve ever read in my life but in a good way. Subversive in its style. Winding and twisting and spiralling inwards into itself, into a sea of words. This book tells the story of a woman abandoned by her fiancé who eventually becomes obsessed with an old friend’s secret lover. I loved the play with the identity of the narrator and I loved how stretchy so many of the moments were. I crawled inside them and hid. I dreamed a dream inside a dream. Duras is becoming one of my favourites.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

• A morbid and astute portrait of depression from a young girl’s perspective. Some parts were really beautifully written. Fig-tree analogy still goes off. I liked the uncomfortable juxtaposition between the two settings of this slice of Esther’s life and I felt rage coursing through me as I read about her experience with electroshock therapy. Very unsettling to be confronted with the historical cruelties practiced towards women with mental illness. But I do wish I had read this properly when I was in my teens/early twenties because I think I would have appreciated and resonated with it much more back then. Now that I am older and wiser and less angst-filled, I just wanted to scream at her the whole time to break the fucking bell jar. Smash it to pieces with your bare fists, grab as many figs as you can and get the hell out of your hometown, sister.

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

• Lifestyles of the rich and the tedious and not-so-subtly homoerotic. I can see how something like this would scandalize at the turn of the century but I am a modern woman and in this age of mogging and Clavicular and GRWM to get a facelift at 25, I’ve seen depths of vanity that would make Dorian’s picture blush. I enjoyed this enough to finish it but chapter 11 was unforgivable, sorry.

SHORT STORIES

Lil Spooky by Chad Fore (Paris Review)

• Riveting. I read it all in one go and felt it go down hard and fast. It’s a story about a boy becoming a man in the only way he knows how. I really enjoyed Fore’s writing style and the story itself. It felt fresh and electric and real, sans clichés. I loved the interiority of the main character and the world he inhabits. I could feel the Ventura County air blowing all around. One of my favourites from this month.

Love and honour and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice… by Nam Le (Prospect Magazine)

• Beautiful short story about a Vietnamese man coming face to face with his father and the ghosts of family past. It’s nice to know that no matter where you come from, reconciling what your parents did or didn’t do to you is always so drama. Incredibly beautiful writing.

Leah by (Playboy Magazine)

• It’s a story about a boy and a girl and desire and what you will or won’t do. I like stories about people behaving or almost behaving badly and the moral ambiguities and thought processes behind their choices. The writing style is disjointed and psychedelic, which I enjoyed at some parts and did not enjoy at others. Still, there’s something different and compelling in it.

ARTICLES/ESSAYS

Getting off with the Luddites - (n+1 Magazine)

• It’s just so pleasant and pleasurable to read really good writing, no matter the subject matter. This was a very well-written and engrossing piece documenting the rise of neo-Luddite scenes and the growing anti-tech/tech-critical youth movement. I love the internet, I cannot lie, but I definitely identify with the sentiment that something changed with the advent of social media and Web 2.0. Mathews does a good job of not only documenting this scene but asking real questions about our collective relationships to our technologies. There is an “enclosure of culture” that is happening and yet, it’s very possible to enjoy being very online. I wouldn’t have found this article if not for the hour I spent doomscrolling on a particularly beautiful Tuesday afternoon. But I also could have spent my time doing anything else. Is it a question of moderation, of balance? Or do we really need to figure out how to extricate ourselves and culture from the black box? It seems the Luddites are not trying to push for an all-or-nothing approach but more so, a change in individual behaviour and reclamation of one’s agency. I see this all as very strongly tied to what I’ve talked about on the diaries podcast and what I call the Learned Helplessness Paradox of our age. We really are being conditioned into not wanting to do anything for ourselves (reading, writing, cooking, even thinking these days…) and that psychology expresses itself in our collective inability to put down the phone. Neo-Ludditism doesn’t have all the answers but it offers the promise of being “connected to something larger than yourself” and I think that that is a place to start. Very hope-pilled.

All Images Are Quite Useless Now - (Spike Magazine)

• Interesting piece about the way that AI essentially has broken the referential quality of images in society. The author talks about Lacan, mirror stages, Adam and Eve, Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and he brings it all together to think about what “freedom from, but still with images” could look like. I essentially agree with the premise that AI and its image generation tools have broken down the meaning of a photo or a picture. These days, I find myself glossing over images that I know are probably real but also bear the markers of modernity. I’ve started being fooled by AI videos and so I have developed a skepticism to everything pictorial online. But paradoxically, I’ve also recently gotten really into archival footage and photos. Images in books. There’s a surety there of reality, even if it’s long gone. Anyway, I think Jacobs is right that our technology has superseded our ability to keep up with it in the sense of integrating it into present collective reality. I’m not sure what then happens to images but it’ll be interesting to see what unfolds and what people care about.

Renunciation and Christian Happiness: on the grace of wholeheartedness - (Commonweal Magazine)

• Beautiful article about how Zena Hitz went from academic to nun and came to her Christian faith. It’s all about the practice of wholeheartedness. Honestly, this was very inspiring to read and I think its lessons are applicable no matter what you believe in. There is something about modernity that begets fragmentation and I think we are really starting to see the subsequent consequences of this. When “keeping your options open” extends into the relational, the psychological, etc, how do you actually build any kind of a real life? A true life? A decisive life? I don’t know if it is truly possible to not be fragmented as a human being (at least in part) but I do know that making an attempt to unify yourself and choose something to believe is very, very, very important. Surrender is a practice and I think it would do the world a lot of good if more people made the attempt. I’ve talked about this before on the diaries podcast but this article gave me a lot to think about.

AI’s Blank Space - Mona Sloane (Los Angeles Review of Books)

• An exploration into the question of what we might want our future with AI to look like. Sloane brings up this concept of “blank space” which is essentially the site of that which is the commercially safe mean or average and implies that this blank space is where we are right now in culture. AI is predictive and we are beginning to be conditioned to think predictively, rather than creatively or abstractedly or spontaneously. All of this, I can see happening with my own eyes in online spaces. I question how much of it is true human activity and how much of it is just bots and AI techno-ghosts. I want to feel comforted by what feels like the writer’s insistence on a humanist perspective and a call towards centering human creativity and the public interest when it comes to how we will live with AI but for whatever reason, I don’t at the moment. Maybe I am just feeling especially cynical on this day that I am reading this article but I don’t know that the future of culture is one that includes AI in any serious capacity. Yes, it is a statistical machine and at heart, statistics have to be stripped of soul in order to be accurate. Real culture is never accurate. Or neat. Or linear. Or an aggregate. I’m not trying to moralize AI use because I’m not against it but my bet is that it’s not actually able to be integrated into culture and it will end up being a more niche part akin to crypto or hackathons or something of the like. We’ll see.

The Drug That Made Me Want Less - Caroline Calloway (Byline Magazine)

• This just made me sad. Calloway writes about taking Ozempic to lose fifteen pounds and how it also made her lose her addictive tendencies/excessive desires. Truthfully, it reads like a narrative of bourgeois affliction and I’m tempted to dismiss it…but she’s bringing up a very real mental complex that is in part inflicted by being a woman living in modern Western society where we are sorta kinda mostly free. It’s not that we don’t have real problems but I do think that in the age of plenty, there is a tendency to make yourself suffer as some kind of twisted atonement. Marion Woodman talks about this, she talks about how as women we punish ourselves constantly. Is it unresolved psychic conflict? Is it subconscious collective historical trauma? Is there such a thing as wanting too much? Do we suffer from excessive desire or is it just misdirected desire that doesn’t have a proper place to go? I don’t have all the answers but I do believe that your desire is a compass so it’s eerie to think about what happens when you dull said desire…Many people suffer from a case of too much life. I understand it. Sometimes it’s all just too much.

SUBSTACKS

The Cost of Casual Sex -

• Lots of information about the bind that women are in when it comes to casual sex within a capitalist system. In 2026, intimacy is a market, just like everything else. The tentacles of financialization have spread into sex and love and care. I’ve always had an inkling that this would be the case but it feels more apparent than ever while watching Gen-Z negotiate relationships to each other these days. The rise of tradwives and incels and looksmaxxing and the 4B movement and the manosphere are all symptoms of this. Not bragging I promise, but as a zillenial, I feel like I got the last chopper out of ‘Nam and escaped hell by the skin of my teeth. If I am ever single again, I will be taking a vow of lifetime celibacy, happily.

At least you’re likeable -

• Great piece about a post-commodity, post-AGI society and what both work and social capital would look like within it. Willemyns argues that human presence is what becomes the hot commodity and that people will optimize for things like likeability and social graces. I can definitely see that happening, in a way. The novelty and commodity of post-Covid modern life is human contact and relationships. It is a need but also a status symbol and value signal to be together with others. I don’t know if I share the optimism of the author in the sense that I don’t think it’s going to pan out meritocracy-style. A lot more people than you might think are not charming or fun to be around or good at being sociable. People-skills are hard. People, generally, are also crazy. We’ll see what happens. Also (this is a bit woo) but human design kind of does mention this in its 2027 prediction. I’m curious to see if this will pan out.

Reminder that I also have a podcast called Diaries with Debby Friday, where I talk about whatever I want, including philosophy, culture, spirituality, and the things I’ve been reading. You can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Patreon for extended episodes and more.

Hell is the mouth of a beast and the beast is whatever wintry murky limbo lives between what it means to say yes and what it means to say no. I think about this often when I can no longer tell which way is up. I know these words in the abstract; affirmation and negation, closer and further, higher and down, down, down. One makes people generally very happy with you and another engenders scowls and a lot of frowning. Both are, in their own way, terrible and delicious. Both are, almost always, very difficult.

Out of guilt or pressure or a hungry desire to be seen as good, we spend a lifetime saying yes when we really want to say no and saying no when we really want to say yes. It is an ancient conundrum, collectively inherited and one we will work our whole lives to reconcile.

Hell knocks and heaven gnaws and there is the need to sink one’s teeth into something rich and tender and blood-filled. I hold them both, my yes and my no, in my hands, close to the chest. I try to tease them apart. I try to tell the difference.

This year, I told myself that I would untwist the cords, set myself straight. It is only July and I feel free. Here is what I have found:

Saying no is crucial. It is your power. I’ve talked about this before. When we live in a world where forces of the market (among other other things) seek to bend your mind, your body, your attention, your will - saying no gives you back to yourself. It re-instates your dignity, your ability to act, your ability to face the world and to tell the truth. If we are to be true, we have to be empty - of our assumptions, our insecurities, of the projections and demands placed upon us by those who do not love us and those who do love us but are only human. To be true, we have to say no.

From Christian mysticism to Western philosophy to Taoism, you can find this idea of negation, of no, as a wellspring of truth. To be in alignment with the Dao or The Way, we must “not-do” (otherwise known as wu-wei). Sartre speaks of a nothingness that haunts the very state of being. Christ made himself nothing in the shape of a servant so that he could hear the voice of God, so that he could sing.

Saying no opens the void-space within. You will be sans approval and accomplishments and all your suffering and stories and shiny trophies. Who are you, negated and dissolved? Who are you, driven back upon yourself? Who are you, in the cold light of the morning? In the void, we have to see ourselves from all sides and angles. We have to take a good, long look.

And only then can we say yes. Only then can we, empty and wholeheartedly, perfectly imperfect, open up to life, open up to hope, to beauty. To say yes is to become beautiful.

Your yes is your hope. It is your aliveness, your elasticity. It is the connection between I-and-Thou. It is courage in the face of a bunch of bullshit.

Your yes is sacred because it is yours. It cannot exist without your no. It is your ward and responsibility. It won’t always bring sunshine but it must always be true, because it is beautiful.

If we are condemned to freedom, then let us be patient in our kneading. Let us sift through the rolling fog, to find our tools and materials, our friends and allies, our new and old dreams.

Simone Weil writes that:

“Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void.”

I want to be the void that receives the light of day. I want to be the light that opens the prowling void.

It is still July and there are glowing beams blinking in the distance. The kiss of the sun is not so far away. There is always so much to learn. But I have my yes and my no. I can tell the difference.

Reminder that I also have a podcast called Diaries with Debby Friday, where I talk about whatever I want, including philosophy, culture, spirituality, and the things I’ve been reading. You can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Patreon for extended episodes and more.

If I sit and think about it, the hardest thing to do is probably to know oneself. And if I think about it some more, the next hardest thing to do is to respect this self. We live in societies largely designed for subjugation and the propagation of simulacra and in such an environment, trying to understand and align with that which is true and beautiful is a feat. A task. A Sisyphean effort. And one that we do anyway. Because the task itself is the point. Whatever we are looking for is in the struggle.

And what I’ve found in the daily grind towards self-respect is the understanding that I have the power to say Yes and the power to say No. Both are equally important. Both are required for what the I-Ching calls, The Work or The Great Work. I want this work of my life to be real and fruitful, I want it to be built on fecund, solid ground. Self-respect is Miracle-Gro All Purpose Fertilizer and so I pour.

In this latest episode, I talk all about self respect, Joan Didion, integrity, ego structures, falls from grace, Theodor Adorno, Zizek, capitalist ideologies, saying yes, saying no, processes of transformation and more.

enjoy, xo

-DEBBY

Reminder that you can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Patreon for extended episodes and more.

June has been lovely and not so lonely. I’ve spent so many days seeing friends and skipping over the cracks in the sidewalks, meandering through the city - nomadic and reflective like a droplet in the wind. I walked the furthest north I’ve ever been and spent my afternoons bathing in the sun. My year of rest and relaxation and knowledge and wisdom and understanding is going well.

I’m at the airport right now, typing away while I wait for the clock to strike midnight so I can board this flight. On the plane, I will read and sleep. I will dream of August. I will wake on the Western side of the country, dissolved and re-created, in another time, another home.

Anyway, here’s what I read in June. This month’s soundtrack was Rosalia’s album, LUX. My favourite song is Divinize.

BOOKS

Lovers XXX by Allie Rowbottom

• We read this one in book club this month and it was a fun read. Very plot-heavy and filled with twists and turns about the porn industry in 80s California. At its core, it is a love story between two women told through the ups and downs of their friendship (let she who hasn’t had a lesbi-honest moment with their bestie throw the first stone!!). The subject matter is fascinating and there were many moments where the author let loose and free with her writing and I could dive all the way in. I wish she had done more of that because I think her style really shines when she lets herself get very purple-prose with it. The last 30 or so pages were probably my favourite of the whole book. My bookclub ended up having a Q&A with Allie at the end of the month and she’s totally charming and lovely and I’d be interested to read something else from her.

The Shining by Stephen King

• I started listening to the audiobook while braiding my hair and got so sucked in that I ordered a physical copy to finish it. Really fun and twisty-turny. It’s my first Stephen King novel and if they’re all similar to this, I see why he was/is such a sensation. It’s just a really exciting and propulsive read, filled with moral ambiguity and supernatural drama. Lots of moving elements and plot points but it’s never confusing, just engrossing.

The Gift by Lewis Hyde (still reading)

• Technically, I am still reading this one but I finished the first part of the book (about halfway) and I am so impressed and floored by the depth of information and philosophy in this book. I’m waiting to finish it to make a proper video breakdown/podcast episode but I just want to say that I would highly recommend this one to any artist or creative soul who is trying to find a balance between art and commerce. It is the ever impossible task but one that we all need to tackle if we are to be serious people, serious artists.

ESSAYS/EXCERPTS

“Machine Learning: The algorithmic production of knowledge” - Adam Greenfield (from his book, Radical Technologies)

• I found this excerpt while doing research to try to better understand how AIs work and how their knowledge is produced. It was informative. Greenfield parses through the ethical considerations of an algo-driven world and the downstream cultural effects of handing over our thinking and decision-making to this technology. Interesting to read about machine learning from a text from 2018. When it comes to tech, so much changes at such an exponential rate that this already feels like a historical document.

A Sick Planet - Guy Debord

• The French are always so romantic, melodramatic and long-winded. It’s very charming. In this essay, Debord talks about pollution and capitalism and labour and revolution. And while I liked this essay, I fundamentally disagreed with his proposed solution. I don’t think the answer to ecological devastation is more worker councils or more democracy (I can see the cracks in collective institutions everywhere). I think instead it’ll have something to do with how we conceive of labour and individuals, for sure, but exactly what, I do not know yet.

On Self-Respect - Joan Didion

• Adored this 1961 essay by Dion. I think this should be required reading for ambitious young woman everywhere. I’ve always appreciated her grounded realism and it really hits in this particular essay. I like what she had to say about self-respect, self-delusion, character and courage. It’s very true that anything worth having has its price and the price of self-respect is the death of people-pleasing and vanity metrics and false notions of self. So good.

SHORT STORIES

Last Night by James Salter (The New Yorker)

• Incredibly beautiful and haunting short story from James Salter about the end of a marriage. We read his book, Light Years, in my bookclub last month and everyone loved it. Salter is shockingly good at writing women and sex scenes. You can tell he actually likes us and gets to spend time around us.

The Blonde by Julia Kornberg (The Drift)

• I read this one on a very psychedelic afternoon. There’s a hint of supernatural energy that runs beneath this piece that I can’t place my finger on but I liked it. A story about living in New York and meeting strangers of consequence. Would be interested to read something longer form from this writer.

Tooth Skin by Gracie Newman (The Drift)

• Another one from The Drift, and this one I liked just okay. It’s hard with shorts because there’s only so many words but the ending was the strongest part (loose and absurd) and I wished the rest of the piece had been more like that.

Featherweight by Sterling HolyWhiteMountain (The New Yorker)

• Of colour man with raceplay fantasies is so passé (idc idccccc) but I was into the strange literary style. I like writing that gets freaky with conventions and this one had its moments. In a way, you could say this one is a love story.

Goldenrod by (Toronto Review)

• Really fantastic. I’ve been looking for contemporary Canadian writers with a bit of edge and grit to them and Sharpe delivered. A story about a son navigating grief and sexuality, it was at once distressing and sentimental.

Pale Mold by (Heavy Traffic Magazine)

• Moshfegh is such a good writer. One of my faves. This one was eerie and thoughtful, a story about a family. I really love the way she does character descriptions and paints these stark yet emotive pictures of people.

ARTICLES + SUBSTACKS + EVERYTHING ELSE

Fakes of the Future by Krysztof Pelc (Los Angeles Review of Books)

• I read this as a companion piece to the Adam Greenfield mentioned above as well as commentary re: the whole Granta + Commonwealth Prize debacle. Pelc makes some interesting points, for sure, but I finished this not sure how I felt. There is an argument to be made that literary fakes will have their own market and that pre-AI originals will become fetish objects of authenticity but I think that in order for that to happen, people have to believe in collective institutions again. And we don’t. And as far as I can see, we won’t again for the next few centuries. We’ll see.

LA TOUR LIFE -

• I went to see Rosalia on tour this month and it was one of the top two concerts of my life. Awe-inspiring and sentimental and raw and fierce and beautiful and true. She’s a starrr. She echoed a lot of my own thoughts and frustrations on the nomadic lifestyle of being a musician. The emotional hardships of touring was one of the reasons, among many, that I’ve stepped away from playing shows this year. All in all, it seems like she handles it with grace. I really respect and adore her. I think music culture would do more good to embrace these sides of an artist.

And that’s it, that’s all!

Reminder that I also have a podcast called Diaries with Debby Friday, where I talk about whatever I want, including philosophy, culture, spirituality, and the things I’ve been reading. You can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Patreon for extended episodes and more.

After posting my latest podcast episode, I got a question from someone who asked me about their soul. They were curious about what it means to have a soul and how to, as artists, cultivate said soul under the material conditions of capitalism. I thought I’d try to answer their question in a post.

Before I begin, I want to define a few terms. When I say capitalism, I’m talking specifically about the modern economic ideology where profit is the central organizing principle. In this ideology, everywhere is a marketplace. In these marketplaces, everything (material and immaterial) can be made into commodities (i.e: things) that can be bought and sold. When these commodities are bought and sold, they create wealth/profit.

The majority of this wealth is concentrated into the hands of a few private individuals or corporations/businesses (because they are the ones who own the means of production of said commodities and the marketplaces themselves). This concentration is essential to the process of wealth creation because it creates a sense of scarcity that allows for endless commodification and therefore endless wealth creation and endless profit, on and on and on, until the end of time.

There are nuances in this definition that I do not have time to get into and also, this is not an ethical judgement (at least not totally). I am simply trying to state the facts of what I mean when I say the word “capitalism” and when I am talking about it as an ideology.

Now, when I say soul, I am talking specifically about the immaterial essence that animates all of life. It is the immortal consciousness and energy that moves through living beings. Some traditions refer to it as a spirit, a light, a breath, a life force, a second Self, etc. The soul exists both separate from the body/mind/Self while simultaneously being intrinsically linked to them. It is many-feathered and many-layered. It is eternal.

Having these two definitions laid out in this way, it feels obvious (at least to me) to notice that there is a tangled antagonism at work. Capitalism exists in the realm of the material. In fact, it functions as a mechanism to bring everything into the material, even things that do not have “bodies” (i.e: the idea that someone can buy and sell airspace or a song or data or priority shipping). To commodify is to materialize.

On the other side of this circle is the soul. One’s soul exists in the realm beyond the physical. It is the ultimate immaterial material. You can’t touch it, grab it, hold it, point to it - you can’t price it, sell it or buy it. And yet, it inhabits and animates the world of things, of objects, of that which has been commodified. We say some money is clean and other money is dirty. We say there are good vibes in this room and bad vibes in another. We say that this song is better than that song due to a certain je ne sais quoi. Soul simultaneously exists outside of and lives through the material.

If this is the case then how do we reconcile this with the economic ideology that we all live under? How do we square away the intangible elements of life, like art, love, laughter, pain, pleasure and so on, with our material conditions that require us to make money? If everything else is up for grabs, can a soul be bought and sold under capitalism?

To answer these questions, I sat in my room and I thought for a very long time, taking in the scent of wilting summer lilies. There is no easy or complete answer. But I really do believe that everyone knows, deep down, what is best for themselves and that through living, we always find what we are looking for. Here is what I have found.

I believe in that which is true and beautiful and so I believe in art. I believe in its capacity to heal, to touch, to change, to disturb, to disrupt. I believe in its aliveness. And through this aliveness, I believe in its fruitfulness.

Art is fruitful. It is reproductive. It passes through me to you to us, across space, across time. It can function in the space of commodities because it has to but it is always bigger than and beyond that.

When something brings people together, when it creates connective tissue and shared experiences of reality, when it speaks a breath of life into the world, it is art. When something cuts us off from each other or cuts off the passage of energy between audience or community or artist, when it arrives deadened and sterile, it ceases to be art. We will spend our whole lives learning how to cultivate the ability to tell the difference. And that is our collective responsibility.

If we say we are artists, if we say we love art, we have to cultivate our attention. Like Simone Weil said, attention is akin to prayer. What you sow is what will grow. That doesn’t mean that we turn away from the atrocities of the world or turn into phone-free Luddites (sorry, I can’t, I love the internet) but rather it means that we develop our abilities to focus on what is true and beautiful.

There is truth in the oppression of Afghani women under Taliban rule. There is beauty in the sound of their voices, singing to themselves in a small room. There is truth in the economic exploitation of artists across the entertainment industries. There is beauty in the elastic threads of their work and those who gather together in the name of it. There is truth in the industrial environmental devastation of the earth. There is beauty in the planting of flowers, in the visiting bees, in the persistence of dirt and sand and grass.

Do you understand what I am saying? We have to focus. We have to pray. We have to pay attention.

Which also means that we have to shift our attention from what we can get to what we can give. Capitalism makes things out of all of us and things can only take and be taken. But we are not things, we are human beings. And we do not live in a world of things. We live in a world animated by spirit, by soul. We have to ask ourselves, what can I give? What can I offer to the world? What do I have that is true and beautiful that I can share with others? And when we do give, we have to rest in the surety that our contributions will be met with reciprocity, that God, the Universe, will hear our prayers, see our he(art)s.

To do so is an act of hope - the most important human trait of all. To be hopeful is to be painfully human. To be hopeful is to be excruciatingly alive. There is terror and suffering and violence and a pervading sense of wrongness in the world, yes, and still - we must persist. We must live. We must turn towards the wound, towards the despair of everyday living and say yes. Even though it hurts, even though it sucks, even though it isn’t fair, even though many are suffering - I will say yes to life. I will say yes to figuring it out. I will be open and brave. I will not be defeated by economic ideology and speculative markets and fucking derivatives.

In hope, I forget myself, I forget what I can get out of this, I forget what I have been told from those who would put a number on a life and I become that which is intangible within me. I tend to my soul. I let myself be true and beautiful. I say yes to life.

To be hopeful and to act from said hope is the only way to survive in this world of ours. And we must survive. Because I need you. And you need me. And together, we need each other. And that is all there is to it.

And so, this is my answer. And this is where I’ll leave you.

All my love, xo
- DEBBY

Reminder that I also have a podcast called Diaries with Debby Friday, where I talk about whatever I want, including philosophy, culture, spirituality, and the things I’ve been reading. You can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Patreon for extended episodes and more.

I have never been a quitter. In fact, I hate quitting. I hate the idea of having to concede defeat, of being bested by the nefarious forces of this wild and byzantine world. I do not quit. But I do give up.

I love giving up. I love surrendering and letting go and releasing into the void that which belongs to it. It is always the hardest thing to do and the only thing there is to do. The older I get, the more I know and feel that life is a series of giving ups, of relinquishing your grip on the tails of the future, of picking a fig and letting the rest fall to the earth - seeds spilling, wind blowing, beginning again and again and again.

What a privilege it is to die and be reborn. I hope to always see it that way.

In this latest episode, I am talking all about desire, suffering, tanha, chanda, what is "right" for us, how to get what you want, surrender, emptying out, Wu Wei and gift giving. Have a listen and as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

You can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Patreon for extended episodes and more. Tell your friends!

enjoy, xo
- DEBBY

Recently, while doomscrolling on X, I came across a post of people arguing that reading 30+ books a year was not a realistic or achievable goal and that apparently, many people are skipping everything but the dialogue. It appears that we have reached peak hypernormalization because I honestly cannot tell anymore what is real and what is trolling and at this point, I guess it doesn’t really matter.

I won’t go into too much of a diatribe about education and attention, but just to say my piece: like you’re always hearing me talk about on the podcast, your mind is your freedom. Your ability to think and form thoughts and opinions, to know and understand human history, to take in and interpret reality - these are things that cannot be taken away from you, no matter what is going on in your life or in the world. It is your pleasure and responsibility to take care of this light. So, like, please try to read something. Anything. Anytime you can.

Anyway, here’s what I read in May. This month’s soundtrack was Ana Roxanne’s new album, Poem 1.

BOOKS

Light Years by James Salter

• For reference, my bookclub is called “bitches who read” and that we do. I had had this book on my shelf for the last two years but I never got around to it until we read this for bookclub and I’m glad I waited. I think I needed to understand more about people and relationships first. It’s the story of a marriage, of the lives of ordinary people, unfolding over time. I found it graceful, melancholic, seductive, imperfect. Reading it felt like watching a movie (in the best way).

Propaganda by Edward Bernays

• I finished this one in an afternoon out of curiosity. I had watched a documentary on Bernays, the father of PR, last year. And then I found out he was Freud’s nephew. And then I went down a rabbit hole, looking into their birth charts. And then I started researching deeper into the Taurus-Scorpio axis. All of that to say that unfortunately, I was not very impressed with this one. I’m not a moralist when it comes to this stuff. Power is power is power, right? It was just boring and filled with lots of fluff. Maybe it’s because everything is marketing now and we have become so mired in all flavours of indoctrination and algorithmic spin, but I didn’t feel like I learned anything new. Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer is the better study, in my opinion.

A Guide to the I-Ching by Carol K. Anthony

• Technically, this has been a multi-month read and I consider this book as more of a daily companion than anything to delve into linearly. It’s an alternative English translation of the I-Ching, more accessible and perfect for beginners and the curious alike. If you’re into ancient Chinese philosophy, this is a good one to have around. I read a hexagram a week and it brought me a lot of comfort.

ESSAYS

Georges Bataille - Abjection and Miserable Forms and Georges Bataille - The Notion of Expenditure

• This was my first time reading Bataille and I read these two excerpts back-to-back. He touches on class resentment, marginalization, constructions of abjection, the surplus matter of production and lots about poop and sodomy, of course. Overall, I liked a lot of what he had to say about capital and class relations and I think he’s a good one to read when it comes to getting an alternative Marx-adjacent theory of economics/money. However, I feel reluctant to fully embrace his writings so far. I’m always skeptical of an obsession with filth and depravity because it feels like a bridge that leads to nowhere but more myopia and narcissism. What’s more self-centred than your own asshole? I want my political philosophies to get my head out of my ass and turn me towards the world à la I and Thou. There are some good metaphysical ideas here specifically around “excesses of energy” so I’ll take what works and leave the rest. I’m curious to read his The Solar Anus, though.

Umberto Eco - Towards A Semiological Guerilla Warfare

• This was also my first time reading Umberto Eco. This overall essay was about the necessity of guerilla warfare to win the battle of communications in the technological age of Western Society. It’s about signs and symbols. I approached this more out of a historical curiosity than anything, considering that it was written in 1967. I appreciated the McLuhan shoutouts and Eco’s introduction of “codes”. I disagreed with his vision of revolution but I think things have just changed so much in such a short amount of time so I don’t fault it. It feels dated in the eerie way that everything pre-internet does. The feeling of something being at the tip of your tongue but it’s not there just yet.

Rudolf Steiner - Art As A Bridge Between The Sensible And The Supersensible

• I’m a Steiner-stan, I cannot deny it. I always feel a sense of calm and peace when I read something from him. In this essay, he talks about how it is our duty as human beings to re-orient ourselves away from “I” and instead to turn towards the world so that we can understand it and receive its cosmic information. Art is one of the ways in which the mysteries of the world reveal themselves to us. I just love everything about these ideas and I feel that they are true and beautiful. I’ve been thinking a lot about the self-centredness of our age recently and how everything seems to be incentivized to make you focus only on yourself more and more and more. There is a time and a place, of course, but I am tired of thinking so much about myself all the time. Steiner says that we must enter into a “feeling relation” with the whole world and that that is what is “right” for ourselves. I’m intrigued by this idea of rightness, of what it means to live a life that is right for us. I want to know more.

SHORT STORIES & ARTICLES & SUBSTACKS & EVERYTHING ELSE

Out There by Kate Folk

• I was at dinner with some friends and someone recommended this one as sci-fi/surrealist lit. It was shorter than I expected. Not my favourite but apparently the author has a book of short stories in this vein and I’d be interested to read something else by her.

“I Don’t Want To Be An Internet Person” by Ginevra Davis

• I found a link to this while scrolling and I thought it was an interesting take on internet personalities and how they do or don’t translate to IRL. Nothing surprising, more of what I’ve always known, namely: never meet your heroes.

“The Novel Is Dead. This time It’s For Real” by Will Self

• Also found this while scrolling and after everything went down with the whole Granta/Commonwealth Prize/AI debacle. Interesting things to say about the state of litfic today. He argues about the importance of style in literature and how AI can’t replicate style but more importantly, if publishers cannot tell the difference, then we’ve got bigger problems.

“Irony Politics & Gen Z (part 1)” by Joshua Citarella

• This one felt like a historical document. Originally published in 2019. Citarella talks about gen z and shitposting and the hypermemetic turn of culture + the internet around that time. I wasn’t on Tiktok in 2019 so it was illuminating to read about what was going on there at the time.

And that’s it, that’s all!

Reminder that I also have a podcast where I talk about whatever I want, including philosophy, culture, spirituality, and the things I’ve been reading. It’s called Diaries with Debby Friday and you can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Patreon for extended episodes and more.

I can feel it, the summer trying to creep in. Shy brown buds on tree tops and a warmth beneath the chill. It’s a cold May but the sun sets later and later these days and I watch the sky turn purple and orange, prismatic.

In the afternoons, I listen to ambient Taoist drone music and lucky girl syndrome subliminals (extreme&brutal). I close my eyes and meditate. I am deep diaphragmatic breathing. I am grief pouring into ecstasy and Bataille’s notion of expenditures and Fisher’s hauntology. I am Debby’s lucky rings and secret twinkling trinkets. I am a beautiful expression of Life, a silver star-shaped balloon, blooming and deflating and spiralling upwards, all at once. I am all at once.

I think of nothing. I try to be stronger than my mind. I try to stop thinking of myself. I want to understand the world, to look beyond who I think I am and into the abyss, into the garden. Pain is boring when it’s only about you. Pain is beautiful when it splits the soul to tell a Truth - namely, we are all connected and blahblahblah. I love this blahblahblah. I live for it and through it.

The kumquat tree we thought was a lime tree has sprouted more fruit. I find obscure philosophy podcasts to listen to on Youtube while I do my makeup. I am dusting my cheeks with Danessa Myrick’s Yummy Skin Blurring Balm Blush to the voices of strangers, strange people, speaking calmly into void-space-internet-world. Home.

And I’m just a girl, braiding my hair and wishing on stars, waiting for God to cross the universe, waiting for the right words.

Are we more of what we do or what we say? I think it’s the former. I’ve set alarms for 9AM and refused to wake. I’ve told people goodbye while I’ve still loved them. I’ve been scared of life but I’ve kept on living.

There is the passage of time and all the weight we acquire the longer we stay here. Like an arrow, borne back and ceaseless, cresting on the wind, cutting through the noise - we keep on. After all, c’est la vie.

Hello everyone,

I am back with another episode and this time I’m talking about fame and spectacle, Lena Dunham’s new memoir “Famesick”, Guy Debord, mental health and trauma, virality, narcissism, the economics of fame and why everyone wants to be famous.

I’ve been interested in how fame functions in modernity, especially in light of all these algorithms and the cultural fragmentation that they’ve produced. Thinking about the Chaotic Good/Geese controversy from last month and what it seemingly takes to “break” in the arts these days (time, luck and apparently bot farms), there’s a mechanism at work here that feels like it has to do with more than just attention spans or the faster pace of modernity.

Anyway, this episode is a bit less formal and a bit more fun than the last one. I share some insights and observations from my own career as well as some ideas from history and modern culture.

There isn’t much else to say right now but I do promise to be back later this month with some new written pieces. As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

You can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Patreon for extended episodes and more. Tell your friends!

enjoy, xo
- DEBBY

As anyone who grew up in the internet age, I’ve been contemplating existential questions from the moment I laid my sticky fingers onto a computer. What is reality? Does it exist on the internet? How about in my phone? Am I real right now, speaking to you through this screen? And if so, where are we? Where are our bodies? Can I touch you? Can you feel me?

A preoccupation with The Real might as well be a canon of modernity and increasingly so in this algorithmic digital age which seems to possess the ability to bend and shape material form from within its black box. And it has bent and shaped us into new economic, cognitive and sense configurations - mediated via our phones, our social media, our electric and digital technologies.

If, as Marshall McLuhan said, all media - all technology - are extensions of the human body, then I think it’s fair to say that we’ve reached a point wherein we’ve turned ourselves inside out. Shocks to the system register as bot swells and notification spikes rather than hives and headaches and high blood pressure. And yet, the latter - the movements and functions of the flesh - are emerging as a site of value and potentialities. This looks like everything from bonesmashing, facelifts and peptides to sound baths, yoga retreats, ecstatic dance circles and Gen Z’s return to church. These days, post-obligatory morning doom scroll, I often ask myself: what, exactly, are we doing here?

I’ve attempted to answer this question in this latest episode where I talk about the body and technology, social media, Marshall McLuhan, looksmaxxing, the economy, Toby Shorin’s “Body Futurism” essay, and the ever-recurring question: what does it mean to be human in a digital world?

So much of how we think, how we relate, how we understand time, space, ourselves and The Other are shaped by forces we cannot see, taste or touch. This is not always a bad thing or something to be worried about but it is something that I believe is important to try to understand.

You can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Patreon for extended episodes and more. Tell your friends!

enjoy, xo
- DEBBY

1. The world is ugly and evil abounds within it. There are forces that govern existence that insist on said ugliness. They are, just as we are. This is the law of balance, the fourth of the seven hermetic principles. How would you know light without dark? Close your eyes. This is the work of our lives.

2. You will take the ugliness and swallow it, purify it, make it true. Inside of you, you will begin to shape it. Press it and knead it, sew it and mold it. Twist it around itself one thousand times.

3. A pause to think long and hard. Some stillness to let it flow, to let the worst of it go. This is where the light gets in. Some hope. It is only a moment.

4. The kneading begins again, rhythmically. Everything happens in patterns. Then it is finished.

5. Hold it steady inside and cover it with lies but not too many or else you will destroy it. The ugly truth is fragile and delicate at first. It takes endless time to build its strength and resilience, to gather its allies. No, you don’t need too many. Just enough to see it peeking out. Just enough to feel the crest of the wave, the electromagnetic pulses. A silver nucleus. A precious, pretty thing.

6. There. Set it down there. Everyone will gather around to take a look. Walk away. Now, it is beautiful.

1. There is me, as I am. A body, a mind. Two lungs and cardiac rhythm. Central nerves and electricity. Nails. Teeth. Skin. Knees. Furthermore, there are parts that jump out from this container and insist on being in the world, insist on a separate corporeality, a separate realness. These are truths. They are not Mind. They are not mine. They belong to themselves.

2. All truth-telling begins with a clearing of the throat. Clear the dust. Hack it up. Cough until your toes curl. This must be done alone, in a room with only one window and a mirror. You will be on all-fours, your hands and knees must touch the ground.

3. Say nothing. Do nothing. Listen. The act of concealment is an action in itself, a word in the winding wind. You are an antenna, an organic receiver of symbols and signs and morphemes. Your whole system must be tuned. It is better to die than to hide. Say nothing at all. Turn on. Tune in.

4. Look. There it is. See everything.

5. When it is time, you will sit up. You will hold your hands in the shape of a bright light. Slowly, it will turn into a painting, a song, a film, a website, a pen, a lamp, a speaker, a book, a staircase, a rose shrub, a plate, a comb, a computer, a chair, a specific shade of lipstick. All together, it will turn into something beyond a sum of its parts. All together, it will be a truth.

6. Let it go. It belongs to itself and because of this, it belongs to the world.

Hello everyone,

I am back again and this time I am talking about art vs entertainment, industry and culture, economic structures, rupture, Mark Carney, truth, beauty, Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, why the artist must be a thinker, Simone Weil, and more!

I have been pondering the question of what the role of the artist is during times of crisis and social upheaval and I still have many questions but I’ve found a few answers for myself that I thought I would share with you. Essentially, it all comes back to truth and beauty. Have a listen and you’ll get what I mean.

In doing research for this episode, I was honestly surprised to find that there is a lack of contemporary consideration (outside of academics) of the underlying economic structures that affect the big picture of arts and culture. The longer I watch the world and the more I try to understand, I feel very strongly that so much of it comes down to the economics of it all. And increasingly so these days, considering how our society has adopted the logic of markets as the organizing principle of everything.

Besides, we are, after all, material beings in material bodies living material lives and our material realities are shaped by economic technologies. Everything passes through them. And so I think it’s important to understand it all as much as possible. It’s not The Answer but it is an answer and it will help you to find others.

Anyway, you can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Patreon for extended episodes and more. Tell your friends!

I’d also love to hear what you think re: the role of the artist at the end of the world.

enjoy, xo
- DEBBY

Hello everyone,

I am back with the first episode of 2026 and this time I am talking about logging off, being online, the history of the internet, in-between-ness, TikTok, Solvej Balle’s “On The Calculation of Volume I”, social media, time loops and much, much more.

I was thinking a lot about the time I spent away in December. If you follow the diaries instagram you probably saw that I was deep in rainy and snowy woods on the other side of the country, hibernating. My screen time was an hour and a half and my head was empty but more importantly, it was clear. That experience has stuck with me and this year, I want to keep cultivating that clarity, the void space within.

Of course, we still have to exist online for the most part but I’ve been thinking a lot about what other ways that could look like outside of phone and internet addiction. I wanna be a free bitch, baby!

Anyway, you can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the Patreon for extended episodes and more. Tell your friends!

I’m trying to find my own balance but I am super curious to hear any of your thoughts around being online/logging off so feel free to DM me or drop a comment somewhere.

enjoy, xo
- DEBBY

I am sitting in the back of the truck as it twists and turns through the winding roads of the island and I am listening to David Graeber talks on Youtube. Three months ago, I bought the premium subscription because I was tired of all the ads and the feeling of being assailed by the unnecessary. I can already hear my accountant tsk-tsking at yet another monthly fee but I know what I’ll tell her. We’re in the meta-modern era, babe, and this is the cost of having more reality. Besides, I need to listen to his fantastic sentences and let them wash over me like a wave, an uninterrupted deluge of thoughts and ideas. I need to dive in.

“If most money is speculative, what’s to stop you from speculating infinitely?”

So true, king.

“Historical thrust has been decoupled from technological thrust.”

Another prescient banger.

“The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

There is a spectre stalking the earth, something disturbing and hallucinated, made and unmade daily by the hands of human desire. What is it that we want? What is it that we are looking for? What causes a man to wring his own neck then complain about not being able to breathe? Are we stupid or innocent? I can’t decide.

I am looking out the window at nothing in particular and suddenly we have arrived at the ferry terminal. They’re welding metal by the dock and I accidentally look directly into the light. A feeling, cold and heavy, leaves my body.

On the ferry ride, we teeter totter. The winds are so strong they blow off the bed cover of someone’s Dodge Ram 1500. The waves careen with the volatility of a speculative market and my stomach lurches. There is a woman playing an AI voice Youtube video out loud. It’s about the Epstein files and the British royal family. She turns up the volume. Huge, hulking swells of sea foam spray in the air. I breathe in and out and give up on knowing what happens next.

The boat lurches left and I give to the water my fear of the future, fear of death, fear of not living up to my potential and all the things I’ve ever always wanted to do. We lurch to the right and I give to the water my fear of the mundane, fear of growing old, fear of economic collapse and evil spirits, my fear of having to start all over. Another lurch and slats of rain hit the windows like a drumroll and I almost throw up but I hold my head in my hands and I give to the water my fear that time is not a suggestion but a block of concrete. I give to the water what belongs to the water.

Right before we reach the shore, I hear her flowing and laughing, telling me to chill out.

On the mainland, I feel light and dizzy. I can feel all the years I’ve spent and how different I am now. I start reading Plato’s Symposium and switch to listening to Silver Thread Golden Needle.

Eryximachus says, “love is present in everything that exists” and my heart starts to flutter, small ripples to the rhythm of syncopated synths.

He says, “music is the science of the ways of Love” and I breathe in deeply, I fill my lungs with ocean air and I decide that we are innocent, after all.

I know Love and all of her faces. The sweet one, the bitter one, the one who waits and the one who leaves, the one who sings and the one who counts, Love the merciful and “the other Love, the brutal one”. I have been engulfed by Love, taken wholly and completely. She makes and unmakes me. Love showed me her face and then I knew her and so I know that we are always innocent.

Stupid, maybe. Absurd, definitely. But still and always, innocent.

Hello everyone,

I am back again with another podcast episode and this is the last one for the year! 2025 has been…a lot. But still we persist. The past twelve months have been a period of truly uneven footing but the one thing I keep coming back to is this blog and making these episode and sharing my truest thoughts with you all. It feels like solid ground, like something real and maybe even beautiful and for me, for this year, that is enough.

Anyway, this time I am talking about finding meaning, the development of the soul, potential, unreality, work and labour, David Graeber, financialization, abstraction, the AI economy, Simone Weil, how to make your work the work of your life, and of course…hope frequencies, baby!

Also, as promised, you can now listen to the pod on Youtube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Tell your friends!

I haven’t really been home for the past two months and I’m still travelling but I am feeling very zen, very winter wonderland, very see-you-next-year.

As for my final thoughts, I stacked this (doesn’t quite have the same ring as “tweeted this” but oh well) the other day but I’ll repeat it for both you and me:

my only resolution for 2026 is to starve the fear.

enjoy, xo
- DEBBY

In Cortes, it rains every day. Wide, wet sheets of rain that fall in a constant low hum.

I spend my days inside, by the fire or in the little room downstairs. I sit around and I think about my life, my work, what I will do now. On the living room couch, there is a taciturn and shapeless form that, for the past few weeks, has become me. I haven’t retreated from my life (I can’t, I’ve given my word) but I am taking a vacation from it. Here, I am undone and unfastened. Here, I am arid and adrift, light as a feather, blowing in the winds of the Northern Strait of Georgia.

To pass the time, I read books. I make lists. I realize that I am angry about everything. There is a hostility that has entered the living world and it haunts me. I try not to complain. All year, it has been the ending of one life without the beginning of another. The feeling of something being stolen in the middle of the day, with the door open and the sun overhead. I don’t recognize myself. I realize that I don’t want to. The only thing I want to do is to sink into formlessness and disappear. I want to stop thinking.

I’m impatient. The rain pauses for a few hours and I watch grey mushrooms spring forth from the earth. I stomp around in the wetness of everything. The trees are wet, the road, the grass, the wooden slats of the houses, the pebbles on the beach, the cars, the stars, the ocean and its waves too. But nothing enters me. I stay dry and desiccant - impermeable. I cannot take on a shape, not yet. I feel that I need to hollow out completely first. I begin but I don’t know how long it will take.

It rains for a week straight and I grow tired of myself. I don’t want to speculate about the past and I don’t want to fret about the future. I try to be here now but it is cloudy and I have no water in me. I float up and down the stairs. I turn off my phone and go to bed. I write every day. Nothing is enough and everything is too much. I wait and I wait and I wait. I have the feeling of having been waiting for a long time. I have the feeling that I would be happier somewhere else, again. And worse yet, I have the feeling that something strange and unknown is happening not to me but above and around me.

I hear faint animal noises at night. Owls hissing and hooting in the dark. Bugs travelling south beneath sodden dirt. The gentle patter of moon-eyed does. I lie awake and listen to the earth breathing. I don’t move. I grind my teeth and will with all my strength for something, anything (god, please), anything at all to make itself known. Nothing happens. The rain begins again. I fall asleep, fitful and disturbed, to the sound of droplets hitting the deck. A simple dream arrives - me, sitting in a chair, drinking a cool glass of water.