Where to start?
Towards the end of last year, I decided that I wanted to start sending out these emails in my own name rather than via The WW Club, as I have since 2016. For the past five years, my work has been almost entirely focused on the subject of work itself. I still think about work a lot (in fact, more deeply than ever–more on this soon) but I was craving room to write about other things, too.
For a couple of weeks over the Christmas break, I deliberated over the direction for this new-and-hopefully-improved newsletter. I felt that I needed to land on some very concise theme or format - We live in the age of information overload! People need clarity! - in order to justify the change of gears. Then I realised that doing so would pretty much defeat the point.
My life, like anyone’s, is a balance of the cerebral and corporeal; the spiritual and the superficial; of mindful moments and mindless ones. I like reading about philosophy, history, and architecture, and spending hours going down research rabbitholes. But I also like not reading or writing much at all, instead listening to obscure radio shows, staring out of airplane windows, dancing in dark rooms, talking about random shit with my friends. I felt the need for an outlet that would allow me share my (considered!) thoughts on all these things. This newsletter will hopefully provide one.
The expansiveness of this new direction was appealing to me, but it also posed the dilemma I opened with: Where the hell do I start?
My answer to this question - whether I’m asking myself, or being asked - has long been: Start where you are. Sometimes that means taking a moment to look around you and noticing the abundance of resources at your fingertips (it’s crazy how much we take for granted), and sometimes it’s about getting super-literal, as is the case right now.
I’m writing this from a public library, which is where I often work. I love libraries, always have: I wrote my university dissertation in the British Library. I sought comfort in the Silver Lake Library, during my first few wobbly months of living in LA. And I finished big chunks of my book in Brooklyn’s Central Library during the sweltering months of Summer 2016. Often I’ll seek out a public library when I’m travelling, in the way that I’d imagine religious people gravitate towards churches or temples.
The more I thought about it, the more the concept of a Public Library seemed like the perfect starting point. Public libraries are spaces where you can, theoretically, find information on just about any subject: a metaphor that works well for the future expansion of this newsletter’s content and themes. (There’s also the fact that ‘PL’, for public library, happen to be my own initials. A tenuous line of reasoning, perhaps, but one that seemed like a small sign of…something.)
I was interested - but not surprised - to read that Americans went to the library almost twice as often as they went to the cinema in 2019. As Zadie Smith wrote in her 2012 ode to Willesden Green Library: “Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.”
In an era when almost every square inch of public life has ‘optimised’ for commodification, libraries are among the remaining truly radical spaces. You don’t have to spend a cent to sit in one, and you’ll find yourself among people from all walks and stages of life. The internet might have delivered unlimited access to all the information in the world, but it has come at a price; One we have paid with our attention, the deterioration of our physical communities, our mental health.
Despite their association with study and work, libraries are actually a vital antidote to our productivity-obsessed times. Liberated from the pressure of paying to enter one, or of being required to generate something as proof of time well-spent once inside, you’re free to explore, daydream, and come and go as you please. And if it’s knowledge that you’re seeking, well–you can start wherever you’d like.
Three Libraries I Love
Biblioteca Vasconcelos, Mexico City.