If you happen to be in Canberra next weekend, I’ll be answering all your burning freelance writing questions as part of an Artist Triage event at Noted Festival on Sunday the 20th from 11:20 to 11:40 alongside a host of amazing writers and editors. I’ll also be participating in the Independent Publishing Fair at the Gorman Arts Centre in Braddon. Come down and say hi! You can check out Noted’s killer program of events here.
Late last year, I took over as editor of VAULT magazine and so pleased to report that my first issue as editor is out at newsagents now. It includes a cover story on the work of Michael Cook, an essay on the Paris terror attacks and features on Marian Tubbs, Grayson Perry, Celia Hempton, Kasia Klimpel, Louise Zhang and the LA art scene by the incredibly talented team of contributors. You can subscribe here.
There’s no doubt that articles that urge foodies to travel to far-flung suburbs to sample that tiny mezze place or the city’s best Sichuan cooking have made eating out more exciting. But they also risk creating a Foodie Olympics, where points are awarded for the spiciest, strangest and most obscure – as if turning the food staples of entire cultures into a “culinary adventure” isn’t offensive enough.
“Eventually, a hole-in-the-wall reaches critical white-Instagrammer mass, and the swarm moves on to its next discovery, decrying the former fixation’s loss of authenticity,” Soleil Heil writes in her February 2016 essay ‘Craving the Other.’
Worse still, it sparks the probability that the enthusiasm that sees your average ‘ethnic’ food lover identify star anise from Sichuan pepper with their eyes closed, won’t extend to acknowledging the actual differences between Chinese people.
– I wrote my first article – on the politics of food trends – for SBS Life yesterday. You can read it here.
Wollen is equally committed to reclaiming ‘girl’ – a word that stands in for youth, foolishness and vulnerability – as a badge of pride. She says girls often “can’t live up to the demands of contemporary feminism – to have high self esteem, a lot of money, great sex, fearlessness – and end up in a shame spiral as if we could just pull up our bootstraps, work a little harder, and fix things.”
– I interviewed intriguing LA artist Audrey Wollen about her powerful ‘Sad Girl Theory’ for Daily Life a couple of weeks ago. You can read the piece here.
What I found out — what I discovered at City Paper — was that journalism is a done thing. In other words, there is no real “better than you.” There’s just the story you produced. That’s what it is. Either you repeatedly asked questions or you didn’t. But you made a choice. Someone else might be more curious than you, but the functionality of them being more curious than you is that they just asked more questions. That was a deep sort of lesson — that the winner is the person who keeps asking questions. That’s the winner.
– Ta-Nehisi Coates’ cure for journalistic envy in New York magazine.
This promise of making a temporary home in Tokyo, New York or Rio, regardless of your background, class or bank balance, has buoyed Airbnb’s growth since its beginning but its forward-looking face is fraying a little at the seams. In December 2015, a study from Harvard Business School, which surveyed 6,000 hosts across five US cities, found that Airbnb hosts were 16 per cent less likely to accept prospective guests with names that sounded African-American, such as Darnell, Rasheed or Tamika than those called Allison, Brent or Kristen, who they presumed were white. This practice spanned every demographic, even as each instance of racial profiling sparked losses of $65 to $100. Suddenly, the ‘Bélo‘, the Airbnb logo conceived as the global symbol of belonging, has already started to look more like the sign of a world whose cosmopolitanism extends to letting strangers crash on its couch but not quite far enough to actually open its mind.
– I wrote about AirbnB bias and the downside of the sharing economy for Daily Life last week.
A lot of the talk about Bowie swirls down to how he played himself, and it’s true that he gave us a whole pop sense of persona. It’s also true and more important to me that he worked harder and longer than he played. He took his work more seriously than he took himself, which is the first and number one lesson of adult life. He knew when to go out and when to stay in, which is the second. When he was older, like when he was younger, he made some bad art and decisions. Sometimes he was a joke, but he was always the first to tell it (in interviews, commercials, and guest appearances, he was very, very funny in the is-it-or-isn’t-it way I like). No one could repeat him, duh. No one so glittering and dilettantish was also a public intellectual, and no one made trying (the new selling out) look hotter. No one reminds me more that trying again is the really heroic move.
– Sarah Nicole Prickett on David Bowie
For a month, he called her every night and they would talk for hours. Finally, he paid a visit. “He looked just like Charlie Chaplin, a clown suit, a big black hat,” said Simone. “He told me that he was not a gifted singer and he knew it. He said, ‘What’s wrong with you is you were gifted—you have to play. Your genius overshadows the money, and you don’t know what to do to get your money, whereas I wasn’t a genius, but I planned, I wanted to be a rock-and-roll singer and I just got the right formula.’ ”
What Bowie was affirming for Nina was her true calling as an artist, a sensibility that he could recognize as something different from that of a pop star. At a period of such turbulence, it was a lift that she needed. “He’s got more sense than anybody I’ve ever known,” she said. “It’s not human—David ain’t from here.”
– How David Bowie Helped Nina Simone, Time. R.I.P.
Happy almost New Year everyone! It’s been a frantic few weeks (more updates on that soon) but thrilled to report that my essay “The double standards of what’s considered black beauty” is one of Daily Life’s top 20 stories of the year. If you’re lucky enough to have ample reading time over summer break, this list also includes must-reads by Natalie Reilly, Ruby Hamad, Celeste Liddle and Clementine Ford.
‘Master of None’ owes its strengths to the way it writes people of colour who are curious, complicated and frivolous all at once. But it’s masterful because it honours the journeys we take as migrants but believes we’re shaped by the journeys we take as human beings.
– I wrote about Aziz Ansari’s incredible new show Master of None for Daily Life last week.
