002: A Reintroduction
Have we met before? You look so familiar.
Praise the Literati has been renamed Swanning Around.
If you know me at all, you know I love taking off by myself. Headphones on, a leather handbag or bookstore tote slung over my shoulder. Whether it’s my hometown or somewhere new, you’ll likely find me in museums, gardens, bookstores, tea shops, or stationary stores. My pace is that of someone whose girlhood was spent in New York hailing taxis, attending fashion and art parties with my mother, walking the halls of the Met, and visiting the swans in Prospect Park. There’s a natural independence, I think, to only children (along with an innate loneliness, but perhaps more on that later).
When I moved from New York to Los Angeles at fifteen, I missed the freedom of getting around on my own. There’s something special about propelling oneself forward with one’s own two legs. But I’ll always be grateful to my mother (who shuttled me to school, cheer practice, and sleepovers) and to Lara (one of the two cool senior girls who took me under her wing and brought me to the movies, the beach, diners, and all around LA, really).
During my freshman year at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I fell in love with biking. UCSB is one of the most bike-friendly campuses in the country, but there’s definitely a learning curve. It’s a bit like swimming farther out than you’ve realized. Or rushing a sorority. One of my favorite scenes from that fall: passing my friend Matteo as we biked in opposite directions, while he air-played the piano—either to a song playing in his headphones or an unfinished composition only he could hear. There are several bike repair shops on campus and in town, and it’s a rite of passage to have your bike stolen before graduation.
One of the lessons I learned in California was the art of leisure: of a slower tempo, of listening to the gentle murmur of the waves, and of accepting a mild climate that makes you feel like the same day is repeating itself over and over again. I think it forever changed how I view time and how I write.
Before I buy a pair of shoes, I take a few things into consideration: do they complement the rest of my closet, add some height, spare my bunions, and, most importantly, can I Citibike and run to the subway in them. Can you tell I still don’t have my driver’s license?
Swanning Around extends beyond the geographical confines of the cities and neighborhoods I’ve wandered through. It’s shaped by the feelings, ideas, and imagined settings I’ve travelled to through books, photographs, paintings, songs, and films. It’s wearing your heart on your sleeve. A last-minute invitation to a dinner party. Listening to jazz in the park. Wandering lonely as a cloud. Crying on the subway. Picking up a new book. Taking a photograph. Buying the flowers yourself.
As promised in the Praise the Literati introduction, this Substack will feature my musings in the forms of interviews, essays, playlists, recommendations, photo diaries, fragments, collages, and so forth.
