Fun At Parties

Before I get too far into this one, a brief disclaimer: I know that most of these dispatches probably leave readers feeling one way or another. The first, a sense of comfort because they aren't the only ones having these kind of thoughts, and hopefully we do an okay job of helping synthesize the feelings in everyone's brains these days. The second, I am certain, is a bit more "geez these women must be fun at parties." 

And to the second point, I just wanted to note that honestly: We actually are really fun at parties.

That said, I'm writing this from a place of generalized grief today. I went to bed early last night after a long day of waiting for updates while one of my dearest friends underwent heart surgery. The night before, I stood talking with him and his brother about the logistics for the day and the weekend, making sure we had all of our comms bases covered, and I told him: "Listen. Your recovery is all about you, and that's how it should be. But your surgery — that's all about us. Because you're going to get put under and then you're going to wake up and nothing that happened in between is something you will ever remember, and for the rest of us it will have been one of the longest days of our lives." 

The surgery went well, and I was relieved, but I still crawled into bed at 9PM last night and slept the sleep of the mentally exhausted. I woke up just before 5AM, which is frankly my favorite time to be awake on a Saturday morning: There's no rush to get up and do anything, the world is quiet and calm, and I can spend a few hours catching up on TV shows and reading the news on my phone before any of the "real" day begins. This morning, I opened Instagram and the first thing that I saw was a message from the Foo Fighters about the death of their drummer, Taylor Hawkins.

I have never met Taylor Hawkins, but it was very easy to see that he was not only one of the most talented drummers on the planet but also probably the one having the best time. I've never heard anyone say anything less than glowingly effusive about him (and I worked in the music industry, where everyone complains about everyone), and earlier this year I was really touched by the way that Dave Grohl wrote about him in his fantastic book The Storyteller. In fact, Grohl's relationship with Hawkins reminded me a little bit of my relationship with Rebecca. To wit:

Grohl's words stay in one's head because it's rare to hear a man be so overtly loving towards another man in a friendship sense — at least, outside of the realm of sports. The book stuck with me in large part because of the way he describes this and other friendships, and through how clear it is that he is simply a man who could not function and live his life with joy if it weren't for the relationships he has with people around him. I hope that someone is holding him tight today.

Because I am, indeed, fun at parties, the timing of all this coincides with my reading of Mark Lanegan's last memoir, Devil in a Coma, which is the story of Lanegan's long hospitalization and struggle with COVID. It is a particularly bittersweet read because it is written in pure survival mode, and Lanegan passed away only two months after it was released. I thought the man was immortal for all the opposite reasons we took Taylor Hawkins for granted: If everything Mark Lanegan went through hadn't killed him yet, it seemed impossible that he could die. But he did, and I'm now reading his words about clawing his way through the clutches of death from that perspective.

I gravitate towards books about illness because no matter how many years away I am from mine, it's a shared language that comforts me and scares me at the same time, and because I'm never not curious about the way that other people try to parse what happens to them in words. As a writer, Lanegan is gloriously unflowery with his language; he is as bullish about sneaking cigarettes in the hospital stairwell as he is about describing his diminished lung capacity. In a way, he's been given the gift of writing his own obituary without rose-colored glasses:

Perhaps these are all too gloomy and morbid of words to read and thoughts to have on a Saturday morning, but I take comfort in collective grief and mourning for lives lived well or at least in the pursuit of art and a good time. It is grey in Brooklyn this morning, and it started raining about an hour ago to match my mood, and I will probably spend the day doing what Rebecca and I do best and eating little bowls of pickles to stay alive. 

In brighter food news, I made this chicken tagine with olives and preserved lemons last weekend, and it was a very satisfying meal to cook and eat in the weird time of the year when you can't really cook based on the weather and you just want comfort food while gesturing ever so slightly towards the spring. 

You’re reading “Soup and Despair,” a (sometimes) weekly newsletter by Sarah Flynn and Rebecca Orchant. It’s about food, feelings, and surviving the dark times. If someone forwarded you this email, it’s because they love you and they want you to eat. You can subscribe to it too!