Look at me

I started a new YouTube account to talk about books. I don’t mention it here merely as part of a grand synergistic effort, but as a sort of admission. Meaning, I’ve taken on yet another platform to share myself, adding it to this Substack, a robust Instagram, my academic writing, teaching and, of course, my life as a performer. So many chances to impress and seduce, to interest, to inspire. So many chances to remind you I exist and to give you the opportunity to love me.

Much has been said and written about the deleterious effect on artists of continually needing to create “content.” The need to balance individual work and creativity with a public output and social front isn’t a new phenomenon, but the attention mill is generally faster and hungrier. But this isn’t my own version of this reportage. Nor is it my version of the counterpoint (1), that online creativity and interaction do have real, personal utility beyond just branding and feeding coal into the ever-raging freelancer fire. Because, I mean, of course.

My reason for beginning yet another stream of contact is nestled comfortably in both camps. Do I want to talk about books to my phone out of some frantic desire for people to remember I exist, some compulsion to tell them about these fetish objects I love so much and the words contained therein? Absolutely. But do I derive genuine pleasure from filming and sharing those videos? I think so.

“Booktube” – videos of users’ reviews of recently read books, their thoughts on upcoming releases, lists of their favorites around a theme, etc… – has been my frequent companion in the past year and a half, most typically atop my upright piano as background noise during long hours spent learning and practicing new music. The content is formulaic enough not to require my full attention, but interesting enough to distract me from the loneliness and frustration that practicing can entail. Most youtubers in the genre spend a majority of their videos just talking head on to their camera, holding up a book every so often. I look up to see a face that’s gotten increasingly familiar over the months and perhaps jot down a title that piques my interest, then I go back to Schoenberg and Ravel. 

I admit I started my own channel earlier this month out of some sense of feeling left out. “I could talk about books for ten to thirty minutes a few times a month! I talk about books all the time!” That second part is key: I am always ready to talk about books. The topic excites and distracts me. It seems easy and evergreen, especially in situations made more strenuous or fraught for me by a recurring social unease and fear of alienation. I’m often anxious about saying the wrong thing, being remembered in a poor light, not performing the part of myself – that Platonic ideal of myself, the more interesting, attractive and kind one – up to standards. Solution: “Tell me what you’ve been reading. What did you think about it?” Personal, absorbing, safe. But not everyone actually wants to talk about reading all the time, and I worry sometimes that I’m a caricature of myself. So, I figured, let the people choose. I’ll talk about the books I read, and you can listen when it suits you, if it suits you. 

There’s the sticky wicket, of course. I’ve formed my very own book club – one composed of myself da sola and the entirety of the internet – and I care if you listen. I care what you think of my curation and opinions. How could I not? And yet I can’t compel you to love me on Youtube any more than I can here, on stage or in person. As with everything else, I can only try to care about aspects other than my audience.

The unsurprising and immediate upshot of choosing to film myself talking about books is that I’ve had to articulate my thoughts on them more than I sometimes allow myself time to do. Because of the constraints of the medium, I’ve had to distill books to short summaries and verbalize considered opinions in a few sentences. In Suppose a Sentence (2020), Brian Dillon states that the “constraint” of composing 300-word book reviews for Time Out London taught him how to write, “how to maximize style, thought and range of reference in a piece of writing that would end up, on the printed page, about the size of a bus ticket.” (2) I’ve certainly not mastered spoken concision yet, and perhaps never will, but I will probably get better. I’ve given myself the task of having opinions, which itself requires some deeper interaction with a work, and to voice them publicly, to boot. But I’m also doing this within a genre that allows for me to be imperfect in how I formulate my reflections. I do redo segments and edit out gaffes, but quite honestly, I don’t have the time or energy to make a flawless product. 

I’m good at talking about books, but there isn’t too much on the line, and that’s a rare and lovely equilibrium that I’ll try to remember. It’s also worth noting that those things in which I take the most pride also tend to be, ironically but also perfectly logically, those which I’m least fretful of having an audience. (3) I can relax into knowing I deserve one, knowing they will probably respect my work. And, most of all, I can take the most joy in that work on my own terms, regardless of others’ attention or praise.

It’s a simple solution to the problem, if not inherently easy by virtue of its simplicity.

Notes:

1. Brandon Taylor touches on this subject beautifully in “i read your little internet novels” (March 23, 2021) on his own Substack, sweater weather.

2. Dillon, Brian. 2020. Suppose a Sentence. New York: New York Review of Books.

3. A recent contradiction to this assertion: When I performed Arnold Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire just under two weeks ago, I was both proud of my work and disappointed that several of my loved ones couldn’t attend because of limited seating capacity or scheduling conflicts (not to mention geographical limitations). So, I’m certainly not bulletproof. However, I wonder if this isn’t partially a “proof” of my assertion as well as a notable exception. It was my first stab at this absolute giant of 20th-century music, and I do think I felt more vulnerable as a result, that I needed more witnesses to my baptism.