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3eee698
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Is there some lesson on how to be friends? I think what it means is that central to living a life that is good is a life that's forgiving. We're creatures of contact regardless of whether we kiss or we wound. Still, we must come together. Though it may spell destruction, we still ask for more-- since it beats staying dry but so lonely on shore.
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friendship
inspirational
npr
the-scorpion-and-the-tortoise
this-american-life
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David Rakoff |
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74e1622
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People are really trying their best. Just like being happy and sad, you will find yourself on both sides of the equation many times over your lifetime, either saying or hearing the wrong thing. Let's all give each other a pass, shall we?
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David Rakoff |
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374d0ee
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The only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out.
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David Rakoff |
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49f2bf8
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hanging out does not make one an artist. A secondhand wardrobe does not make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, nor even HIV - I hate to say it - none of these make one an artist. They can help, but just as being gay does not make one witty (you can suck a mile of cock, as my friend Sarah Thyre puts it, it still won't make you Oscar Wilde, believe me), the only thi..
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artists
writing
humor
wilde
rent
writers
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David Rakoff |
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012366b
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For most of my life, I would have automatically said that I would opt for conscientious objector status, and in general, I still would. But the spirit of the question is would I ever, and there are instances where I might. If immediate intervention would have circumvented the genocide in Rwanda or stopped the Janjaweed in Darfur, would I choose pacifism? Of course not. Scott Simon, the reporter for National Public Radio and a committed life..
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politics
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David Rakoff |
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21f3a64
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Writing is like pulling teeth. From my dick.
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David Rakoff |
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cfc9637
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What remains of your past if you didn't allow yourself to feel it when it happened? If you don't have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss them over with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories.
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David Rakoff |
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7fc257a
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Being a stranger was like being dead, and brought to mind how, in a book he had read that most folks misunderstood one common state: The flip side of love is indifference, not hate.
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David Rakoff |
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4c88bcb
|
I am no fun at all. In fact, I am anti-fun. Not as in anti-violence, but as in anti-matter. I am not so much against fun - although I suppose I kind of am - as I am the opposite of fun. I suck the fun out of a room. Or perhaps I'm just a different kind of fun; the kind that leaves on bereft of hope; the kind of fun that ends in tears.
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hopelessness
tears
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David Rakoff |
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fa2c107
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Everybody's got something. In the end, what choice does one really have but to understand that truth, to really take it in, and then shop for groceries, get a haircut, do one's work; get on with the business of one's life. That's the hope, anyway.
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David Rakoff |
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a1bb98d
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All of the designers I have met up to this point have been very nice, although upon being introduced to Karl Lagerfeld, he looks me up and down and dismisses me with the not super-kind, "What can you write that hasn't been written already?" He's absolutely right, I have no idea. I can but try. The only thing I can come up with right now is that Lagerfeld's powdered white ponytail has dusted the shoulders of his suit with what looks like da..
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David Rakoff |
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f568dbb
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Not being funny doesn't make you a bad person. Not having a sense of humor does.
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sense-of-humor
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David Rakoff |
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d22aaa8
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During the act of making something, I experience a kind of blissful absence of the self and a loss of time. When I am done, I return to both feeling as restored as if I had been on a trip. I almost never get this feeling any other way. I once spent sixteen hours making 150 wedding invitations by hand and was not for one instance of that time tempted to eat or look at my watch. By contrast, if seated at the computer, I check my email conserv..
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writer
writing
humor
procrastination
artist
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David Rakoff |
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80dc073
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There are many things in this world that are an outrage, to be sure, but death at our current life expectancy doesn't strike me as one of them. Maybe I sound like some Victorian who felt that forty years ought to be enough for any man, but one of the marks of a life well lived has to be reaching a state of finally getting it, of not needing more, and of being able to sign off with something approaching peace of mind.
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David Rakoff |
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a2f2170
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There is nothing so cleansing or reassuring as a vicarious sadness.
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David Rakoff |
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818c009
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There is supercomputer somewhere in the Nevada desert whose sole function is to count the number of times that I have said the following, because it is unquantifiable by human minds at this point, but this time it's really true: I should have stayed home.
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David Rakoff |
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f674c8c
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This brings up yet another, far more important misconception: that being comically generative and having a sense of humor are one and the same thing. The former is among the least important things in the world, while the latter is among the most. One is a handy social tool, the other an integral component of human survival. It bears repeating a third time: Not being funny doesn't make you a bad person. Not having a sense of humor does.
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David Rakoff |
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668a709
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If all of the money was gone from my life, Would you still love me?" a man asks his wife. "Of course," she replies. "Come here, let me kiss you. I'll love you forever, but would I miss you!" --
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David Rakoff |
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1df605c
|
Well into adulthood, writing has never gotten easier. It still only ever begins badly, and there are no guarantees that this is not the day when the jig is finally up.
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writing
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David Rakoff |
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43622aa
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the flipside of love is indifference not hate
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David Rakoff |
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322bfed
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Is there some lesson on how to be friends? I think what it means is that central to living A life that is good is a life that's forgiving. We're creatures of contact, regardless of whether to kiss or to wound, we still must come together. Like in Annie Hall, we endure twists and torsions For food we don't like, and in such tiny portions! But, like hating a food but still asking for more It beats staying dry but so lonely on shore. So we mak..
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David Rakoff |
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917e6a8
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Almost any age is better than twenty-two.
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ageing
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David Rakoff |
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54f3918
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When you're making something, you're in a different state. You go into a deep level of concentration, to the point where you're not self-conscious anymore, it's just flowing out of you.
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David Rakoff |
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df302e9
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Sheila taught me a survival technique for getting through seemingly intolerable situations-boring lunches, stern lectures on attitude or time management, those necessary breakup conversations, and the like: maintaining eye contact, keep your face inscrutable and masklike, with your faintest hint at a Gioconda smile. Keep this up as long as you possibly can, and just as you feel you are about to crack and take a letter opener and plunge it i..
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david rakoff |
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5a1773b
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Lenny Bruce described flamenco as being an art form wherein a dancer applauds his own ass.
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David Rakoff |
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d617482
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Hoped if she kept the dream hidden and frozen She soon would forget that she'd never been chosen. But dreams screams as loud whether thriving or dying And Helen despite herself never stopped trying.
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David Rakoff |
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da9f151
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No secrets, no longing, no desperate hoping Just reach out and grab from a world cracked open.
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David Rakoff |
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0ab1126
|
I finally understand what Julie Norem meant when she told me that one could be simultaneously anxious and happy. The assurances are momentary, at best half comforting, like being told "That's not a man in your room. It's just your clothes draped over the back of a chair casting a shadow, see? However, there IS, actually an insane, knife wielding murderer loose in the neighborhood. G'night." Everybody's got something. In the end, what choice..
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David Rakoff |
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d062341
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I am the furthest thing from a do-gooder. I am venal and flib and too clever by half, I know, but the thrill of the most brilliantly quicksilver apers'u is no match for the self-interested high I get from having done someone a good turn. You'd think I'd do more good turns as a result, but there you go.
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David Rakoff |
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d18629f
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The best=laid plans, one's most fastidious contingency strategies have revealed themselves in the cold light of day to be laughably inadequate, no match for the happenstance that seems of late only to promise death, mayhem, poverty, flood. And here you are, having spent all that time protecting your home from the oncoming elements only to find that it has been shored up with crackers.
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David Rakoff |
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8d74535
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I will stipulate to having both French sea salt and a big bottle of extra virgin in my kitchen. And while the presence of both might go some small distance in pigeonholing me demographically, neither one of them makes me a good person. They are mute and useless indicators of the content of my character.
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David Rakoff |
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2f77950
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We are disclosing animals, wired for unburdening. It's what we do as a species. When I am being told, I listen, mindful of the honor, remembering all the while that the shore would be mistaken to believe that the waves lap up against him because he is so beautiful.
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David Rakoff |
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99725d8
|
I didn't always write for a living, and even back when it was my most fondly held dream to one day be able to do so, writing was difficult. Writing is like pulling teeth. From my dick.
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David Rakoff |
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f4db6ef
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It must be murder to be an aging beauty, a former Tadzio, to see your future as an ignored spectator rushing up to meet you like the hard pavement. What a small sip of gall to be able to time with each passing year the ever-shorter interval in which someone's eyes focus upon you. And then shift away.
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beauty
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David Rakoff |
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9ad70c7
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Should you happen to be possessed of a certain verbal acuity coupled with a relentless, hair-trigger humor and surface cheer spackling over a chronic melancholia and loneliness - a grotesquely caricatured version of your deepest self, which you trot out at the slightest provocation to endearing and glib comic effect, thus rendering you the kind of fellow who is beloved by all yet loved by none, all of it to distract, however fleetingly, fro..
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David Rakoff |
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2f74fe6
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But if one's dreams having to come true was the only referendum on whether they were beautiful, or worth dreaming, well then, no one would wish for anything. And that would be so much sadder.
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David Rakoff |
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ce8c127
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But even this gives rise to another central tenet, attendant to the Comedy Is Good myth: Comedy Is Hard. Certainly well-rendered comedy is hard. All things done well require practice and work. But for the most funny people, being funny is as inevitable as being double-jointed; it is a worldview formed long before words. One is born funny. The adage, as is, is incomplete. It should be Comedy is hard... if you're not funny. Pirouettes are alm..
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David Rakoff |
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53d03aa
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The central drama of my life is about being a fraud, alas. That's a complete lie, really; the central drama of my life is actually about being lonely, and staying thin, but fraudulence gets a fair amount of play.
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David Rakoff |
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7b7acb9
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Childrens ilogic can be an exquisitely structured mistake.
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David Rakoff |
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e7c8d52
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It was turning out to be an anxious Christmas season. Too many were the early mornings spent sitting at the table, insomniac in the gray dawn, thinking to myself, Eggs would be good. Not for eating but for the viscous wrath of my ovobarrage. It seemed only a matter of time before I was lobbing my edible artillery out the window at the army of malefactors who daily made my life such a buzzing carnival of annoyance. I could almost feel the sa..
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David Rakoff |
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3b30f22
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I come by my alarmism honestly. I have learned this custom over the years as I have settled into being a true New Yorker. This is how we welcome foreigners to our shores. Because we are so often frightened by living here, we are annoyed and offended when visitors fail to show the proper signs of terror. So we try to scare the living daylights out of them.
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irony
new-yorker
xenophobia
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David Rakoff |
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2e15b19
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The overriding sense of Tokyo...is that it is a city devoted to the new, sped up in a subtle but profound way: a postmodern science-fiction story set ten minutes in the future.
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tokyo
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David Rakoff |
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341421e
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I think what it means is that central to living A life that is good is a life that's forgiving.
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David Rakoff |
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624ae67
|
There is much in our culture to affront the eye of the fervent terrorist postulant, things out there that do us no favors, to be sure. If, for example, it came to light that the dangerously thin, affectless, value-deficient, higher aspiration-free, amateur-porn chanteuse Paris Hilton was actually a covert agent from some secret Taliban madrassa whose mission was to portray the ultimate capitalist-whore puppet of a doomed society with nothin..
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paris-hilton
terrorism
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David Rakoff |