#64: keepers of the quiet
clearing emails, refraining from gossip, and staying within your dominion of control
Above is an audio recording of me reading this post for those who prefer listening. Thank you, Philipp Kaspar, for the intro music!
I archived over 11,000 emails last week. Inspired by my boyfriend who diligently maintains less than a page of emails, I let late September Virgo energy get the best of me and figured out how to bulk archive emails prior to a selected date. It was euphoric. I kept refreshing the page and watching the number go down and down and down.
I did the same with my Youtube watch list and saved podcast folder on Spotify. For years, I have been stockpiling videos and podcasts to consume, subconsciously hoping that I will find the big answers within them or reach some form of salvation once I have completed my 10,000 hours (literally) of watching/listening. To go through and delete them all was an act of self-trust. I don’t need to consume more in order to feel complete.
This was well-timed with a recommendation from my coach to listen to “Do nothing” by Derek Sivers. He says,
Observe yourself.
Your own mind is the best laboratory.
It’s also the most private and peaceful place to work.To be wise, shut out all media and opinions.
No news, no gossip, no entertainment.
Most of it is not worth knowing.
It’s not news to anyone that we are in a state of informational overwhelm.
Someone was talking the other day about a friend who deletes all of her text messages after a conversation completes. She feels that the energetic load of holding onto past conversations is larger than we think.
We often hold onto to these archives in hopes that there will come a moment in time in which they will be helpful for achieving a particular emotional state. Maybe in the future this text thread will make me feel nostalgic in a good way. Or maybe this YouTube video that I have no desire to watch right now (even though I feel like I should) will eventually appeal to me.
We think we need to take action in order to feel the emotion that we desire.
Sitting in traffic, we ache to feel peaceful. We thrash in and out of lanes, stressing about the minutes we can shave off of our arrival time if we just rush enough, and in so doing, the stress continue to compound. We really could have skipped that whole process and went straight for the feeling of peace.
We are always running towards emotions while holding onto a contradictory belief that they must be delivered externally, in some future state, by someone else or under new circumstances.
It’s as though we feel hungry so we place an order for delivery and then get impatient and run to the store to get groceries and miss the delivery man.
Most actions are a pursuit of emotions.
You think you want to take action or own a thing.
But what you really want is the emotion you think it’ll bring.1
In clearing the junk from my email, Youtube, and Spotify, I began to think about where else in my life I stockpile information. Where else am I distracting myself with other people’s noise in order to prevent myself from having to take a good hard look within?
Gossip is one answer.
There are multiple types of gossip. For instance, a writer that I really admire,
wrote beautifully about listening to passerbyers on the street, animated in storytelling about the ins and outs of other people’s lives. Gossiping to escape, to evade responsibility, to consume ourselves with the problems of others under the illusion that at the end of our little chat, these people will be better off for our understanding of what the almighty we would do if we were in their positions — which, of course, we would never be in because how dare she or I can’t believe he did that!I find myself having conversations about other people and feeling transfixed by the urge to stalk them and continue to probe and find more details. We scroll the lives of others and know how many babies Nara Ziza has and what their names are and what they ate for lunch yesterday. We watch people pour protein shakes into coke at gas stations and review them. We sing remixes of Donald Trump’s “eating the cats and eating the dogs” speech subconsciously, sometimes first thing in the morning. The amount of disk space that is occupied by the most useless information from the internet is actually quite unfathomable.
Then there is the somewhat innocuous gossip that we do even in our most intimate relationships, just by catching up on the lives of others as a normal means of making conversation. Sometimes it is a sincere check in on how someone we mutually love and care about is doing. Other times, we are just making the conversational rounds.
And then there is the headspace that is occupied by remaining transfixed on the problems of your nearest and dearest others that, hard as you try to make otherwise, are outside the realm of your control.
In our most empowered states, we spend way less time thinking about other people and way more time focusing on our zone of control. In the Courage to be Disliked, this is referred to as having a clear delineation between “my tasks” and “your tasks.” Or said differently, the things that are within our control and the things that are not.
In this piece about gossip stealing sovereignty,
l brings up King/Queen archetypes from Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette’s famed book about masculinity. Isabel asserts that Kings/Queens have no fucks to give about other people’s problems. They remain composed in their dominion of control and distract themselves not with the particularities of others lives.One of the cornerstone qualities of a King is that they know where their realm begins and ends. They understand the boundaries of their responsibilities. They understand what is needed of them, how to take care of themselves, their people, their community. They conserve their energy for what is under their control, so that they can show up fully and intentionally in the areas that they rule over. This necessarily means not getting involved in what is outside of their realm, what is outside the “borders” of their world.2
In the same way that Kings/Queens do not concern themselves with gossip, they too do not stockpile thousands of hours of content that they feel obligated to consume in order to know the answers. They are calm and self-possessed enough to know and feel that they have the tools within.
They are guardians of their time. They are stewards of their energy. They are ruthless about avoiding noise.
What would happen if we, too, cut out all of the noise?
There would be more room to listen to ourselves.
The people that seem to have the clearest sense of a calling also tend to have the most open dialogue with themselves. Without the distractions of the noise around them, they are able to hone in closely on that which resides within their domain of control.
In recent podcast interviews, Liz Gilbert talks about the power of two-way prayer, which is essentially asking a question to a higher power and allowing it to be answered. Not a dialogue, but a question and a listening. She has a newsletter called
, in which her 120,000+ subscribers address a question at the top of their notebook page to some force outside themselves - call it God, Love, Chocolate, or anything else - and listen for the answer. In so doing, they write to themselves exactly what they need to hear in that moment. This practice shines light directly in your corner. It illuminates the things you most intimately need to hear.So that’s the invitation. To listen. Not to the gossip of others. Not to the things you think you should listen to in order to “arrive,” but to yourself. I admit the irony of writing a newsletter that pulls so much from other influences - both
and in this instance. But that actually doesn’t feel counter to the point of this.When we clear out the shit that we felt obligated to hold, we have better access to our own intuition and the serendipity that pulls you to the messages that you need to hear, delivered in any form. Sometimes that’s by an open question to your journal. Sometimes that’s by heeding the call to an afternoon walk with a podcast that feels divinely timed. The prerequisite is having your finger on the pulse of you rather than everyone else.
When we feel pulled to gossip, can we ask whoever we are talking to a question about themselves? When we are consumed by the problems of others, instead can write an open ended question at the top of our journal and see where it leads? When we feel suffocated by the burden of information that sits on our devices and in our heads at all times, can we turn on our favorite playlist, walk uphill on the treadmill, and manically clear a bunch of shit off our phone with the euphoria of recognition that you don’t have to absorb anything or do anything to be okay?
On the off chance that our entire purpose in this simulation is to catch a falling glass before it shatters off the dinner table, hold the door for a stranger in Erewhon, or show up to your mom’s house for lunch on a random Tuesday… can we take solace in the luxury of truly not knowing why we are here? And as a result, lean into the freedom and dominion that we have to heed our own callings?
That’s what a King/Queen would do. Well, I actually haven’t read that book but I now feel freed of the need to, which ultimately means I will read it sooner, with greater joy, by my own volition.
That’s all for today! Thanks for Getting Caught Up in Char’s Web with me!
I will catch you here again soon!
Char’s Web Song of the Week
Xandra’s Curation Corner
Xandra Beverlin is an incredible art curator at Pace Gallery, co-founder of PULSE, and dear friend, who so generously pulls pieces for this newsletter each week. I text her a few short bullets about the main themes of Char’s Web and she replies with the most thoughtful articulations of the artists that come to mind. This is my favorite part of writing my newsletter. Do yourself the favor of reading her curator’s notes!
It’s likely no surprise that this week’s theme very clearly brought to mind the work of Conceptual and Minimalist artists. It’s admirable how a Conceptual practice finds value in re-interpreting an existing thing, rather than just striving to create a new byproduct for the sake of doing so — a type of contemplation that I think we could all benefit from in this environment of what can feel like excessive noise.
Specifically, this letter brought me to Sophie Calle, a French Conceptual artist whose work often incorporates both writing and photography, with a focus on vulnerability and intimacy. (The Walker in Minneapolis is putting on the first North American survey of her work this month, if you want to learn more.)
Calle has this way of gnawing into the psychology of human relationships in such a subtle way — placing some of the most mundane objects and experiences of the everyday on a pedestal, urging us to consider them differently. Take Care of Yourself (2007), originally created for a vast public audience at the French Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, brought 107 women from all ages and backgrounds to contribute interpretations to a breakup email she received from an ex.
“I asked 107 women, chosen for their profession or skills, to interpret this letter. To analyze it, comment on it, dance it, sing it. Exhaust it. Understand it for me. Answer for me. It was a way of taking the time to break up. A way of taking care of myself.”
Another work, The Blind (1986), comprised a series of interviews of blind people, in which Calle asked them to simply define beauty. No Sex Last Night (1996) is a film about a couple’s road trip across America ending at a wedding chapel in Las Vegas, eschewing tropes of the genre and instead documenting the result of a man and woman who barely know embarking on an intimate journey together.
Her work ties so well with what you’re getting at because I think the beauty and intrigue that she so distinctly reveals in her practice doesn’t come from or lead to a specific product: it is instead generated merely through conscious observation. In Calle’s eyes, these elements of meaning aren’t manufactured as we are so often told: they are already existing around us every single day — but only if we take the time to do nothing and notice.
All past issues of Char’s Web are available for reading here. A few samples below…
#1: A first of many.
#43: the slobs I peeled off the street
#49: we have to be orderly on the instant
#50: the soundtrack of “Up”
#63: what does it mean to be ready?
Derek Sivers, “Do Nothing” from “How to Live”
Another beautiful piece my love - im constantly inspired by your way of being and ability to be maleable in your approach to many facets of life. The art curations in this one are so beautiful, and the first film pics remind me of some of ours!
So resonated with this Char! As a fellow Virgo, one of my daily rituals is to delete emails and texts:) I love a good purge of any kind!! Your wise words are a good reminder to focus in and away from the noise. Thank you!! <3