Update on what I'm into
For your parasocial enjoyment
The big thing I’m up to is working on my next book, Dear Student: Letters on Life and Learning in College. (Or Learning and Life, who knows, these things change.) There are no interesting updates to share about this work. It’s going well. It’s on schedule. It’s currently a wreck, but that’s completely fine at this stage. It won’t be a wreck in six months. I may nevertheless write a post on my “process,” because Substack loves nothing more than such.
This post is about what I’m into. If you knew me ten or five or even two years ago, you might be surprised to learn that what I’m into has changed quite a bit. I don’t know if everyone is like this — some people are into the same things, year in and year out, and we salute them for going deep. But I’ve noticed that other people I respect get into new stuff. It can feel like a betrayal at first. I liked them because they were into this one thing. But then they got into a new thing.
For example, I have thought often over the past few years about this essay by the art historian Jennifer Roberts about art and attention. I am so interested in what she had to say in 2013 that in 2024 or so I started following her on Instagram. And it turns out she isn’t into attention anymore. She’s into the moon.
Similarly, I have been into the work of Buffalo-based graphic artist Julian Montague for 20 years. But I was surprised to learn that people don’t follow him for the reasons I did: his stray shopping cart project, which permanently changed how I look at the world around me (i.e., I look for and then think about stray shopping carts). Montague had gotten into other stuff, and people loved it. When his shopping cart book was republished two years ago, it was partly because so many of his fans knew nothing about this important work.
Perhaps some of you started following me because of burnout, the subject of my 2022 book, The End of Burnout. (The hardcover for which is in at least its third printing.) Or, going further back — and God bless you if it’s the case — you followed me because I wrote about the need to conceal Christian identity in public life, the subject of my 2009 book, Secret Faith in the Public Square.
I still give talks about burnout (indeed, I spoke about it at three universities in the past couple months; hit me up if you’d like me to speak at yours), though I haven’t written much new stuff on it lately. I haven’t written or spoken about Christian identity in public life in quite a while (even though more recent events prove I was right). I doubt I will anytime soon, but who knows.
Anyway, here are some newish things I’m into.
Art
I have never taken an art history class. I do draw, which must count for something. The first artist I wrote about was the contemporary portraitist George W. Bush. Several years after that, in desperation for new ways to teach writing, I started taking my undergraduate students to the university’s (really excellent) art museum. The museum educators taught my students and me much about how to look at artworks. So I started looking at artworks differently, too. That led me to read more about art.
Then someone who writes well about art told me they like how I write about art. With that encouragement, I decided I would write about art more. I wrote what I think was a pretty good essay about art and attention last year. Then the good people at the quite excellent art museum at Marquette University invited me to give a talk about Marian art and attention. It was so much fun. That talk is going to be an essay, coming out very soon. And I have another essay coming soon about a major exhibition of contemporary painting.
I remain baffled by art, but it’s fun to be baffled. The bet I’m placing is that I can help others by writing through my bafflement.
French
In January, I enrolled in a French class with other adults whose brain plasticity is, like mine, at approximately the level of sheetrock. It’s been a blast. I’ve kept going to the class and now also listen to several French podcasts, read Le Monde, watch Instagram reels about the anti-Shein protests outside BHV Le Marais, that sort of thing (or genre de chose).
I did this because my wife and I found ourselves, for work reasons, in France in 2022 and Switzerland in 2023. On both of these trips, I leaned on the tiny bit of French I learned in college, but mostly I leaned on the excellent English skills of people in Paris and Geneva. I felt stupid and helpless. I realize that this is the experience of most Anglophones in French-speaking places. But, you see, I am committed to believing that I’m not like other guys.
Then we had work-related occasion to go back to Paris, and I decided, that’s it, I’m going to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to delay for up to ten seconds how quickly the cashier at Franprix switched to English on me. And it worked! Instead of switching to English immediately upon my opening my mouth, they switched after my second or third French sentence. This is progress.
Opera
I think the first opera I went to had Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg onstage in non-singing roles. (In a production that I just learned became the basis for an opera in its own right.)1
I went to a few more after we moved to Dallas, because we got free tickets. It seemed fine. Then I listened to Jessa Crispin’s podcast series on classical music, which convinced me to go to Elektra. It utterly blew me away. The next year, I got season tickets for the Dallas Opera.
I don’t listen to recordings of opera very often. I really just love the in-person experience, for which my wife and I have developed our rituals: what night to go, where to eat beforehand, where to park, etc.
I didn’t subscribe to the full Dallas Opera season this year, even though their focus is on French opera. Carmen is really long. The Little Prince is actually sung in English. And Don Carlos is even longer than Carmen and is also not in French. I do have tickets for Dialogues of the Carmelites. I feel a special connection to the composer, Francis Poulenc, becuase on both of our recent trips to Paris, we ate our first meal at an adorable restaurant below the place where he was born or possibly died. Or both.
Brags about former students
A few people who took my summer spiritual nonfiction writing class (via the Jesuit Media Lab) recently published essays that they worked on in the class:
Anthony Russo, “Recommitting to the Sign of Peace in a World at War,” America, Sept. 19.
Allison Bobzien, “The Golden Legend: Understanding St. Martha’s Bravery and Boldness,” Busted Halo, Oct. 15.
Lisa Creamer, “Who Is My Neighbor?” Everyday Ignatian, Oct. 31. (The real question of this one is, can a snake in my garden be my neighbor, whom I must love?)
Anthony, Alli, and Lisa all came to the class with strong narrative and rhetorical skills. I hope the class helped focus these skills a little bit more, not just through my instruction but through the writing community we formed.
If you’re interested in taking a class like this, keep an eye on the Jesuit Media Lab site. They’re always doing something really good!
Why no one has turned the story of the Von Erich family (basis for the movie The Iron Claw) into an opera is beyond me. Five brothers, all of them wrestlers, living under the thumb (dare I say, the iron claw) of a domineering father? Shirtless baritones? Flying off the top rope? Come on, librettists, get it together.