AN INTRODUCTORY NOTE:
I started this newsletter with two goals in mind:
- Share music I’m listening to
- Share things I’m writing
The trouble is that I got so caught up in number one that I started to neglect number two. So—we’re going to do a switcheroo.
This email will now primarily be focused on random things I’m writing / thinking about. I will still include my top five songs of the week at the bottom of every newsletter, but I will not be writing little blurbs about each song. Hopefully the other words I write are interesting enough that they more than make up for it.
Now, onto today’s newsletter…
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“Is that all you got, Lefty?” said Mimo.
I didn’t take too kindly to the way he called me Lefty, the name brimming with disdain and contempt.
“As a matter of fact, it’s not, Righty.” I fired back. “I’ll show you, once and for all.”
And that just about decided it. I would need to learn to draw.
I knew that this was not the type of thing that could be learned overnight or even in a few weeks or months. It’s the type of thing that you have to bear with your whole heart, steadying your aim diligently, day after day, until you might be able to sketch a banana or an apple or some other inanimate object that you have lying around your house.
And so I bought a notebook, a little memo book, for 99 cents at the Acme. It wasn’t perfect but it was at least spiral-bound, and the type of thing that you might carry around if you’re a detective, interviewing people and jotting down notes. I flipped open the first page, licked the tip of my pen, and began to draw.
“It doesn’t look very much like a dog,” Mimo remarked.
“Well, that’s because I’m not done yet!” I argued. “Give me a damn minute!”
I furrowed my brow, focusing, my tongue creeping out of the corner of my mouth, my eyes wide, my heart beating, my mind swimming—desperately, yes desperately—trying to weave lines on the notebook page, tangling them, wrestling with them, wondering why I was using a pen and not a pencil, scribbling, scratching, scrawling, doodling. I took a gasp of air, and Voila! I looked at the page. It looked nothing like a dog trying to chase its tail.
“Told ya,” Mimo quipped, smirking at me.
“You smug son of a bitch,” I fumed. “This won’t be the end!”
I slammed the notebook shut and stormed off to my bedroom, leaving Mimo behind. I wanted to be left alone, but it was too late for that. Mimo was here to stay.
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My troubles with Mimo all began a few weeks ago, when I was reading Elena Ferrante’s essays on writing, titled In The Margins: On The Pleasures of Reading and Writing. Within the pages of this brilliant little book, Ferrante introduces the concept of the Necessary Other, which is really just a name for the complex and vital relationship between her two main characters, Elena and Lila, in the Neapolitan Novels.
These two characters need each other more than they need themselves; they are mirrors reflecting both what they are and what they can never be, forging a relationship that is at times touching and at times toxic, both passionate and painful. Each becomes the catalyst for the other’s growth, for change, for escape from the shackles they have both endured. Their bond is push and pull, loving and loathing. They are friends; they are rivals. Where one ends, the other begins, and vice versa. They are, in every sense of the word, necessary to each other.
Around the same time, I stumbled upon this YouTube video, about a man who started sketching, and how it changed his life forever. After finishing the video, a voice popped into my head and told me, “It really is a shame you’ll never be able to draw like that.”
“I beg your pardon?” I responded to the voice.
“You’re not capable,” the voice said.
“Yes, I am!” I retorted.
“Surely, you must be joking,” the voice said, and it laughed and laughed and laughed.
It was not until later that day that I connected the dots. I knew, as Ferrante did, that ultimately the Necessary Other must come from within, deep inside of my being, challenging me in a way that nobody else is capable of. The voice that spoke to me was like the siren’s song, so alluring that I was willing to listen to it above anything else. I listened to the voice with expectant ears, wondering whether it was friend or foe that stood in my way, and I felt, all at once, that this voice was my Necessary Other, my shadow Gemini twin, the wolf to my sheep, the inevitable division of what I am and am not.
“They call me Mimo,” the voice said.
“Mimo Mannino?” I asked.
“That’s right,” the voice confirmed. “Mimo Mannino.”
So now, out of pure spite and scorn, I spend every morning, at breakfast, drawing in my notebook, to prove to Mimo—my imaginative antagonist, my Necessary Other—that I am capable of drawing. And can you imagine? I no longer scroll on my phone while I eat my yogurt and banana and protein shake, but instead I make art—art!—an expression of myself on paper. I am present, I am tangible. I become the words and pictures that spill out of my head and onto the little page.
I hate Mimo, but I love what he makes me do.
“Congrats,” Mimo tells me. “You drew a chimp. If you could even call it that.”
But this time, I don’t fret. Because I remember a quote that I read, not too long ago, from C.S. Lewis. He says:
“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of.”
I read the quote again and I laugh, howling right in the face of Mimo. “Do you not understand? Do you not see the victories that I will achieve?” I ask.
Mimo smiles back at me, and reminds me, “You’re still not very good at drawing.”
“I’m aware, you buffoon!” I respond. “But please tell me that again, tomorrow.”
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WHO IS YOUR NECESSARY OTHER?
AND WHAT ARE THEY TELLING YOU?
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