Good morning.

I'm on Bowen Island for a mini personal retreat this week, and I have an essay planned for tomorrow, so this week's Public Learning will be short.

Although Bowen Island is hardly isolated, the acoustic difference from the city is immediately noticeable, and though I love where I live, the quiet is soothing. Mount Pleasant's leafy streets give me an immense amount of isolation from the din of nearby almost-highways, but living in an older apartment building still means plenty of thumps and bumps and thrums and beeps.

As I questioned in the last newsletter, I am thinking a lot about how to find the balance between enough noise to create some smoothness to the day, but not so much that I end up taking in more than I want to.

Wherever you are, I hope these leafy cool days bring you good soup and warm sweaters – and for those of you in British Columbia, please don't forget to vote in the municipal elections. Tomorrow is the last day.

Something worth your time

Closure is a myth — As I was listening to an old On Being interview with Pauline Boss yesterday while reflecting on some losses I have felt this year, I was intrigued by how emphatically the psychologist who coined the concept of "ambiguous loss" rejects the idea of closure.

In a beautiful mixed-media collaboration with Donna Carnes from 2012, the two argued that in contexts where the loss of someone is ambiguous, such as with someone who has gone missing, the work of therapists must be to "find meaning, instead of finding closure." To do so requires holding multiple truths about someone at the same time: they're gone, but they may come back some day. This allows people to move forward without papering over the complex truths — and the feelings that accompany them.

In a flourish I wish more academics would have the courage for, Carnes' poetry is woven throughout the article, which also includes active, first-person dialogue between the two authors. The concluding poem will stay with me for a long, long time.

Walk On

You walk on

Still beside me,

Eyes shadowed in dusk;

You’re the Lingering question

At each day’s end.

I have to laugh

At how

Open-ended you remain–

Still with me

After all these years

Of being lost.

I carry you like

My own personal

Time Machine,

As I put on

My lipstick, smile,

And head out to

The party.

Things I am still figuring out

What do we do with the email inbox in the age of totalizing digital communication?

My personal one languishes, and my work one feels interstitial amidst many other channels. Receiving things there can almost feel like getting physical mail sometimes. It's not going anywhere, obviously, but its future is very uncertain to me.

Easy Listening

It's frequently sampled on TikTok, but I had never heard the original, full-length version of Labrinth's "Never Felt So Alone" until this week. The singer-producer-composer dynamo (rightly) rose to fame for the soundtrack of Euphoria, and his wider catalogue is as interesting as it is ambitious, including the fascinating and impressive two-album Cosmic Opera: Act I and Act II.

One of the pieces that I loved most, however, was "Where the Wild Things" from Imagination & the Misfit Kid.

It's a highly stylized combination of thumpy pop and soulful vocals, punctuated with some playful dubstep-lite interludes and scratchy guitar. I recommend the entire album.

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