I have a new short story out in Lightspeed! “The Last Lucid Day” is about who closure serves, and why we chase it so doggedly. This story is a heavy one. Take care of your heart while you read.
I also got to do an Author Spotlight to accompany the piece. It was a pleasure to talk through the artistic choices and hype up some books I’ve been loving lately. You may notice that none of the books mentioned are super current. That, my friends, is because I’m a wizard.
The vast majority of the world’s books, music, films, television and art, you will never see. It’s just numbers.
– Linda Holmes
I first encountered Linda Holmes’ “The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going To Miss Almost Everything” in 2011, at a deeply formative time in my life. This short and profound essay measures the volume of extant art against the length of a human life. There are so many books to read, movies to watch, albums to listen to—and so little time! The aspiration to be “well-read” is a useless one. Our only recourse is to cull—to preemptively toss out work that you do not anticipate enjoying—or to surrender—to live with the acceptance that you will miss out on very many things, no matter how hard you try.
I know the point of the essay is not despair, but I did feel a great deal of despair about this. Culling entire genres, authors, or mediums feels antithetical to curiosity. Though I’ve tried a fair few video games, I’ve yet to fall in love with one—but I will never say that I don’t like video games. That would be absurd! There must be a video game out there that will render me absolutely feral with excitement. I just haven’t found it yet, and that’s on me.
But if you do not cull—if you remain curious about and open to every piece of media that crosses your path—then, well … You have to accept that you are going to miss a lot! You are, in fact, going to miss almost everything!
I have had a very hard time being okay with that.
A decade after Holmes’ essay, this Amal El-Mohtar tweet came across my timeline—and it has been rattling around in my brain ever since. A liberating sentiment, beautifully worded: it does not matter if what you’re reading is “current.” You do not owe anyone an apology for reading something “late.” So what, you weren’t there on release day? So what, you missed the preorder? You are here now.
I stowed this tweet in the same corner of my consciousness as “The Sad, Beautiful Fact,” left it alone for a while, and something wonderful happened.
Wouldn’t you rather arrive “late” than not at all?
I know I would.
Wouldn’t you rather appreciate the books that delight you than mourn the stories you won’t get to read?
Yeah. I would, actually.
I’ll get to the art I’m meant to get to. I’ll get to it when I’m meant to get to it. A wizard is always on time.
Dominique Dickey 